Rocca owners to open Streetlight Taco in South Tampa
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 8, 2024

A Tampa chef will open a Mexican taco restaurant with the financial backing of some of the investors behind Michelin-starred Rocca.

Streetlight Taco, which has taken over the former Holy Hog Barbecue location at 4004 Henderson Blvd., will open Tuesday. The concept is the creation of chef-partner and executive chef Michael Brannock. Brannock was previously a corporate chef at Tampa-based PDQ, where he met Rocca investor Nick Reader, who stepped down as CEO of PDQ in mid-2023.

Reader and Jack Murray III, who is also an investor in Rocca, are the only investors in Streetlight Taco. They declined to disclose the total startup investment in Streetlight Taco.

The restaurant will have a casual, laid-back vibe, Brannock said — but the food is a serious endeavor, with tortillas made in-house from heirloom corn sourced from family farms in Mexico. In the two years that Streetlight Taco has been in development, Brannock has made eight trips to Mexico to connect with vendors and family farms.

Brannock developed a passion for Mexican food and culture through his childhood friends in his home state of North Carolina. At PDQ, Brannock would sometimes cook Mexican dinners for internal events, and Reader would muse that they should open a Mexican restaurant.

Unlike Rocca, Reader said, Streetlight Taco is a place family can visit multiple times a week. With a full bar, the experience can be as inexpensive or extravagant as a diner wants. Tacos are sold two per order for $10 to $12; signature cocktails are priced from $11.

Among the creative twists Brannock put on Mexican food: a steak taco with shoestring fries, jalapeno chicharron, cilantro, onion, salsa borracha and lime, as well as a sweet potato taco with a wood-grilled wedge of sweet potato, agave glaze, scallion goat cheese, pomegranate arils, jalapeno and sesame garlic macha.

Customers will order their tacos from digital kiosks near the entrance. Streetlight Taco will open with curbside pickup service and eventually expand to offering delivery via third-party app services like Uber Eats.