Chargrilled Meats Champ Los Tacos No. 1 Reopens Today at Chelsea Market

Crowd-favorite Manhattan taqueria Los Tacos No. 1 and seafood offshoot Los Mariscos will be reopening today for takeout and delivery at the restaurant’s original Chelsea Market location, the owners tell Eater.

The menus will mostly remain the same, featuring the company’s lauded adobada, nopal, carne asada, and pollo asado tacos. But there are a couple of adjustments: Los Tacos No. 1 added an extensive, customizable taco bar to the menu for $17 per person, with a minimum of two people per order. Los Mariscos is also now selling margaritas for pickup and delivery.

To follow social distancing guidelines and city restrictions on restaurant operations, the team installed a new to-go window that faces the street at 425 W. 15th Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, for customers to line up outside and place orders. Both Los Tacos No. 1 and Los Mariscos will also be available for delivery for the first time, via the restaurants’ own websites. The delivery radius reaches Midtown and lower Manhattan to start.

Co-owner Tyler Sanders says they’ve been considering starting up again in May for some time, while the virus’s spread has slowed and city and state officials have started to talk about a reopening strategy. Eager customers have been emailing them, too, asking about a potential reopening. “It’s been a month since we’ve had good tortillas,” Sanders says. “And it’s Cinco de Mayo — we couldn’t think of a better day to open.”

The team is rehiring about 30 of their more senior employees to staff the to-go operation at Chelsea Market. If the relaunch goes well, the owners will start reopening their Tribeca and Times Square locations within the next few weeks, with the goal of rehiring all of their employees — just under 200 people overall — as quickly as possible. As more locations open, the team plans to be able to offer delivery to all of Manhattan.

“This has been nostalgic because it brings us back to how it all started — feeling the groove and the community out there,” manager Jacob Ackerman says. Los Tacos No. 1 originally opened inside Chelsea Market seven years ago.

Sanders and the other two co-owners, Christian Pineda and Kyle Cameron, say that they are approaching the reopening as the launch of a new restaurant. The location is set and the kitchen is already built out this time, but startup costs were still involved and they’ve set up flexible payment plans with their vendors to get off the ground.

“I have the same feeling inside as the day I first opened my first restaurant,” Sanders says. “It really feels like we’re in a boat and Los Tacos had a lot of people on that boat. COVID-19 decimated all of that. Now, we’re rebuilding.”