Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pompano Beach is getting an outdoor food hall next year
Papamigos food truck is there right now
Sitting on a nondescript corner of Atlantic Boulevard and Dixie Highway, nestled beside a warren of humble-looking storefronts and a water fountain that seems grandiose by comparison, you’ll find the Papamigos food truck.
It’s the only one in this area of Pompano Beach, right across the street from City Hall and behind where Papamigos is building a brick-and-mortar restaurant.
And yet, everyone — from the owners to the local government — say that sole food truck is a harbinger of big foodie things to come.
The city of Pompano Beach is planning a 15,000 square-foot dining and pedestrian plaza they will call The Backyard. Although scheduled for early 2021, they already have interest from eateries such as Shack in the Back, Sweets and More as well as Wood and Wire for this al fresco kitchen concept that will be in the middle of a larger district the city is coining as “Old Town.”
“That was the first commercial area in Pompano Beach,” explains Nguyen Tran, director of the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Association. “[We] created an event called ‘Old Town Untapped.’ We got a lot of the local craft breweries, six of them in Pompano Beach. We had craft vendors, breweries giving out beer samples, live music. We
did this the first Friday of every month. The first one, we had like 200 people. Then the second one we had over 3,000 people. The area was just buzzing.”
Pandemic problems
Then the coronavirus shutdown hit and the CRA had to hit the brakes on that monthly event. But entrepreneurs took note of the area that already housed businesses such as Chicken Box ‘N’ More, Odd Breed Wild Ales, Benzer Pharmacy and the Bailey Contemporary Arts Center.
“I’m not going to build a restaurant that I can’t put people in,” says Brian “El Jefe” Faeth, one of the owner/operators of Papamigos.
Valuable partnerships were cemented, including with the Papamigos owners, the family behind longtime favorites Papa’s Raw Bar and Papa’s Fresh Market (formerly Papa Hughie’s Seafood World) in nearby Lighthouse
Point.
“COVID-19 completely stunted the restaurant,” says Troy Ganter, who heads up the marketing for his family’s various restaurant and food market interests under the umbrella of their Eat Drink And Be Local brand. “It became a questions of how do we get this area activated. The CRA bent over backwards to get the food truck done. Four months ago we were trying to get a restaurant open, not a food truck.”
Faeth adds, “We already had this food truck concept already planned…for our catering and stuff like that.
So instead of putting all our funds into getting the building…why not put this here? This fits the need because it’s delivery only with COVID-19. We can start generating some traffic, some exposure of the area, what’s going on.”
Papamigos goes all ‘Mexi-Crasian’ on us
Papamigos serves what is being billed as “MexiCrasian,” a fusion of Asian and Mexican street food with a little Caribbean flavor thrown in for good measure. “Crasian is like Asian to the next level, because we’re all crazy,” Ganter explains.
Some of the dishes that the food truck is market testing include braised meat birria (three for $15) and citrus-marinated pork tacos (three for $12). There are also “Roll A Fatty” burritos stuffed with rice and beans and seven different fillings from jerk chicken to blackened, grilled or fried shrimp, for $15 and $18.
“We’re not sending sushi out of the truck,” Ganter adds. “In the heat of a food truck, that’s not the best thing to showcase. But we are going to have the tuna yuki chopped up tuna tartar [in] sushi tacos. You use a sheet instead of a taco shell. And I think we’re going to be famous for that.”
There is also a “Nacho Mama Roll” with shrimp tempura, avocado, cilantro and topped with queso and pico and served el gordo style with El Jefe’s pastor meat.
The Backyard
El Jefe is the nickname of former Marine Faeth, who is the fiance of Lauren Grosso, Ganter’s cousin and the other owner/operator of Papamigos. Faeth says he and Grosso are committed to both opening the family’s latest dining business in Pompano Beach’s Old
Town and participating in The Backyard when that gets activated.
“We really believe in this area and we want this area to really be developed,” he says.
The plans are for what Tran, of Pompano Beach’s CRA, says will be outdoor kitchen “glampers.”
“Kind of like Hullabalo in West Palm. That sort of concept — very casual, very relaxing, very cool, kind of trendsy. It’ll be like in Wynwood with pop-ups of storage containers that are turned into kitchens.”
Tran says this redevelopment involved “getting regulatory departments to think differently” and it took a lot of time, starting in 2014 with fixing up the former Bailey Hotel and rechristening it as the Bailey Contemporary Arts Center, converting the hotel into three art galleries with artist studios on the second floor.
“Basically it was four walls, and those were caving in,” Tran recalls. “But redevelopment always starts with arts and culture. That’s the way it was done in Delray Beach and West Palm Beach.”
Then, on the other side of Dixie Highway, came the Ali Cultural Arts Center as a multipurpose performing arts space in 2015. Next up was the Pompano Beach Cultural Center, which opened in 2017 adjacent to the City Hall and across Atlantic Boulevard from Old Town and where the Papamigos food truck is currently.
Now entrepreneurs such as Jeff Zadoff of Buddha Sky Bar fame is committing to opening a restaurant in Old Town and getting in on The Backyard as soon as it opens. “He’s a risk taker,” Tran says. “He goes in early, like he did with Delray Beach. He also saw that same vision that we’re trying to create.”
Developer Adam Adache has signed on to do a mixed-use property with commercial space on the first floor and condos above that he will call Old Town Square.
“Right now it’s still a very transitional area,” Tran says. “But Pompano Beach is thirsty for something like this.”