The Boxyard: A New Eatery In Tucson
This past week, friend Rosemary took me to the Boxyard on 4th Avenue. Indoor and outdoor community dining is housed and enclosed by ten re-purposed box cars on a 12,000 sqft lot. The development includes space for outdoor events which is temperature controlled with structures for shade. A small older building currently sitting on the site will be re-purposed and preserved as part of the project.
The bar was open, so we ordered drinks. I ordered a margarita, Rosemary ordered a blue drink, called the Elwood. Presumably in honor of the Blues Bros. Neither was particularly noteworthy. Neither was the service. We sat at a table but after a while realized that to get our drinks ordered we had to go up to the bar. Moreover there was no food offered.
So we ordered lunch from a hole in the wall at the edge of the courtyard called Percheron, large breed of draft horse.
That has to do with the size of their burritos. The friendly young man behind the counter was Alex Valencia, son of the owners of what Rosemary calls the mothership, Percheron at 4860 S. 12th Avenue. There menu is not extensive but perfectly adequate.
We ordered a medium bacon-wrapped burrito with carne asada, grilled onions, tomato slices, mayo, mozzarella cheese and avocado slices with spicy chipolte dip. Excellent! And huge. The meat was delicious and plentiful.
Rosemary also ordered two tacos with carne asada, tomato, avocado and grilled onions. Its specialty was that the shell was coated with grilled cheese. They too, were very good. As large as this food order was, we consumed it all, leaving no room for anything else.
Another eatery in the Boxyard is Nhu Lan Vietnamese Food Truck. Presumably it is no longer mobile or perhaps the truck still roams the neighborhoods. In either case this restaurant gets great reviews from customers. Another restaurant on site is Bx, slow-cooked mesquite BBQ boxcar.
All in all, we thought the Boxyard an interesting concept that should be a popular hangout. The Boxyard’s website is still in construction at this writing, but following is the link.
Boxyard rating: The bar was a three, but Percheron was a five saquaro rating.
Boxyard Tucson
238 N. 4th Avenue
11 AM to 2 AM