TUCSON, Ariz (KGUN) — Sometimes the best way to be sure your dream comes true is to build it yourself. That energy and dedication is building a new restaurant opening soon in a building more than a hundred years old.
Downtown Tucson has gone from a ghost town at night to a busy zone of places to go and things to eat. The owners of a new restaurant called Tabu are so dedicated to their vision for their business that they’re building it with their own hands.
REALTED: Coming soon - TABU Restaurant and Bar at 128 E. Congress St.
On Congress Street, the team behind the new Tabu Restaurant is bringing in the building blocks of a special new place. Omar Rueda wants the first time you walk in to be an experience.
“Awe. Or people to just stand back.”
To achieve that, the owners are putting their hearts into the project —--and putting their backs into it too.
The partners did the demolition themselves.
They designed the furniture, built it, and now it’s going into position to make an interior designed to be a handsome fusion of the new with the old.
Jesus Mario Ramirez says his designs were inspired by part of the world that routinely builds new looks into places that are very old.
“I was in different places in Europe and I was getting ideas, getting ideas, and then when I came here, I said, Okay, I'm gonna get a little bit of this and a little bit of that and I'm gonna come up with this. So that's what I did.”
Just as the interior aims to combine very different styles into an appealing blend, Tabu’s menu will do that too.
Omar Rueda says, “It’s fusion but It's fusion within the spectrum of honoring tradition, tradition of where the ingredients come from, whether it's South America or Brazil and the native ingredients, again with new ingredients and European and Asian influences to unite everything.”
And soon it will be time to bring it all together, designing the restaurant and the food it will serve to meet a target to open in about eight weeks.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
