Who’s Who: Eric Adler, Puesto

Editor’s Note: Eric Adler is the co-founder and managing partner of Puesto, a growing modern Mexican restaurant in California. The restaurant, best known for innovative tacos, just opened its fifth location, with a sixth planned to open by the end of the year. He was interviewed for this article by Ed Avis, publisher of el Restaurante.

     No one in my family was actually in the restaurant business before we launched Puesto. My

mom is from Guadalajara and my dad is from Monterrey, Mexico. I grew up in San Diego eating Mexican classics my whole life.

     I was in commercial real estate, my family’s business, when I met a chef, Luisteen Gonzalez, who was catering upscale taco parties in San Diego. I was really impressed by what he was cooking – he was making fresh corn tortillas, scratch salsas, and tacos made with really different ingredients, like huitlacoche, carne asada, and mushrooms. He also made a bunch of costras – you put cheese on the griddle until it gets crispy, put veggies on top and roll it into a tortilla, and the put salsa on top. I would go to the parties he was catering and have a dozen tacos, they were so incredible.

     I wasn’t looking to open a restaurant, but I did want to start a business, and I saw great potential in this concept. Luisteen himself didn’t want to run restaurants. He enjoyed catering, and didn’t want to deal with the whole operation of a restaurant. So we told him we would handle the business side of things.

     We started working on the idea in late 2010, and really wanted to do something different, something more contemporary and colorful than a typical Mexican restaurant. We wanted a feel like you’re in Mexico City. I really like the look of Diego Rivera murals, so when we started talking to our designers, someone mentioned Chor Boogie, a well-known muralist from the Bay Area. We gave him the idea of what we wanted, and he gave us an original mural with a lot of color. His murals are definitely the dominant design features in all our locations now. The rest is clean and modern, which is something you don’t see a lot of in Mexican restaurants. But in Mexico City you really do see that.

    For the menu, we focused on tacos, but really different ones. A good example is our most

popular taco, the filet mignon taco. What’s unique is that it has pistachio salsa on it, something that Luisteen developed a long time ago. And the crispy melted cheese. So we have some twists on our menu. We’re not trying to be fusion or anything like that – we’re just trying to explore Mexican flavors and combine things that make sense. We say, ‘Would we eat like this in Mexico City?’ That’s we go for.

     In San Diego we’re really close to Valle de Guadalupe, in Baja California, Mexico, and on our trips there, the food and the wine have just been really impressive. I don’t know what Napa was like 40 years ago, but that’s what people say it’s like. There are a ton of European chefs and winemakers there. Considering what we’re doing with Puesto, with our modern Mexican concept, wine should be on the menu, and it felt right having it be Mexican wine. We’re happy to be pioneers in bringing that wine here to give our guests something unique.

     We’ve been ordering some Valle de Guadalupe wine in kegs (from Volubilis Imports), so we can serve it on tap. It’s really fresh that way. The worst thing is having a glass of wine and not knowing when the bottle was opened, and it’s easier for transport.

     I think the craft beer scene in Mexico is really interesting, too. We’re doing a collaboration with Aguamala Cerveceria in Ensenada this year. They’re creating a beer for us that will be Pale Ale with fresh nopales and cilantro.

     We opened the first location in February 2012. We created the brand for more than one location, and in November 2013 we got the opportunity for this great space in downtown San Diego that we really liked, so that’s how our expansion started. The third location was in Irvine in 2016, the fourth in December 2017, and our fifth just this May. Our sixth, in Concord, will likely open at the end of this year.

     Our newest and largest location is in Santa Clara. It’s a challenge because Santa Clara is further away, in a completely new market. We’re focused on tacos, and we have a lot of them on the menu, 10 to 12. Almost everybody orders tacos, and each table can order a lot of different combinations, but everyone at the table wants to eat at the same time! So you have a table of six and everyone wants their three tacos at the same time. It’s a challenge that we work on every day.

     When we opened the first location it was a fast casual concept. But at the second location, the landlord said that if we wanted to open a Mexican restaurant in that project, it had to have a full bar. So that’s when we transitioned into what it is now. And that’s what the guests enjoyed most.

     We listen to guest feedback….but we always have stayed true to what we feel the menu needs to be. For example, they might want burritos and flour tortillas, but we just don’t do those things. However, a year ago we did add a flour tortilla to the kids menu. We did that because we upgraded our tortillas to all organic, non-GMO blue corn last year. But kids don’t like the blue! So we said we’ll offer a flour tortilla on the kids menu.

     We make our tortillas in-house. We partnered with a great company in LA, Kernel of Truth Organics, and they make the organic, non-GMO, blue corn masa for us. They deliver it fresh every day. Then we make the tortillas with a hand press. You can’t just make a bunch of tortillas and use them all day – they need to be constantly made all day. We probably average around 3,000 tortillas per restaurant per day.

     I have other family members involved in the business. My brother Alan and my cousin Isi joined us at the beginning. Then my other brother, Alex, and Isi’s brother, Moy, came about a year ago. With five locations and a sixth coming, there’s a lot to do! Excited to welcome you to Puesto soon!

Update: Puesto is opening a new location with a brewery