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Frank Neri was shutting down his first restaurant, Pez, when he acquired the e-mail.
It was a Monday when he introduced the closure. Two days later, a message got here in from the Michelin Information asking for images, chef particulars and a full description of the restaurant.
“We did not get a star,” Neri says. “However we made the checklist. And we had already closed.”
The irony wasn’t misplaced on him. After years of pouring his coronary heart into Pez, a Baja-style seafood idea rooted in advantageous eating, the validation got here just some days too late.
“The media jumped on it,” he says. “The story turned about how we closed proper earlier than the checklist got here out.”
However the expertise gave Neri readability. He had chased perfection and ambition, and he realized simply how fragile an excellent restaurant will be. That lesson stayed with him. So did the necessity to evolve.
“I used to suppose advantageous eating meant success,” he explains. “Now I do know it is about doing one factor rather well, conserving the crew small and staying centered.”
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Like many others within the hospitality world, Neri needed to study in public. He made robust selections, weathered shutdowns and leaned on a WhatsApp group of native Miami restaurateurs to share methods and vent frustrations throughout the pandemic.
The group, which he jokingly refers to because the Cuban Mafia, included a number of the metropolis’s most influential operators. “At some point they’d say, ‘Tomorrow we’re speaking to the mayor, we’re pushing for full capability,'” Neri recollects. “After which it might truly occur.”
These laborious classes reshaped his method to the enterprise. It turned the start of El Primo Red Tacos.
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The birria taco increase
When the pandemic hit, Neri had a selection. Fairly than double down on huge eating rooms and sophisticated menus, he simplified. He took a slow-braised beef birria recipe, one he had been serving quietly for brunch, and turned it into the centerpiece of a stripped-down popup. Birria solely. Takeout solely. Twenty hours every week.
Inside days, individuals have been lining up across the block.
However the transfer wasn’t simply reactive. The muse had been laid years earlier, throughout a visit to Tijuana in 2012. Neri remembers the precise date, July 28, as a result of it modified the best way he considered taste.
“I had this tostada with yellowfin tuna and machaca,” he says. “I would educated in France and Spain, however this was one thing else. A taste explosion.”
It wasn’t about copying that dish; it was about chasing that feeling. The affect of daring, sudden taste combos impressed Neri’s method to tacos. He needed to create one thing equally memorable, however rooted in his personal voice and imaginative and prescient.
Years later, when no person in Miami was doing tacos the best way he remembered, Neri gave town six months to get it proper. When nobody did, he launched his personal idea: El Primo Red Tacos.
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Now positioned in downtown Miami, El Primo Red Tacos retains the menu tight and the main target singular. The specialty is birria, and every thing revolves round doing it proper. “We specialize. That is what we consider in,” he says. “Specialize, excellent it and that is it.”
Even the recipes are private. Neri’s mother-in-law helped form the unique birria mix, which he fine-tuned with care.
Neri affords his recommendation with the identical readability that got here from hard-won expertise. Take small steps. Keep away from bloated menus. Give attention to what you care about most. That mindset did not simply assist him rebound; it gave him a brand new blueprint for development.
Failure did not finish his profession. It set the stage for one thing extra centered, extra intentional, and extra profitable. “We’re pleased with our meals,” Neri says. “All people does birria now, however not everyone does it properly. No one does it like we do.”
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Frank Neri was shutting down his first restaurant, Pez, when he acquired the e-mail.
It was a Monday when he introduced the closure. Two days later, a message got here in from the Michelin Information asking for images, chef particulars and a full description of the restaurant.
“We did not get a star,” Neri says. “However we made the checklist. And we had already closed.”
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