Despite major renovations to the space and tweaks to the menu, Agave Tequila Bar replaced Sabor Latino in February without missing a beat.
“We never closed,” says general manager Mary Beth Accivatti. Working from 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. before each day’s opening, crews took out most of a wall between the restaurant’s two rooms, doubled the length of the bar, and freshened up the decor. They also installed garage-style doors opening onto Main St., which offered a pleasant breeze on one of those unseasonably mild days early in March.
The menu looks familiar–burritos, enchiladas, tacos–but they’ve tried “to take it up a notch, while respecting the expectations of current customers,” Accivatti says. And the bar’s new name reflects a focus on serving premium tequilas, a sector of the market that has seen considerable growth in recent years. The succulent agave plant provides the base ingredient distilled into tequila.
These days, smaller producers are making tequilas with a lot of subtlety, Accivatti says. Agave will offer flights with samples of several types of tequilas allowing customers to “see the progression of flavor.”
The transformation of Sabor Latino into Agave is just one of the changes underway on N. Main’s 200 block, where the Kouza family, whose holdings on the block started with the Main Party Store, recently brought in Kosch Dining Solutions to manage their two, soon to be three restaurants there (see Marketplace Changes, January). Kosch, too, is a family business: Accivatti, who has thirty years of experience in restaurants and food service, is the sister-in-law of CEO Gordie Kosch.
Agave Tequila Bar, 211 N. Main St., 214-7775, Mon.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-midnight, Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-1 a.m.,
Sun. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. agaveannarbor.com