A Hawaiian-style Mexican food restaurant and a national chain
bookstore are the latest additions to Gilroy. Maui Tacos and
Barnes
&
amp; Noble both opened recently in two of the city
’s major shopping centers.
A Hawaiian-style Mexican food restaurant and a national chain bookstore are the latest additions to Gilroy. Maui Tacos and Barnes & Noble both opened recently in two of the city’s major shopping centers.
Maui Tacos, located in the Pacheco Pass Center at 890 Renz Lane, near Best Buy, held its public grand opening celebration on Saturday. The restaurant offers what it coins as food with a lot of “Mauitude,” including fresh Mexican food with a tropical twist – salsas are mixed fresh daily and all the meat is marinated 24 hours on site before serving. Maui Tacos is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and also does catering and phone-in orders.
The restaurant chain, started in Hawaii by Mark Elman, a chef from Los Angeles who missed Southern California’s quick-service Mexican restaurants, is tremendously popular on the islands.
Local owners Kevin Tomlinson and Brian Pinkman took over the building in February and opened the doors to the public May 5. Going under the name Middle Lee, Inc., they are under contract to build a minimum of 18 stores through 2010 in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. They are already planning to open their second restaurant in Hayward sometime near Thanksgiving.
Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, opened a new 23,000-square-foot bookstore on Tuesday in Gilroy Crossing.
The store will stock nearly 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a café serving Starbucks coffee. The new store will be open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and employ about 50 people.
The new store will feature:
• The Barnes & Noble Membership Program. Designed for Barnes & Noble’s best customers, this program gives Members an additional 10 percent off virtually every item in Barnes & Noble stores and 5 percent off already discounted prices online at Barnes & Noble.com. The annual fee is $25.
• Large-scale children’s departments. It has a bigger than most typical bookstores and stocking over 15,000 titles in an easy-to-browse environment.
