Boriken Dulcia et More was a fast-growing, family-operated kiosk in the Plaza Del Sol mall in Kissimmee.
Shoppers especially loved the made-to-order loaded baked potatoes — “the best baked potatoes in Central Florida,” its website claims — offered in the kiosk. They also offered “a wide variety of pastries, candies, desserts and cakes, made with Puerto Rican recipes,” which were also customer favorites.
Then came Covid and the mall — and all the stores inside it — were forced to close down. Owners Emilio Millan and his wife, Matisse, who had inherited the business, didn’t want to close. They thought they could make it through the pandemic with carryout orders and such.
But, no, they could not do that, Emilio Millan said. They had to abide by the rules of the mall. However, they did decide this would never happen to them again. And so, he said, they started looking for a permanent location.
The Millans are Puerto Rican and live in Poinciana. Many of the customers who visited the kiosk in Kissimmee were also from Poinciana and lamented the fact the grab-and-go kiosk restaurant wasn’t closer to where they lived.
The Millans looked around for a place and found an ideal location near the Publix in the Promenade Plaza on Cypress Parkway. They hope to open their new brick-and-mortar location, called Boriken Foods, by mid-December.
“We think this is going to be a great addition to our area,” Nolan Collier, regional leasing rep for Southeast Centers LLC, said.
For now, the menu offerings at Boriken Foods will be the same as they were in the kiosk, Millan said, but they hope, in time, to expand the menu and perhaps even offer Puerto Rican specialties, such as mofongo.
