Sept. 26, 2016 By Hannah Wulkan
A popular Mexican street food vendor will open its first brick and mortar location in Long Island City next week.
Gordo’s Cantina, known for serving authentic Mexican street food at street fairs and in pop up locations, will open its doors to the public at 24-11 Queens Plaza North next Monday, October 3rd.
After looking for a location for almost two and a half years, owner JR Savage will give Gordo’s Cantina a permanent home.
From Queens originally, Savage said that he watched LIC grow over the past 10 years, and when a great space that was in his budget opened in the Queens Plaza area, it seemed ideal.
“It will be easy for my friends in Manhattan and Greenpoint and Williamsburg to come because the train is right there, but I also want to start bringing it back to my Queens roots, and that area is perfect to attract lots of local people too,” Savage said.
The restaurant will specialize in street food native to Central Mexico, including tacos in handmade tortillas and open-faced quesadillas made on corn tortillas, just as one would find them in Mexico.
Gordo’s Cantina will also offer specialty dishes, such as a braised rabbit dish wrapped in a banana leaf that Savage has been perfecting for over a year. He added that there will also be a variety of weekly specials and off-the-menu specialties, and the restaurant will open for brunch and breakfast soon as well.
Savage explained that after working a variety of street fairs, festivals, and popups, he has really narrowed in on what his food is about.
“We focus on a more homey feeling for people that really care about food instead of the more gimmicky stuff,” Savage said. “Our stuff is more about comfort, it’s home cooked Mexican street food. What you get from us is what you would literally get in the streets of Central Mexico.”
The restaurant will be decorated with items from Mexican Flea Markets and will have red tile floors, wooden counters, copper ceilings, mismatched metal chairs and industrial green light fixtures, according to a press release.
Gordo’s Cantina will be open Monday through Wednesday from noon to 11 p.m., Thursday through Saturday from noon to midnight and Sunday from noon to 10 p.m., though Savage said that he plans on expanding the hours to include breakfast and brunch soon, and eventually plans to remain open until 3 a.m. The restaurant will also eventually offer delivery.
Gordo’s Cantina will officially open on Monday, though there will be a soft friends and family opening this Thursday and Friday.
For more information visit the website at http://gordoscantina.com
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15 Comments
Yes. Yes. Yes!
I love tacos and I sincerely hope that they make good tacos. No braised rabbit tacos. Chicken, beef and pork please. Just tacos. They are simple yet so hard to find. Please god let there be good tacos in LI City!!!
There are – Chela and Garnacha
they have same food at Taco Bell
The FAKE MRLIC wrote the September 27, 6:15 am & 10:53 am posts about Trump & the bowling alley. He just won’t give up. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the REAL MRLIC. I did write the posts about Trump and the bowling alley. I guess I’m just going to have to give up and come up with a new UserName.
Hahahaha braised rabbit….strip club…oh man these guys are over before it even began…good luck hahaha
Who would go here when you have Chipotle opening up soon. These guys are going to go out of business real quick.
Where’s the guy who bitches about brunch? He’s not going to be into braised rabbit, more for me!
I think this used to be a Chinese take out place.
Lots of office workers and residences in the immediate area so if their food is good, they should do OK.
Business advice to the owners: Stay open later so you can get some of the customers from Scandals, the strip club that the restaurant shares the building with.
I wonder how long their lease is? The restaurant is in one of the few large one story buildings near Queens Plaza. I would expect it to be developed into an office or residential tower soon.
Also stay open late enough due the fact there are about 2000 rental apartments within a 5 minute walk
they’ll give you more business than Scandals.
They should have opened a bowling alley here.
How about putting that bowling alley along with a movie theatre in the old Swing line building – where MOMA QNS was back in the last decades?
This is great! I just hope they don’t accidentally put Momento out of business.
Trump warned us about this. #TrumpIsGod