Fort Worth restaurant veteran Adrian Burciaga has taken over South Main Village anchor Tinie’s and will reopen it about Jan. 13 with an ambitious new menu by a celebrity chef from TV’s “Top Chef Mexico.”
Tinie’s, 115 S. Main St., opened in 2020 as a Mexican cuisine restaurant and mezcal bar under Sarah Castillo, founder of La Pulga Spirits and the now-closed Taco Heads restaurants.
Burciaga, a co-founder of James Beard Award finalist Don Artemio, said he and wine expert Martin Quirarte have joined Castillo to upgrade the menu.
The restaurant is now promoted as Tinie’s Interior Mexican Cuisine.
Guest chef Ix-Chel Ornelas Hernández, known for her heritage mole sauces at El Patio Restaurant in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, wrote the new menu. It features dishes such as a pork chop with roasted pineapple, baked chicken with green pipian mole, steak in yellow mole, octopus and fish stew.
“I see this as an opportunity,” Burciaga said. He met Ornelas at the TV show finals, he said, and hosted her for wine dinners when he was the manager at Cafe Modern in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
He left Don Artemio in October. It continues under chef and co-founder Juan Ramón Cárdenas and his son, Rodrigo, who also opened the adjacent Dos Mares seafood restaurant.
He and Castillo talked about her original plans for Taco Heads, which had evolved into more of a patio restaurant and margarita bar with a popular Sunday brunch.
The brunch will expand to both Saturdays and Sundays, Burciaga said.
The restaurant is named for Castillo’s mother, Cristina (the name ”Tinie” sounds like the last syllables in “martini”).
Burciaga said he remembers meeting Sarah Castillo in 2011 when she was working the window at Taco Heads, then a popular food truck in the West Seventh Street neighborhood.
“Tinie’s is a tribute to her mother, and I think that’s in the new menu,” he said.
Tinie’s bar menu is changing, too.
An upstairs balcony dining area will be converted to a lounge, and the patio will be enclosed for more dining and group events, he said.
Tinie’s will be open for dinner nightly except Sundays and for brunch Saturdays and Sundays; 682-255-5425, tiniesfw.com.
Bud Kennedy
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