Childhood memories pack a lot of power and the best ones carry over into adulthood. For SerVehZah Bottle Shop and Taproom co-owners Tony Martinez and Johnny Barbosa, biting into something as simple as a Mexican sweet bread is enough to take them back to their childhood breakfast tables.
“Going back to the roots, it’s something that we grew up with,” says Barbosa. “You wake up and you have a concha with coffee. It just makes your day.”
That means of time travel, back to their raices (“roots” in Spanish) is the impetus behind the Arts District’s new Mexican brunch spot, Mi Barrio. Located in the former space of Nightmare Cafe on Commerce Street, Mi Barrio looks like another knockout from Martinez and Barbosa, who opened SerVehZah during the pandemic. They’ve since expanded with a taproom in North Las Vegas.
“We get antsy when we have too much time on our hands. This all started years ago when we were just looking around for ideas for SerVehZah,” Martinez says. “We looked at things and said, man, a brunch spot would be really freaking cool at some point.”
When Nightmare Cafe announced its closure at the end of March 2024, the duo swooped in, signing a new lease in May. The restaurant has since received a facelift to match its bright flavors. And before you ask, yes: the chilaquiles really are that good.
“That’s our star of the show,” says Martinez. “There’s a reason it’s dead center in its own little box on the menu. Finding good chilaquiles around town, to really say it’s still crunchy but saucy, there’s an art to it.”
The restaurant’s menu champions that dish with a build-your-own option ($12) that includes everything from birria and steak to mole salsa, something Barbosa says you likely won’t find anywhere else. Other dishes include the huevos con chorizo y papa ($14), recommended as a burrito, and the brightly plated huevos rancheros ($13).
“These are meals that we grew up eating,” Martinez says. “Just very simple, classic Latin dishes, a little bit of everything, which is actually kind of fun because a lot of people will come in and say, ‘Where are you guys from? I haven’t seen someone put molletes on a menu.’”
Different ideas come together to make fun dishes like the birria grilled cheese ($17), birria hash ($16) and the Gansito French toast ($15), a chocolatey, strawberry jam-filled treat. Savory classics like avocado toast and tacos have a place here too, but when’s the last time you had a sope benedict ($15) or bone marrow street corn ($16)?
“We went through and we tasted everything on this menu, and I didn’t want to throw anything on there that we couldn’t put our name behind,” Martinez says.
The duo’s bar experience also transferred over to Mi Barrio, where boozy coffee, five different flavors of mimosas and a growing list of signature cocktails like the Avo Toast Marg ($16) have won us over.
Mi barrio loosely translates to “my neighborhood,” and it seems Martinez and Barbosa are intent on building theirs. They’re currently partnering with a SerVehZah employee to help her open an ice cream shop speakeasy called Craft Creamery Downtown.
“Commerce is barely starting to get its legs to try to mirror what Main is,” Martinez says. “It’s not like Fremont East—that got a lot of love from the city right off the bat. It’s been a lot of good, organic growth. It’s a true neighborhood.”
MI BARRIO 1307 S. Commerce St., 702-992-0540, mibarriokitchen.com. Monday-Friday,8 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday & Sunday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
