How
did South Side Grille & Margarita Factory get here?
Billy Costa at The Taste of North Central.
Back in 1985 Chris
Knight was a Training Kitchen Manager for El Torito Restaurants out
of Irvine, California. The basis of his responsibilities were to train
all new management coming to El Toritos chain of restaurants in the
Northeast. He was based out of Norwood, Massachusetts. Later on in
1985 Bill Cocci, myself, was hired by El Torito
to manage and was trained in all kitchen aspects of mexican food by
Chris. In short, after a couple of years, each went our own way looking
for other opportunities to advance our young careers. One night after
a dead-end job interview I went to eat at a restaurant, sorry but
the name does not come to me right now. Well, low-and-behold, there
was Chris as usual, slaving behind a hot stove. We laughed and told
stories and said, "see ya, keep in touch." A month or so
later after a few more dead-end job interviews, an opportunity came
up in Leominster, Mass. This was in 1992 to open a turnkey restaurant
that was closed and formally a mexican restaurant. That restaurant
is very well known as the Border Grille and Bar! It has been
in business since we started in 1992. The folks who owned that property
were very instrumental in giving us a shot in owning a business. The
mission statement was simple and full of commons sense:
Good food/
Good Service/ In a Clean & Friendly Environment
With the Border
at the height of it's success, Chris and I came upon a chinese restaurant
for sale. That was in the year 2001. We jumped through all the hoops
and on 9/11 (we all know what that day was), we were notified by the
bank of our loan approval. But this was not a time for celebration.
We just did not feel very fortunate. With so many people losing so
much why should we have anything to gain? After the grieving of 9/11
the planning started. With a lot of good friends and some cash we
remodeled this broken down chinese restaurant into a destination restaurant
with a colorful atmosphere serving fine food from the American Southwest
and Cajun Country, South Side Grille & Margarita Factory keeping
the same concept of the Border:
Good food/
Good Service/ In a Clean & Friendly Environment
To go back about
8 years, when our sales started to climb, we went from 20 employees
to about 60 at the Border. During this time, we knew to keep it running
successfully, we needed more experience in our kitchen. So we hired
Jim Kennedy (aka JK) who worked with Chris and I back at El Toritos.
JK is a man with years of kitchen and management experience and adds
a whole lot of flavor to the food and restaurant in general. We are
so lucky to have JK and his experience, which is a big contributor
to our success. As is all the management staff and hourly
employees, some who have been with us since Day One.
Chris and I and
our team invite you to experience our full-flavored restaurants. Check
out the menu on this web site. I believe you
will find it to be very unique and flavorful!
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