Walk-Up Tacos
Upscale food stand S&M Eats hitches its wagon to Grapevine Bar
A cute little food stand called S&M Eats opened this week right next to Grapevine Bar on Maple Avenue, where it is serving upscale-yet-cheap tacos, arepas and boleo sandwiches.
It comes from Sean Ewell, who previously co-owned a catering/food vendor company called Longboat Key Tacos, and chef Kellie Doyle, who has worked for a number of restaurants including BreadWinners.
They've landed a most unusual location: Basically, they've taken over what was an unused kitchen at the Grapevine and transformed it into a charming little stand, painted a friendly aqua-blue, where you can grab a taco and belly up to the counter on site, or take it to go.
S&M came into being with a fair amount of serendipity, and has emerged as a perfect partnership.
It also serves as in-house restaurant of sorts for the Grapevine, with its own dedicated window into the bar. They're open for lunch and dinner every day except for Mondays, and they open until midnight on weekend nights.
"It comes from a love for tacos and brisket and trying to make good food," Ewell says.
"I got into this because I wanted to perfect brisket. I always found brisket to be overly salty, and began to work on a recipe where the meat was the star. Kellie is an executive chef who had the ambition but never the capacity or availability to do something on her own."
S&M came into being with a fair amount of serendipity, and has emerged as a perfect partnership.
"Kellie is good friends with the owner of the Grapevine, who owned a kitchen that was not occupied," he says. "That's when we got the idea of, 'Let's pull this together.' I could keep my regular job and we could start this up. Kellie does a lot of the legwork in the kitchen, and I do the marketing."
