From a Window on Calle Ocho.

In 2004, Rafael Reyes opened a ten-table taqueria on Southwest 8th Street in Miami. The menu was four items. The kitchen was eight feet wide. The line was out the door by noon. That window — where a hand-lettered sign read “Fuego” — is where this company started.

By 2012, the family had opened their first full-service restaurant in Dallas’s Uptown neighborhood — Casa Fuego. The concept was different: sit-down, reservation-only, with a tequila list longer than the food menu. It sold out every table its first week. Dallas expansion followed, then a second Casa Fuego in Brickell. The taqueria concept scaled with it.

In 2017, the family moved west. Phoenix got the first Fuego Cantina — a bar-forward, late-night concept anchored by an agave spirits program. Today Fuego Hospitality Group operates three distinct concepts across nine locations in four markets. The kitchen is no longer eight feet wide. But we still write the menu by hand.