After both Carlos Miguel’s and the Rio Grande recently closed their doors in Frisco, three restaurants serving Mexican food are about to open in Summit County. New owner Ramos Manuel is reopening Carlos Miguel’s as Nuevo Vallarta in Frisco. 

Owners of the new restaurant the Lime at Keystone River Run Village have begun construction in Keystone and the third new Mexican restaurant, El Zacatecano, recently opened in Copper. The question is, how will all these new Mexican restaurants differentiate themselves in order to be successful?

Manuel is opening Nuevo Vallarta with a large menu to cater to everyone’s specific Mexican food cravings. The menu will have over 200 options and will have daily lunch specials and happy hour, which will be offered from 3-6 p.m. and again from 9 p.m. to closing. Manuel said in opening his restaurant he wants to bring “more choices to the people in town.”

Manuel said he hopes to open before Thanksgiving as he is just working on getting all of his permits in place. 

“As soon as I get the okay from the health department we will open,” Manuel said. 

El Zacatecano opened on Nov. 8 and calls themselves an “authentic Mexican restaurant” with classic menu items as well as vegetarian items. Representatives from the restaurant made their case for a liquor license at the Nov. 12 Summit County Board of County Commissioners meeting. 

“We’re just waiting on the liquor license, we need to sell margaritas,” Kimberly Carrillo said, which commissioner Thomas Davidson said was the most compelling testament for a liquor license they had heard all day.

Lime at Keystone River Run Village is a chain restaurant from Denver that co-owner Daryl C. Sims described as an “American cantina.” The menu features several taco options, seafood and other traditional Mexican dishes. Lime’s specialties include “scorpions”, margarita chicken, stuffed avocado and chipotle ribs, but the restaurants main feature is their extensive tequila bar. 

“We have a big selection of different and high-end tequilas,” Sims said.

Construction for the Lime at Keystone River Run Village began on Thursday, Nov. 14.