{"id":497068,"date":"2026-02-24T20:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497068\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T20:59:10","slug":"toronto-taco-restaurant-opens-second-location-under-a-completely-different-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/497068\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto taco restaurant opens second location under a completely different name"},"content":{"rendered":"

A popular Toronto taco joint that’s been serving Scarborough for two years just opened its first downtown location, but its founders are appealing to their new neighbourhood with a completely different name.<\/p>\n

It’s been over three years since Narcos Tacos<\/a>, one of Toronto’s few halal Mexican restaurants (and easily one of the best), opened its doors in Scarborough,\u00a0serving the neighbourhood its fill of street food staples from a bright, casual spot on Lawrence East.<\/p>\n

It was about time, then, that co-founders\u00a0Ali Barakat,\u00a0Seif Omar and Umran Hanifi set their sights on expanding elsewhere in the city. By mid-February, the team had achieved it: opening their first downtown location nestled in the depths of the PATH.<\/p>\n

“Expanding into downtown Toronto marks an exciting new chapter for us,” the team tells blogTO.\u00a0“By opening our doors in the Financial District, we’re making our menu accessible to the entire GTHA.”<\/p>\n

But\u00a0they tell blogTO that opening in the Financial District meant\u00a0they’d be serving a different demographic, and with that, rather than hit copy and paste on the Narcos concept, they decided to opt for something entirely new:\u00a0something more regal, you could say.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 17, Tacos De Princesa<\/a>, the reimagined, slightly more upscale sister to Narcos Tacos, officially opened for business, serving a selection of portable Mexican eats to the busybodies of the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

The idea behind Tacos De Princesa, the team explains to blogTO, was to create a more elevated version of Narcos Tacos while still maintaining the flavours and menu staples that’ve made the original a staple in the community.<\/p>\n

“Narcos\u00a0Tacos\u00a0is more sit-down eat-in oriented, while the PATH customers don’t have that luxury; they want to be able to grab something delicious and get back to the office in time. It’s fast-paced and made for grab-and-go,” the team tells blogTO.<\/p>\n

“Our downtown kitchen buildout is designed to pump out more orders in a short time frame to accommodate the lunch rush.”<\/p>\n

The Financial District, like Scarborough and every other neighbourhood in the city, has its own distinct personality, they explain.\u00a0“We didn’t want to force Narcos\u00a0Tacos\u00a0to adapt to it; we just decided to come up with a brand new concept that is made for the space it’s meant to occupy.”<\/p>\n

To meet the area’s specific demands, the team not only focused on offerings that are easy to eat on the go, but also introduced a handful of new dishes unique to the new concept, like surf and turf, salads and vegetarian proteins.<\/p>\n

Still, the core flavours and dishes that people know and love from Narcos Tacos, like tacos, burritos and bowls, are still on full display. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: just add more to make it even better.<\/p>\n

Tacos De Princesa is located in the PATH at 150 King St. W.<\/p>\n

Lead photo by <\/p>\n

Fareen Karim at Narcos Tacos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A popular Toronto taco joint that’s been serving Scarborough for two years just opened its first downtown location,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,199202,199203,190266,3302],"class_list":["post-497068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-narcos","tag-princessa","tag-tacos","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}