Augusta Eats: Puerto Rican restaurant brings island spice to new home on Wheeler Road
Puerto Rico is more than 1,400 miles from Augusta, but the distinctive taste of Puerto Rican food is a lot closer. You just have to know where to look.
Since 2015, Augusta-area lunch and dinner crowds have looked for the Vic’s Grill food truck and for online announcements showing the mobile eatery’s next parking locations. The truck is still rolling, but in August, Vic’s finally put down roots.
Vic’s Grill now also operates a take-out place inside the Hop-N-Go convenience store at 3755 Wheeler Rd.
“Before it was like, ‘Where you at today, Vic? Where you at today?’ because I never had an actual address,” owner Vic Montes said. "People were used to just waiting on an ad. Thankfully we’re here. I love it. It’s a great location.”
Before moving to Augusta at age 12, Montes grew up on Puerto Rico’s western coast in a family that embraced cooking, including his parents, his grandmother and his oldest brother, now an executive chef with two restaurants of his own in New Jersey.
Montes later worked at several chain restaurants to learn firsthand the ins and outs of successfully running a commercial kitchen. After graduating with a culinary degree from Augusta's Helms College, he began catering work. His customers liked his American-inspired dishes but wanted more.
“People were like, ‘Vic, your food is great, but we need some of that Puerto Rican food,’” he said. “They wanted that taste from home. That encouraged me to go back to my roots and start cooking rice and beans and plantains and the stuff I grew up doing.”
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Montes started by selling plates of food out of the trunk of his car during public gatherings of classic-car enthusiasts. Local interest increased after he taped a cooking segment for a local TV station, showing how to make empanadas from scratch.
When Montes started serving meals from a tent at downtown Augusta’s Farmers Market, the response was strong enough to drive his decision to buy his first food truck, which was “a little rundown,” he said, but serviceable enough for a few months until he bought a newer truck.
Now that Vic’s Grill has a brick-and-mortar location, the full commercial-grade kitchen allowed Montes to introduce menu items that couldn’t be fully replicated in the food truck. The recipe for stewed beans and rice, for example, comes directly from Montes’ grandmother.
Another popular dish at Vic’s is mofongo, a flavor-packed side dish with mashed plantains and crispy pork. “It’s a very traditional dish that people have been dying to get, and now we’re able to offer it here,” Montes said.
Other popular traditional Puerto Rican dishes include arroz con gandules, a holiday rice with pigeon peas; and pernil, a slow-cooked, crispy-skinned pork shoulder.
Customer Cynthia Rosa of Augusta visited Vic’s just a day after the restaurant introduced a new dessert, a sweet coconut flan.
“Someone gave me the menu and I just came to buy some of the desserts,” she said.
Montes’ dream of owning and running his own restaurant has been years in the making, and it’s not over yet. He envisions a day when Vic’s Grill will reopen at a new location as Vic’s Sports Bar and Grill. For now, the current location is helping him accrue even more experience in the restaurant business.
“I’m a believer in ‘crawl before you walk,” he said. “I love starting out small. I can’t wait to see this booming, thriving how I know it can.”
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Puerto Rican food truck grows into new flavorful Augusta restaurant
