2 hours Ago By Jeff Kiger
ROCHESTER — Mexican street food will soon be on the menu for the Peace Plaza in downtown Rochester. Angel and Elena Ruelas plan to bring The Taco Shop to the heart of Rochester. They operate a number of Minnesota restaurants and food trucks - The Taco Shop, Fiesta Mexican Grill and Fiesta Cancun Mexican Grill - in St.
Louis Park, Lino Lakes, Center City, Stillwater and St. Paul. ADVERTISEMENT The Taco Shop serves a large menu of authentic Mexican food built around a selection of made-to-order street tacos, tortas, burritos and chimichangas.
Elena Ruelas said The Taco Shop offers fast turnaround for Mayo Clinic employees and visitors as well as Rochester residents looking for a quick and flavorful lunch or dinner. “Plus, we’ll have margaritas, if they had a long day at work,” she added. “We’ve always been thinking of coming to Rochester for a while.
Rochester is a very important Minnesota city,” said Elena Ruelas. “And then we found the perfect spot.” That “perfect spot” is the restaurant space at 20 First Ave.
SW., across the Peace Plaza from the Historic Chateau Theatre . It was most recently occupied briefly by Green-n-Fresh/Peacock Books .
The space is best known as the longtime home of Mac's Cafe and Restaurant, which operated there for 48 years until it closed in 2017. Darci Fenske of Paramark Real Estate represented the landlord in the brokerage deal. Acropolis Properties, led by George Psomas , owns the restaurant space along with other street-level retail storefronts on the Peace Plaza.
Psomas was a second-generation owner of Mac's Cafe. Elena Ruelas said the goal is to open Rochester’s Taco Shop as soon as they can, hopefully within eight or nine weeks. ADVERTISEMENT “The kitchen is all set up.
We just need to make some cosmetic changes to make it ours, get the liquor license and we’ll be ready to go,” she said. They expect to need a team of at least 10 employees to staff the new restaurant..
