The owner of a popular vegan-Mexican food truck is opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Southwest Detroit later this year.
Nepantla Cafe is slated to open in late 2023 at 5410 W. Vernor Hwy, in a building formerly occupied by Charlie Clark’s Bar.
Chef-owner Rocky Coronado is known throughout D-town as the culinary force behind Rocky’s Road Brew, a food truck that rolls around the city slinging a variety of organic coffees, teas and vegan/vegetarian tacos.
Nepantla represents Coronado’s first brick-and-mortar location and it’s a long time in the making. The chef originally had plans to open a restaurant called Damelo Cafe when purchasing the West Vernor Highway building in 2018, the Detroit Eater reported.
Those plans faded away. Now Coronado’s future cantina is a natural evolution of the successful food truck. Nepantla will feature a plant-based provision of Mexican recipes along with juices, coffees and non-alcoholic mixed drinks.
Coronado is still looking for funding sources to build out the new restaurant, and the chef will start raising capital by selling coffee and pre-made breakfast tacos from a custom-built food trailer beginning April 7, according to the Detroit Eater.
Coronado declined to comment when reached by What Now Detroit this week.
The name of the forthcoming restaurant is derived from Nahuatl, a precolonial Aztec dialect still spoken by modern-day Mesoamerican groups indigenous to southern Mexico and Central America. In Latino and Chicano culture, Nepantla has come to mean “in betweenness,” or existing in and between two cultures.
“Nepantla just struck me because the food is all in this in-betweenness,” Coronado told Frame Talent. “When I first started doing vegan-Mexican food, I didn’t see a lot of it, even though traditionally Mexican food can be naturally vegan very easily.”
The moniker is also an ode to Coronado’s personal journey as a gender non-conforming, self-described “brown queer person,” who uses the pronouns they, them and their.
“It’s about knowing where you’re from, knowing where you’re at and knowing where you’re going,” they added during the Frame Talent showcase.
