Family-owned Taco Stop MKE opened in Bay View, its third location, under circumstances far unlike the other two: during a pandemic, as prices for its ingredients in some cases tripled.
And on Tuesday, co-owner AJ Agiss handed out water bottles to demonstrators marching past the business at 2121 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., on their way from Humboldt Park to downtown to protest the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
"I’m Mexican," he said. "I understand the struggles because I lived through them."
He and his parents, Arsene and Bertina, opened their first Taco Stop in South Milwaukee in 2016, at 513 N. Chicago Ave. The business grew steadily over the years, serving tacos with their own recipes for salsas and Bertina Agiss' recipe for enchiladas, among other menu items. The Agisses opened their second restaurant in Elm Grove last year, at 12862 W. Blue Mound Road.
Opening another restaurant this year wasn't part of their plan.
"I wasn’t planning on it at all, whatsoever," AJ Agiss said. But after the Bay View property owner called them to offer the space, "we went and looked at the place," said AJ, who lived in Bay View before his family moved to South Milwaukee, "and we really liked the place."
So they went for it.
"We have a saying between me and my mom," AJ said, that in English translates to, "Who says that we can’t?"
"It’s a terrible motto when you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said, laughing.
But he and his father got to work redecorating the place, as they did to the space in Elm Grove. (The Bay View location previously was a poke restaurant and a Subway.) They had planned to open it in March, but then the coronavirus pandemic hit and stay-at-home orders that closed restaurants except for takeout were issued.
The Bay View restaurant didn't open as scheduled, and the other Taco Stop MKE locations were in jeopardy. "This might be the end of us," Agiss recalled thinking, "we might not be able to survive this."
"Our extremely loyal customers rallied around us and got us out of the hole. By some miracle, we got out of that hole," he said.
After three months of the Bay View restaurant sitting idle, with bills to pay for it but no revenue coming in, it was time to open. "I can’t afford to sit closed anymore," Agiss said.
It debuted May 28, the same date that the Elm Grove and South Milwaukee locations opened.
Customers can place orders in person at the counter-service restaurant and take them to go, or phone in orders to (414) 231-3304 for pickup. (Dining rooms remain closed in Milwaukee.) Like the other locations, Bay View keeps hours of 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
"Our food has always been more geared to go," Agiss said. The restaurant has design-your-own tacos, built on choices of chicken, steak, al pastor, ground beef, chorizo, barbacoa, lengua and beans, a la carte side dishes, and items including flautas, tortas, chilaquiles and Oaxacan-style tamales wrapped in banana leaves.
The menu is online at eat-tacos.com; items are the same for all locations, but prices vary by site. The restaurant has had to raise prices lately as the cost of beef and other ingredients have soared, although it kept prices flat at Bay View as an opening special. "You wouldn't believe the price of avocados right now," Agiss said — he even briefly considered taking guacamole off the menu.
Taco Stop MKE first opened in South Milwaukee in part because Agiss didn't like the tacos he was finding. "My mom’s recipes are being enjoyed by hundreds of people — that’s the thing we wanted," he said.
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Contact dining critic Carol Deptolla at carol.deptolla@jrn.com or (414) 224-2841, or through the Journal Sentinel Food & Home page on Facebook. Follow her on Twitter at @mkediner or Instagram at @mke_diner.
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