By Terry L. Hapney, Jr.
The Ironton Tribune

A 10-month-old restaurant offers “An authentic taste of modern Mexican flavors in Ashland, Kentucky.”
This mantra of Taco Brothers, located at 1018 Bellefonte Rd. in Flatwoods, sums up the commitment the restaurant embraces in providing “great food and a great atmosphere” to diners from northeast Kentucky, southern Ohio and western West Virginia.
The restaurant is one of eight locally and family-owned dining establishments serving the Mexican and Italian cuisine cravings in the Tri-State community.
J. Francisco Ortiz, one of the owners of Taco Brothers, said the idea for the restaurant centers on what is called “fast casual.”
“It is having really good quality food on a faster concept,” Ortiz said. “It’s not necessarily servers, but more counter service for the guest. This makes it more quick than regular restaurants.”
With the restaurant experience, the Taco Brothers owners wanted to make sure they brought the same high-quality nature of the food to the service, also.
“Our team is well-trained,” Ortiz said. “We continuously train our team to make sure we have the best hospitality and the best service in the area.”
The seven other restaurants owned by the same group include El Colonial Mexican Restaurant in Russell, Casa Grande in South Point, Casa Grande in New Boston, Casa Grande in Jackson, Fratelli’s Italian Restaurant in Barboursville, Tuscany Italian Restaurant in Gallipolis, and El Toril Mexican Restaurant in Gallipolis.
At Taco Brothers, the number-one and number-two best-selling dishes they offer are the bowls and burritos. The third-most sold item is tacos.
“Those are the most popular ones,” Ortiz said.
Other menu options include quesadillas, nachos, salads, children’s meals, desserts and soft drinks. Main dishes come in ground beef, chicken, steak, Barbacoa, Carnitas and fajita veggies options. The Mexican Street Corn is a personal favorite side dish of this writer.
Online ordering is available at taco-brothers.com—on a smart phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer.
“To place an order, it’s quite easy,” Ortiz said. “It will prompt customers for online ordering, and they can sign up for rewards, too. It has our entire menu on there for guests to simply order.”
In addition to dining in, customers may order online, pay online or at the window and pick up their orders curbside.
Hours of operation for Taco Brothers are 11 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. on Sunday.
One of the Taco Brothers core values is giving back to the community—being a good neighbor.
“We like to help the schools, churches, organizations and sporting events,” Ortiz said. “That’s one of the key aspects of our business that drives us—giving back to the community. We make sure we continuously give back to the community in the area we do business in.”
August will mark the one-year anniversary of Taco Brothers. In that first year, the most rewarding part of it all, according to Ortiz, is offering a different type of restaurant among the dining options in the area.
“As you’ve noticed, the food tastes a little different than our traditional Mexican restaurants,” Ortiz said. “The rewarding part for us is you have a little different change in the area, giving Flatwoods and this region a different, unique experience versus the traditional one.”