116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
El Viejo expands Mexican restaurant from Boone to Cedar Rapids
Iowa restaurateurs try their hand in a new city
Nov. 30, 2023 7:00 am, Updated: Nov. 30, 2023 8:12 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — Just one year after it first opened in Boone, a new Mexican brand is expanding east to Cedar Rapids.
El Viejo 2, which opened Sept. 26 in the former space of The Longbranch at the Best Western Plus, features a menu from yet another niche in Mexican cuisine brought to the City of Five Seasons by its proliferation of Central American restaurants over the past three years.
This one focuses on Puebla, a city in the south-central state of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City.
Named in an ode to the nickname of owner Juan Dominguez’s father, the restaurant that translates to “the old man” in Spanish features full-flavor margaritas with fresh juice, family specialties, and giant burritos with queso, seafood and more.
Dominguez has been managing and opening Guadalajara Mexican restaurants across Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin since 2006. He and his wife, Virginia Montes, have been starting their own independent franchises since 2019 — with Mojitos locations in Ankeny, Des Moines and Marshalltown, and now two El Viejos.
“We have a lot of customers come from Cedar Rapids to Marshalltown, so I thought (Cedar Rapids) would be a good location for a Mexican restaurant,” Dominguez said.
If you go
What: El Viejo 2
Where: 90 Twixt Town Rd., Cedar Rapids
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily
Phone: (319) 200-4447
Website: elviejoiowa.com
Details: Specialties of south-central Mexico’s Puebla, such as family mole (MO-lay) recipes, are served alongside a full bar with bold margaritas for dine-in at the Western-themed dining room or carryout.
What’s on the menu?
With eight full pages, El Viejo’s menu is certainly familiar to anyone who has been in a Mexican restaurant: Nacho appetizers, lunch specials, burritos, chimichangas and margaritas hold down the menu with many variations of each.
What stands out at El Viejo 2 are the facets of cuisine the family-owned restaurant brought with it from Puebla, which distinguishes itself from the commonly-found Mexico City food with a few dishes.
Puebla, the birthplace of the mole (pronounced MO-lay) dish anchored by its chocolate-based poblano sauce, inspired several specialties on the menu. Dominguez’s mother’s mole recipe, which sells out in his Marshalltown restaurant, has found new popularity north of the border through his restaurants.
Puebla’s food tends to be sweeter and spicier, Dominguez said. Birria, the popular crispy tacos with consume from Jalisco that have inspired turf wars among Cedar Rapids restaurant owners, also is popular with a slightly different preparation in Puebla.
Another standout on the specialties page is chori pollo, a grilled chicken plate cooked with chorizo Mexican sausage and topped with a cheese sauce.
Popular entrees include the Texas Burritos, offering two burritos stuffed with a meat of choice and topped with a creamy white sauce. If you’re really hungry, the California burrito challenges Texas’ claim to having “everything bigger,” offering a green, white and red sauce option atop steak, carnitas, grilled chicken or al pastor (pork).
El Viejo’s queso sauce, offered on several burrito and other entree options, delivers a sweet and creamy balance that doesn’t make an already festive assortment of flavors too rich to process.
A full menu of margaritas served in fish bowls promises flavors as bold as the paintings and 1960s Western decor in the dining room that has carried over from the space’s era as a steakhouse. With fresh-squeezed juices and straight-up Patron, the owners hope to set themselves apart from a well-staked cocktail scene in the city.
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
Daily Newsletters