When a restaurant called AvoEatery opens Thursday, Jan. 30 in West Dallas, its menu will boast 29 recipes utilizing avocados. Yes, 29 dishes featuring the green superfruit. Even desserts.
What’s the avo obsession? The new restaurant is considered a “laboratory” ― owned by Irving-based Avocados From Mexico ― where the company can test recipes and see whether consumers are ready to support a restaurant dedicated to one ingredient.
Álvaro Luque, CEO of Avocados From Mexico, calls the restaurant in Trinity Groves the “first-ever polished avocado restaurant in the world.” To wit: Dallas has eateries dedicated to vegan food, small-batch coffee and locally sourced vegetables. But there’s no avocado-themed restaurant here.
Given its uniqueness, we called it one of the most exciting new restaurants opening in 2020 in Dallas.
The restaurant debuts just three days before the Super Bowl, a holiday of sorts for Avocados From Mexico. The company just released its Super Bowl commercial featuring Sixteen Candles actress Molly Ringwald, who sells avocado-themed items on a fake avocado shopping network.
For years, Avocados From Mexico has used out-of-the-ordinary marketing tactics, like high-priced Super Bowl commercials and, now, an avocado test restaurant, to expand its brand. Luque says Avocados From Mexico controls 85% of the avocado market and that the company is working to increase its supply. Avocados From Mexico are grown 12 months out of the year.
“Every [other] origin of avocados in the world, they only have one bloom,” the CEO says. “But in Michoacán, Mexico, thanks to climate, elevation, great soil, volcanic soil, all of that together: It’s the only place on earth that the same trees will give you four blooms instead of one. That’s how we have avocados from January to December.”
Going green
Before opening AvoEatery, Avocados From Mexico tested consumer interest in Dallas and Miami.
At Dallas’ American Airlines Center, a concessions stand called AvoEats opened in 2018, selling avocado toast and guacamole samplers during concerts and sporting events. Luque says the stand has “increased the use of avocados in the American Airlines Center by more than 700%.”
In Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, home of the Miami Dolphins, Avocados From Mexico launched a concessions stand called Tacos por fAVOr in 2019, testing out taco recipes topped with — you guessed it — sliced avo, guacamole and the like.
AvoEatery is the company’s first restaurant. It’s Luque’s first restaurant opening in his career, too.
After “practicing” with concession stands, Luque says AvoEatery in Dallas is “the cherry on top: our big restaurant reveal.”
The company hopes it has timed it right. Avocados have become more popular thanks to fat-forward diets such as keto and Whole30 that encourage the consumption of avocados. Luque says the health and wellness perks of avocados have made the fruit more popular, “not only from typical Hispanic consumers but really from the general market. They are seeing this fruit as their own,” he says.
What to eat
Luque thinks avocados are uniquely positioned to carry an entire restaurant concept.
“It’s hard to find healthy food that is cool, and that’s exactly what avocados are,” the CEO says. “That doesn’t happen with kale."
AvoEatery’s menu includes items like guacamole and six varieties of avocado toast. Those are no surprise. But it also has a burger (with avocado remoulade); a hot chicken sandwich (with pickled avocado); steak frites (with avocado-herb butter); and a BLT — or, rather, a BLAT.
Luque likes the avocado chicken curry, which has asparagus and mushrooms over basmati rice.
The avocado popsicle comes dipped in white chocolate and topped with toasted coconut.
A cocktail list of 10 drinks is innovative, with avocado-chocolate bitters in an Old Fashioned and an avocado shrub mixed into a vodka-cucumber-mint cocktail.
AvoEatery’s lab-like approach fits Trinity Groves, which is a restaurant incubator. Trinity Groves’ investors have closed plenty of restaurants in the development, including craft-beer restaurant LUCK this month, choosing to test a revolving door of new concepts instead of keeping those that don’t prove to be replicable within a few years of launch.
AvoEatery will replace Tapas Castile, formerly Casa Rubia, at a corner of Trinity Groves. The development is near the Trinity River, just northwest of the intersection of Interstate 30 and Interstate 35E in Dallas.
AvoEatery is at 3011 Gulden Lane, Dallas (in the Trinity Groves development) and opens Jan. 30. The restaurant will be open for dinner until Feb. 14, then will start lunch and dinner hours, seven days a week, starting Feb. 15.
