BISBEE — Mike Clements couldn’t have picked a better time to open Taqueria Outlaw, Bisbee’s newest addition to its restaurant scene.
Cochise County’s estimated restaurant and bar sales were up an astounding 19% in January compared to a year ago after adjusting for inflation, says the Southeast Arizona Economic Development Group, almost double the statewide restaurant and bar sales.
With COVID under control and 58% of U.S. consumers eating out more last year, according to Popmenu, a restaurant advisory service, that bodes well for Clements’ new restaurant venture, which opened Feb. 4 in the heart of Old Bisbee at 78 Main St. in the former Bicycle Brothel building.
What Clements — who began cooking at 17 in New Orleans — has done in the eight months it took him to revamp the 1,185-square-foot building is just short of miraculous. It’s partly why Taqueria Outlaw has been not only seriously busy since he opened it, the feedback on local social media has been off the charts.
With its authentic-looking rustic edge, Taqueria Outlaw is a throwback to an old Wild West saloon or a south-of-the-border cantina with faded 1870s wanted posters tacked to rough-hewn columns, along with a painting of Johnny Ringo and black-and-white photographs of saloon girls on a wall behind a stunning bar made from lumber Clements’ father brought from Cannery Row in Monterey, California.
There’s also copper-plated barstools, a pair of old prison doors from an Arizona jail Clements found and hinged in front of the kitchen and a large cactus mural painted on a salmon-colored wall behind the bar. With a TV rolling out a stream of old Western shootouts, Clements has created the intentional look of an 1880s Tombstone-era saloon — his taqueria seats 42 — where a couple of gunslingers might saunter into.
“I wanted to play off the old Wild West and mining town motif with Tombstone and all that history just down the road,” said Clements. “I also wanted to make it feel warm and comfortable here, a place where people can sit back and enjoy without having to feel they have to leave quickly.”
With taco entrees like chipotle chicken, Baja-style shrimp and mushroom adobada {span id=”docs-internal-guid-73f22908-7fff-0b0c-ec5f-7d0d02545f26”}{span}in a stunning presentation on tortillas made fresh in Mexico de{/span}{/span}livered every two days, customers aren’t in any hurry to leave. Clements’ food — even the chips and salsa are made in-house — is so bursting with flavor and freshness that when you’re full you wish you weren’t and could keep on eating.
Impressive is the trove of rave reviews Taqueria Outlaw is receiving on the restaurant and Bisbee community Facebook page, singing the praises of his Mexican cuisine that salute what Clements has accomplished since he opened, along with the difficult job of pleasing customers in the often persnickety restaurant business.
“Doing a restaurant like this has been in my head for more than 20 years,” said Clements, who spent two years training under chef Julio Campos, who taught him traditional Mexican cooking in Yelapa, Jalisco, which fringes the Pacific Ocean.
“This is what I’m good at because cooking comes naturally to me. I’ve been doing it for a long, long time. And what we’re cooking here is my favorite kind of food — non-traditional Mexican dishes the way I tweak them.”
Whatever tweaking Clements has done with his recipes is paying off.
“We’ve become a big hit with the locals, and we’re seeing a lot of repeat customers and getting great feedback,” he said. “And with the nicer weather, especially around spring break, tourists were finding us since we’re right in the middle of Old Bisbee. So it’s been busy, and our numbers are rising all the time. People are telling me this place feels like it’s been here for a long while.”
Clements has been around the block long enough to know that going the extra mile and then some is what you have to do to stay alive in the up-and-down world of restaurant ownership. He’s got the ability, the chops and the drive to deliver a terrific product, even when Taqueria Outlaw is getting swamped on a Saturday night.
“Sometimes in the middle of a shift, we’ll run out of chips, and we’ll have to start making them again,” he said. “It gets that way a lot here.”
Clements is hardly a stranger to Bisbee’s restaurant scene. He cooked at Dot’s Diner in The Shady Dell Vintage Trailer Court for two years as well as the Stock Exchange. He also did what he calls the “Bisbee hustle” – painting houses in the day, making tacos at night and selling them to bars and at festivals.
Clements knows it’s consistency in a restaurant that can keep bringing customers back, and a lack of it can keep them from returning. He’s confident every meal that comes out of his kitchen and each drink from the bar is going to have that stamp of consistency.
“My recipes and drink mixes have all been in my head for years, but I finally had to put them on paper,” he said, “so every ingredient will be followed to the letter and that consistency will be there every time.”
Taqueria Outlaw is open Wednesday-Saturday, 4-9 p.m. and Sunday, 4-8 p.m.