Rendering courtesy of Plomo Quesadilla Bar.
Plomo Quesadilla Bar started as a late-night operation housed in the back of a juice bar in Fayetteville, Arkansas. After years of success, owner Omar Kasim is expanding the restaurant to Dallas.
Kasim graduated from the University of Arkansas with a business degree and decided to open a restaurant called Con Quesos in 2016. About a year later, Kasim says he was ousted from the concept by an investor. And a year after that, Kasim bought back the restaurant.
Around the same time he was trying to make Con Quesos financially viable, Kasim opened a smoothie place called Juice Palm.
“Something I noticed at Con Quesos — we primarily sold tacos, but we had this kids chicken quesadilla on the menu, and it was one of our top five selling items,” Kasim says.
He decided to start a quesadillas-only concept. Juice Palm already had a kitchen, and they added a side door and counter where customers could order. Kasim says it gained popularity among college students, to the point where they were selling 300-400 quesadillas each night.
During the pandemic, Kasim decided to transform Juice Palm into Plomo Quesadilla Bar. It opened in August, in time for the start of the new school year, and sales remained high, especially on the weekends.
Now, the restaurant is expanding to Texas, and specifically Dallas, where many Arkansas graduates end up. Plomo will be located near KSP Henderson, a pub popular among Razorbacks alumni. The planned opening date is June 1, 2023.
They’re going to renovate the space, adding a garage door to the front and a patio for outdoor dining.
The food menu — with creative direction from Kasim and recipe execution from chef Fernando Castillo — will be the same in Dallas as in Arkansas. Kasim says top-selling quesadillas are the Escobar and Jesse James. But at the McMillan Avenue location, they want to do more cocktails and alcoholic beverages, Kasim says.
Plomo’s quesadillas are named after what Kasim calls “notorious” figures — among them Pablo Escobar, JoaquÃn Guzmán (aka El Chapo), and José Antonio Yépez Ortiz (aka El Marro) — and the restaurant has received pushback because of it. But Kasim says the names tie in with the brand.
“Our slogan is ‘notoriously delicious quesadillas,'” he says. “All of our quesadillas, our monthly specials included, are named after notorious people throughout history.”
