On a hot summer’s day there’s nothing quite like a good mojito and, to be perfectly honest, a good mojito can be hard to find in this town.
It’s all about the muddling. To properly make a mojito, a good bartender should gently muddle the mint (and other ingredients) to release the natural flavors and oils. A good bartender should not pulverize the herb into mushy bits that the mojito-drinker must then spend the rest of the night dislodging from his or her straw and throat.
Kenn-Tico Cuban Bar & Grill knows how to make a good mojito. In fact, this new restaurant on east Grace is almost as proud of its mojito selection as it is its menu, which is why the put nine different types of $7 mojitos on its menu, plus a daily $2-off happy hour special.
But mojito and other fun cocktails aside, the focus at Kenn-Tico is the food. Fresh, good, real authentic Cuban food. Brothers and owners Kenny and Tico Sanchez (get the name?) wanted a place where Richmonders could go to eat the food they grew up with.
Tico likens the goal behind the menu at his new restaurant to the disparity between real Mexican food and what you find in local restaurants.
"It’s all the same," he says of the local Mexican restaurant fare. "But when you go to someone’s house to eat, you get real, authentic Mexican."
The fact that these restaurant owners won’t serve the food they eat at home in their restaurants has always frustrated Tico; his goal was to make authentic flavors and ingredients a central part of his new restaurant.
"What you eat here," he says, "it’s the same authentic Cuban food you would eat in my house or in Havana."
The bread for his Cubano Clasico (that’s Cuban sandwich) is shipped in from Miami regularly, and the same goes with the Cuban coffee, another essential in Cuban dining.
But though Kenn-Tico Cuban Bar & Grill is the brother’s first foray into Cuban food in Richmond, it’s not their first restaurant. Kenny and Tico have been running several popular lunch carts downtown since the mid-90s and aren’t about to give up that operation. In fact, they’re expanding. The Sanchez plan to add one of their Kenn-Tico wrap carts at VCU this fall and another in the 300 block of east Franklin in October.
Hear that, MGers? Kenn-Tico has the OK to put a lunch cart smack-dab in front of the TD building this fall. The only hold up has been putting the final tweaks on their new restaurant, a space that had long-since sat empty while the guys ran their lunch cart operation out of the kitchen.
But not anymore. Kenn-Tico Cuban Bar & Grill is now open at 204 E. Grace St., Monday – Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Stop in for a mojito, a Cuban sandwich, or just to say hi to the guys while they work. It’s exactly what they’re hoping for.
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