BEAUMONT, Texas — A new restaurant is opening in Beaumont soon and the owner tells 12News the cuisine will have your taste buds tingling.
Ricky Martinez owns Tia Juanita's on Calder Avenue and he's excited to bring a new Mex-Italian menu to Southeast Texas. The restaurant will take over the old Crown Pizza and Willy Burger location.
Martinez says the new Mamma Tia's Bistro will feature food and drinks as unique as the décor inside.
"We're gonna legalize marinara here!" Martinez said. "I started out in the pizza business about 45 years ago. and I decided we want to do Italian food but we want to mix it with Mexican food."
Martinez says customers can expect an unforgettable dining experience.
"It's not just food anymore. Most people go out, and they want to have something unique," Martinez said.
He thinks the menu will be the talk of the town.
"We're making a tamale pizza. And we we've come up with a tamale dough, which is a half of a mossad inez what you make tamales with and flour with yeast," said Martinez. "You know, we're really excited about elote and tamale pizzas, because those are kind of undiscovered country."
Nostalgia is the inspiration behind the decor.
"If you'll look around some of this, some of this art is, is 50s 60s inspired," he told 12News. "All of this is hand painted art. I don't even know how my painter does that. He does it freehand. No stencils. No nothing. So, pretty awesome."
Martinez says the heavy machinery like this dough maker and a brick pizza oven will create fresh fusions of Mexican and Italian flavor.
"Yeah that's a brand new expensive piece of equipment," Martinez said.
12News can attest that the chicken and beef fajita meat is on point, we'll all have to be patient to try cuisine that will twist flavors from south of the border to the Mediterranean.
"So we haven't ever had a bad opening yet. So we're looking forward to a good one here," said Martinez. "We think it's gonna be rockin' good time."
Martinez says he plans to open Mamma Tia's to the public around mid-August.