ROCKINGHAM — Although the building is small, the newest Mexican restaurant in Richmond County is “Super.”
El Super Taco opened its doors on July 21 in the former spot occupied by Granny’s Doughnuts on Fayetteville Road, and co-owner Jorge Reyes — who along with partner Orlando Hernandez — wants to bring back authentic Mexican food with their family owned restaurant.
This is Reyes’s first time owning a restaurant, but he and his family used to run a food truck outside a Hispanic store on Biltmore Drive. He’s in the process of working on the truck in order to get it back on the road, but in the meantime, running the eatery is a full-time job.
“A couple of years ago, my family used to run a food truck so we used to help them out growing up with business and all of that,” said Reyes. “So finally I’m old enough, and me and my wife love to cook. She loves to cook, I love to cook, Mom likes to cook, and we like to cater for other people as like a job on the side. People were always telling us, ‘Why don’t you open a restaurant? Y’all can cook. Y’all got good seasoning.’ So we finally decided to do it, and with our family’s help we opened it up.”
The name El Super Taco may seem different, but Reyes said that was the point after initially not being able to pick one.
“We were trying to come up with a name. We could not come up with a name,” he said. “My wife, she’s a person that likes to pick around. She’s a joker. She just looked at us and said, ‘How about a super taco?’ That has a catchy tone. So she’s the one that came up with the name. She just threw it as a joke and it stuck.”
Reyes said his family was looking for a building that wasn’t too big, but also wasn’t too small and after driving past the establishment, noticed that Granny’s Doughnuts had closed. Reyes’ relationship with the landlord turned out to be an advantage after checking in to see if it was for rent.
“He said he wanted somebody that was hungry for achievement,” said Reyes. “There were four other potential guys that were gonna get it, but I guess out of those four, we got blessed.”
With few restaurant choices in close proximity, Reyes said business has been busy and feedback has been positive.
As for El Super Taco’s best dishes, Reyes said it depends on where you’re from.
“If we’re talking about the American community, the speaking English community, I would say its the quesadillas and burritos,” he said. “That’s the top two. They always go for the quesadillas and burritos. For the Hispanic community, I would say the tacos.”
Regardless of nationality, Reyes said his family owned restaurant plans on treating everyone else the same way — like family.
“We’re gonna serve you the way you wanna be served. That’s our motto,” he said. “We’re gonna treat you like family, and we’re gonna treat you the same way every time you come back. Everybody that comes in, we try to remember their order. We have some guys that come in here like, ‘Lemme get the regular.’ We’re still in the process of learning everybody, but we wanna treat everybody like family. That’s what distinguishes us from somebody else. Everybody’s family to us, and we’re gonna keep treating them like family.”
El Super Taco is open from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Reach reporter Matt Harrelson at 910-817-2674 and follow him on Twitter @mattyharrelson.