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New neighborhood Mexican restaurant to deliver

By Gigi Wood

Authentic Mexican food at your doorstep.

That could easily be the slogan for El Banditos, a new restaurant at 327 E. Market St. in Iowa City, due to open in mid-September. It is filling the space left vacant by Motley Cow, which moved a block away to 160 N. Linn St. last year.

“There’s really nothing on this side of town,” says El Banditos owner Derek Perez.

As part of the lease, Perez also took over the adjoining Paul Revere’s Pizza in April. He plans to use the pizza delivery drivers to transport his Mexican food as well.

Paul Revere’s will remain the same, except for one new addition to the menu: buffalo wings.

“Back around 1988 (Paul Revere’s) was DJ’s Buffalo Wings before buffalo wings were the hot thing and that’s all they served, so we’re going to serve them here,” he says.

At El Banditos, the checkered tile floor is a hold-over from the Motley Cow days, but Perez is installing a bar made from salvaged cedar saved from a tree that was lost in the 2006 tornado that caused extensive damage throughout Iowa City.

The restaurant will serve alcohol until midnight. El Banditos is one of the first businesses in town to be affected by the city’s new ordinance requiring a 500-foot separation between bars. The restaurant is located near Dave’s Fox Head Tavern. It is also across the street from the Bluebird Diner and John’s Grocery, although those businesses were not factors in the new ordinance requirement.

“Five hundred feet is a wide swath,” he says.

The restaurant will serve what Perez calls “authentic Mexican” dishes, something he says is hard to find in the Iowa City area.

“I’m pretty sure sour cream doesn’t exist in Mexico,” he says.

Sour cream, like massive amounts of cheese, is an American addition to Mexican food; crema fresca, a less bitter topping, is used in most authentic dishes.

Menu items will include enchiladas, moles, tacos, vegetarian and other dishes created from a litany of family recipes. He plans to use as many local producers and vendors as possible and make his own sangria and sour mixes.

“Nothing will be out of a jar; it will all be homemade, from scratch,” he says. “I think the food will speak for itself.”

The eatery’s name is a nod to Perez’s more than 60-year family history in the restaurant business. His grandfather owned a restaurant called Rito’s in downtown Des Moines during the 1950s, while his parents ran El Banditos on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines in the 1970s. His uncle operated a restaurant in downtown Des Moines under the same name during the 1990s. Perez was involved in the opening of One Twenty Six and Mama’s Deli & Catering, while his brother, Kevin Perez, helped open Shorts Burger & Shine.

“We’ll have pictures up on the walls of the different family restaurants we’ve had over the years, that our immediate family has had all over the country,” he says. “It’s part of our heritage.”

This article originally appeared in the Corridor Business Journal.