DETROIT, MI – There’s no doubt some irony in the fact that plenty of places around the country beat the Motor City to developing a vibrant scene of eats on four wheels, but now that pioneering food truck El Guapo Grill is bringing southwestern-flavored joy to denizens of the Central Business District, Detroit just might be able to take back its automotive mantle.
Guapo means “handsome” in Spanish, and El Guapo Grill is indeed a handsome devil, all decked out in black, red and shiny chrome accents. The truck is run by owners Douglas Runyon, who has worked the front of the house at Michael Mina’s restaurants, and Anthony Curis, whose family is in the restaurant business. After the city signed off on a special use permit for their truck — an existing Detroit ordinance does not allow food truck vending — they were off and running with El Guapo, which began serving lunch on July 15.
Following the playbook written by truck-runners in Los Angeles and New York, they post frequently on Facebook and Twitter (@elGuapoGrill) to let customers know their whereabouts and menu items.
For the moment, El Guapo’s location is relatively static — nestled in a parking lot about equidistant from Campus Martius and Greektown on the corner of Randolph and Monroe, delivering lunch service from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and appearing Saturday night and “special occasions” from 5-11 p.m. They also have a standing gig at Eastern Market later in the day on Tuesdays, and hope to get dispensation from the city to add late-night service and other locations soon.
“Hopefully by being out here and being a good example for other food trucks and working with neighboring businesses, hopefully the city will see this as an asset and will allow us to continue if not extend our hours,” says Curis.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t get an earlier jump on the day. Next week Curis and Runyon plan to launch breakfast service from 7:30-10:30 a.m., which will include breakfast burritos, Great Lakes coffee and crispy Tater Tots. We chatted with Runyon as he and his crew prepared for another lunch rush.
QUESTION: Where did the idea for El Guapo come from?
ANSWER: I opened Jean Georges Steakhouse out at Aria in Las Vegas. That was a very nice experience. Learning to open that was great. However, Vegas wasn’t good for my family and I. I knew I needed to come home.
When I came home, I knew I wanted to do something with a restaurant and was researching West Coast things and saw the food-truck shows and the popularity. There’s the need in Detroit. Obviously there’s the ones in southwest (Detroit), but they don’t come out of southwest. I had a business plan together when I met Anthony, and we evolved from that. We thought, “Detroit needs this.”
Find the entire article from The Detroit Free Press <here>
