Former Green Room chef opens gourmet taqueria inside the Green Spot in East Dallas

by Teresa Gubbins

Colleen O'Hare, former chef at the Green Room, Toulouse, Kitchen 1924 and others, has resurfaced in a novel new venture: Good 2 Go Taco, an upscale taqueria located inside the Green Spot, the alternative convenience store off White Rock Lake in East Dallas.

O'Hare opened the spot with her partner and fellow chef Jeana Johnson who dubs the concept "farm to taco."

"[Green Spot owner] Bruce [Bagelman] wanted a taqueria inside his place, and asked if we'd be interested," Johnson says. "Coming from all the restaurants where we'd worked, our genealogy didn't immediately lead to us saying, 'Yeah.' We had to come up with a reason, an approach, in order to make it something we believed in."

And what that ended up being was a farmer-driven approach to a taqueria.

"We started going out to farms and talking to people, and everything's spurred from there," Johnson says. "When we started talking to these folks at Windy Meadows and Sloans Creek Farm, we learned that their big problem was that every other restaurant wants white-meat chicken breast. That leaves Mike Hale with three-fourths of an animal he can't sell. Nathan and Ellen Melson, everyone wants pork chops. They have belly and bacon because, if it's not a tenderloin strip or rib eye, then nobody wants beef. They were left with all of this product. So our whole purpose is not to only be farm friendly but farmer friendly. We can make tacos out of everything: Pork butt, you braise it, you turn out a product that is unbelievable. And by helping farms, we also get a good price. So it's a huge circle that totally works."

For "research," they went to Austin and where they did what Johnson jokingly calls a "maternity pants" eating spree.

"We ate more tacos in that three-day period," she says. "We were so sick of eating tacos by the end of it. But tacos have gone wildfire in Austin. If you have good food, people will pay for it."

Their menu has 8 to 12 options for breakfast and lunch, and they're making their own chorizo for a taco with chorizo, potato, and egg.

"Nathan and Ellen are smoking ham hock for us so we have a fantastic ham hock taco," Johnson says. "And vegetarian, too."

These won't be the $1.25 tacos you see at other gas stations, but they hope to keep the price at about $10 for a filling lunch with tacos and a drink.

Leaving no stone unturned, they're even giving careful thought to choice of tortillas: "We're leaning towards sprouted grain tortillas, and hemp," Johnson says.

For now they'll be open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but once they get it rolling, they want to extend the hours.

"There's not a single thing to eat out here after 10 p.m.," she says. "Buckner Boulevard is a crazy busy street. People are already begging us for a walk-up window."