LANSING, Mich. — Inside of the Allen Neighborhood Center’s Rathbun Accelerator Kitchen, you'll find Tantay, a restaurant like no other.
“We offer Peruvian cuisine. We’re mid-Michigan's only Peruvian restaurant concept, and the second one the entire state. I believe we have the only urban food truck in the whole Midwest," said owner and founder Jose Aste.
The idea sparked once Aste and his family moved to Michigan.
“There wasn’t any Peruvian cuisine, so that was the first spark. There was a void in the market," Aste says.
So he's happy he can now offer that service to the community.
“I bring Peruvian food in a kind of a different way in terms of you know, we offer a lot of vegetarian, gluten free, vegan options too, so that everyone can try it," he says.
Aste says they’ve been keeping things hot in the shared kitchen for almost three years now.
“We've been building the brands food the menu a following as we transition out of here, and, you know, hopefully, for our own space," Aste said.
On the menu, you will find a lot of authentic Peruvian dishes. Head chef Chelsea Lloyd face lights up with joy when she describes it.
“We have the Saltado. Lomo Saltado is considered one of the most well known dishes to Peru," she said. “People can try the Saltado experience. We have a chicken Saltado, the pollo, and then, we have a veggie Saltado as well too.”
Saltado is like a beef stir fry and chicken stir fry.
“There's a lot of different flavors. A lot of the colors are very, very bright on many of our plates. There's lots of yellow, reds, greens, dark purples, that sort of thing as well, too," Lloyd says. “It's a lot of, a lot of savoriness a lot of sweetness. It's a lot of different flavors that all kind of like pile up and like create like one very multi-layered experience.”
Tantay means to bring people together, to join. Aste hopes his restaurant will do that for the mid-Michigan community.
“In this industry, in the restaurant industry, in order to create something unique something awesome something that has legacy it revolves around people," he says.
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