Popular downtown Tacoma restaurant celebrates 15 years with $5 margs, shots and nachos
In 2006, when The Matador opened on Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma, Sauza Gold, an inexpensive “mixto,” was the well tequila. Even then, the modern Mexican bar and restaurant boasted the largest collection of agave spirits in the South Sound.
“Patron’s great, but there are so many other tequilas,” recalled Andrea Arnett, a server, manager and the last remaining staff member of the original team. (One bartender and a cook have also been with the team for about a dozen years.) “It is your job to find ones that someone will like that’s not Patron. That was our focus.”
Today the well is Lunazul Blanco, and every bottle is 100 percent agave — now the norm for most back bars in America. The list includes more than a dozen styles of mezcal, tequila’s delicious, now in-vogue smoky sister.
“When we first opened, we had two,” said Arnett, adding that the cocktail menu has grown “very adventurous” over the years to include ingredients like charred pineapple reduction, chamoy and beet juice.
The Tacoma restaurant celebrates 15 years on Nov. 17, with specials that harken to its popular twice-daily happy hour — importantly, $5 margaritas, Chingon shots and nachos.
After slimming to a staff of six in the early days of the pandemic, embracing family-style takeout meals and cocktails to-go and balancing limited capacities and outdoor-only seating, “The Matador Tacoma remains a consistently busy restaurant,” said founders Zak Melang and Nathan Opper in a statement this week.
Both industry veterans, the duo opened the first Matador in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood in 2004. (That restaurant moved earlier this year into their shuttered Ballard Annex Oyster House, adding a mezcaleria in the back.) In Tacoma, they saw a challenge and an opportunity.
“The two-story historic building on Pacific and 8th quickly sparked Zak’s attention,” they said. Built in 1918, the nearly 11,000-square-foot building at 721 Pacific Ave. is part of Whiskey Row.
“The layout of the future restaurant was an immediate vision to him.”
When not working in restaurants, Melang is an artist and avid woodworker. The company has its own production facility in Seattle, creating every table, bar top and iron fixture at what is now a family of 10 restaurants, eight of them Matadors, with three locations in the Seattle area and two each in Portland and Idaho. They make a point of eventually buying the building whenever possible, and it seems The Matador Tacoma is here to stay: Opper bought it from his longtime landlord, James D’Aboy of Niblick LLC, for $2.8 million in September, according to Pierce County property records.
In the mid-2000s, the stretch of downtown leading to Schuster Parkway wasn’t yet home to outstanding restaurants like Wooden City or a brewery in Odd Otter; bars including The Forum and The Office were yet to come; the Elks Lodge, now home to McMenamins, had been vacant since 1986.
“When we opened,” said Arnett, “Tacoma didn’t have a restaurant or bar like Matador. You would go up to Seattle if you wanted an experience like this one.”
Word spread, and the restaurant — which has never taken reservations — began amassing a consistent two- or three-hour wait.
Though volume means they don’t press tortillas in-house, most everything else is conjured on-site, including the sauces, salsas and marinades: mole for the chicken enchiladas; serrano slaw for the panko-crusted mahi mahi tacos; the spice blend for the homemade chorizo. Happy hour deals, including $6 Brussels sprouts and black bean dip, a trio of street tacos for $5 and $7 guacamole, have kept the high-ceilinged, candlelit-from-day-one bar busy after work hours and late night, especially with fellow service workers looking for their own dinner and a nightcap.
Notably, added Arnett, staff was trained intensely on tequila, a mantra that holds true 15 years later. As a manager and the longest-serving staff member, she looks forward to guiding more guests and staffers to their new favorite tequila — hers remains Casa Nobles Reposado.
THE MATADOR TACOMA - 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
▪ 721 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253-627-7100, matadorrestaurants.com/locations/tacoma
▪ Sunday-Thursday 11 a.m.-midnight, Friday-Saturday 11 a.m.-2 a.m.
▪ Details: Nov. 17, all-day specials include $5 margaritas, nachos and Chingon shots; plus daily happy hour 4-6 p.m. and 10 p.m.-1 a.m.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.