AIKEN \u2014 Mario Pena and two of his friends, Francisco Molina and Juan Soto, are the owners of Totopos, a new Mexican restaurant on the Southside.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all live in Graniteville,\u201d said Pena, who is a USC Aiken graduate. \u201cWe have wanted to have a restaurant for five years at least. It has been our dream. We\u2019ve dined around the area, and there was nothing that we liked, so we decided to do our own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Totopos made its debut in late September with a soft opening at 510 Silver Bluff Road, which most recently was the location of Victoria, another Mexican eatery.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day I drove by here and I saw a sign that the property was for lease,\u201d Pena said.<\/p>\n
He told his friends and they worked together quickly to make their dream a reality.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pretty much planned everything in one night,\u201d Pena said. \u201cWe talked about how we were going to do this restaurant. We were jotting things down kind of like in a notebook \u2014 this is the name, this is what we want the vibe to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of the d\u00e9cor in Totopos features bright colors, cacti, flowers, butterflies and birds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to bring Mexico to Aiken,\u201d Pena said. \u201cWe want to be festive. We want customers to come in and feel like they are at a fiesta, where they can enjoy good music and good authentic Mexican food.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pena described Totopos\u2019 salsas as \u201cvery\u201d spicy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be authentic in every respect,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you order enchiladas or whatever, you\u2019re going to get the real deal. Our chorizo (pork sausage) is made in house. Everything is made fresh. The tortillas are handmade. Everything is made from scratch pretty much.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, the response of diners has been positive, according to Pena.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already had good reviews [online],\u201d he said. \u201cOne guy ordered mole for his wife, and she told me, herself, that she is really picky about mole. She had had mole from all over the place around here and she loved ours, so that\u2019s good news.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AIKEN \u2014 Mario Pena and two of his friends, Francisco Molina and Juan Soto, are the owners of Totopos, a new Mexican restaurant on the Southside. \u201cWe all live in Graniteville,\u201d said Pena, who is a USC Aiken graduate. \u201cWe have wanted to have a restaurant for five years at least. It has been our<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[33725,38104,14054,5050,5116,5114,5117,5115,159,38103,22224,38102,31748],"class_list":["post-50229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-mexico","tag-aiken-news","tag-mario-pena","tag-mexican-restaurant","tag-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico-dining","tag-new-mexico-food","tag-new-mexico-grocery-stores","tag-new-mexico-restaurants","tag-new-restaurant","tag-silver-bluff-road","tag-southside","tag-totopos","tag-victoria"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/vive.im\/@dc\/117428717113645042","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diningandcooking.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}