Bollywood Tacos launches updated menu, fresh new items

Published 9:30 am Monday, September 13, 2021

For Deepak Kumar, the restaurant business is a family affair. 

His father worked and owned a restaurant in California. Kumar and his brother, Amit, worked at his dad’s restaurant for several years before opening their own restaurant in Georgia in 2005. Kumar moved to Milledgeville in 2009 and opened Metropolis Café at 138 N. Wayne St. It was there that he would meet Sky Hinton, a Milledgeville native and the co-owner of Bollywood Tacos, who started working at Metropolis in 2012. 

He and Hinton wound up becoming good friends. Then, in 2018, Kumar was given the chance to purchase the former Gringos restaurant on West Hancock Street in downtown Milledgeville. 

“I always wanted to open another restaurant in downtown Milledgeville and I thought that was a good opportunity. I talked to Sky and from that, we started working on it,” Deepak explained. “We bought Gringos and we slowly started renovating and changing the menu.” 

Deepak and brother Amit are originally from India and are both chefs. The brothers put their heads together to create a menu that offers Indian and Mexican fusion cuisine. 

Bollywood Tacos opened in 2018 and quickly became a local favorite. Before that success, though, came a failure. Deepak and Amit opened a Mexican restaurant in Macon in 2016, that according to Deepak, wasn’t very successful. However, it ended up being a positive experience for them because they learned a lot about Mexican food. That learning curve made things easier when the two of them, along with Hinton, were developing Bollywood Tacos and its menu. Kumar explained that most of the spices used in both Mexican and Indian foods are pretty similar, and he and his brother thought it would it would be good to blend them in their tacos.

The restaurant recently updated its menu to include more tacos, including chili paneer, chipotle cauliflower and chicken shawarma. They’ve also added the option to order every taco on the menu as a burrito or a burrito bowl. Kumar said that one of his favorite tacos currently on the menu is the mahi-mahi taco, which is offered fried or grilled and comes with mahi, crunchy coleslaw, Baja sauce, fresco cheese and mango salsa. 

In July, Bollywood Tacos underwent renovations to expand its bar area. 

“We’re adding some more cocktails, so the bar is bigger and there is a lot more space in the back for the bartender,” Kumar said. 

He added that an updated cocktail menu, which they’ve been working on for a few months or so, will also soon be available. 

The restaurant’s kitchen is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The bar is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Drink specials are up on the board inside the restaurant and vary daily. 

Additionally, Bollywood Tacos hosts trivia night on Wednesdays starting at 10:30 p.m.

In case readers were wondering, yes, part of the name of the restaurant does come from the nickname for the Indian movie industry, Bollywood. 

“We didn’t want to do any traditional Indian name to confuse people, so I think this is a more kind of like a hip name. It’s easy to remember,” Kumar said, also noting the popularity of Bollywood movies outside of India. 

Kumar has a deep passion for the restaurant business and cooking.

“I just love the restaurant business. I started working in the restaurant business at my uncle’s restaurant in Knoxville, Tenn., and I just fell in love with the restaurant business. After working a long while, I definitely set a goal in my head that I wanted to own a restaurant, that was my dream,” Kumar said. “This is my go-to place, coming here every single day and like working, meeting people. That’s what I love about the restaurant business.”