More Details on Rosa Mexicano, Heading to Boston This Spring

A rendering of Rosa Mexicano. Apparently, there will be roaming women in cocktail dresses. (Rendering courtesy of Baltz & Co.)

Last week, the Boston Globe shared the news that yet another Mexican restaurant is on its way in Boston—this time, it’s a large, upscale import from New York, called Rosa Mexicano, and it will be setting up shop at Seaport West in the South Boston waterfront.

Curious about what drew the chain to Boston (they also have locations in Washington, D.C., Miami and Atlanta, among others), we called up Rosa Mexicano president/CEO Howard Greenstone to get some more details. Turns out, the chainlet has been in business for a whopping 28 years, and they’ve been looking to move to Boston for the past eight years. “Frankly, it wasn’t until the Seaport started to gain a little more popularity and visibility that it just made sense for us to head to Boston,” Greenstone says. “I would venture to say [we are] a little more destination-oriented. It made sense for us to find a location where we could capitalize on that.”

At last count, we tallied over a dozen Mexican concepts that have either opened or are set to open in the past year and a half, so we had to ask—why the sudden influx? “Mexican is obviously a cuisine that has been underserved in a lot of the markets, and Boston in particular,” Greenstone says. “It’s like Italian, when Italian really started to gain popularity 20 years ago.”

And much like how Italian fare can run the gamut from pizza to red sauce-joints to pricey restaurants, Rosa Mexicano fills a specific niche of Mexican fare: high-end. “We don’t really focus on street foods, if you will. A lot of up-and-coming restaurants focus on taqueria-style food. We don’t,” Greenstone says. Instead, think tablecloths and plated entrees like beer-marinated short ribs, Yucatan-style butterflied Red Snapper and huitlacoche-stuffed crispy chicken, all of which price out in the mid-to-high $20s. Rosa Mexicano does seem a bit similar to nearby upscale spot Temazcal–sans the fancy iPad menus– but at perhaps it has the potential to reduce the absurd three-hour waits that the Temazcal hosts like to quote.

Greenstone says that the mammoth 8,000-sq ft space is gearing up for an April 1 opening. In the meantime, get a preview of the space (which will also have a 75-seat patio) in the official Boston rendering above.

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