Newport’s ever-changing food scene got a festive new addition last week.
Now open at 499 Washington Boulevard is Los Cuernos, a spacious new Mexican restaurant developed by the husband and wife team behind Taqueria Downtown, Andrea and Phil Barraza.
The 5,600 square foot restaurant is adorned with vintage movie posters, photos of rock n’ roll legends, and murals of Mexican icons. Combined, they create a vintage chic vibe unlike any restaurant in the area.
“We wanted to do something special that didn’t have a corporate look,” says Phil Barraza. The entire process took about a year and the restaurant’s interior design was always evolving, says Phil.
New Expanded Menu at Los Cuernos
Los Cuernos is a radical departure from Barraza’s other eateries. The sprawling restaurant features a spacious bar area, an intimate upstairs dining room, and a massive open kitchen.
Here with this big open kitchen we’re able to add a lot of seafood and a lot of dishes that we wanted to do, but couldn’t do at Taqueria, says Phil.
That includes dishes like Pescado a la Veracruzana, a Red Snapper topped with grilled tomatoes, capers, olives, onions, and white rice.
“with this big open kitchen we’re able to add a lot of dishes that we couldn’t do at Taqueria.”
“In Mexican food you either have a restaurant that has very good plates or a taco shop with very good tacos. We wanted to do very good tacos and very good plates here,” says Andrea.
New Tortilleria Coming to Passaic
The Barraza’s are currently working on a tortilleria — a bakery that specializes in made-from-scratch tortillas. The new tortilleria will be located in Passaic, NJ.
“We’re going to start bottling our salsas and sauces,” says Phil. The plan is to source all of the restaurants’ tortillas straight from the tortilleria.
In the meantime, diners can expect to see an updated menu at Los Cuernos with new dishes exclusive to the Newport location.
The Barrazas also tell us to be on the lookout for a new buffet brunch that will launch soon.
