Popular in Boston, new Mexican restaurant opens in West Palm Beach

• The menu features classic tacos, a raw bar with local and northeastern oysters, and signature margaritas.
• New cocktails, like the Clear Lime Pie, were created specifically for the West Palm Beach restaurant.
• The restaurant features a large, covered patio with a retractable roof for an open-air dining experience.

West Palm Beach's Nora shopping and dining district recently welcomed its newest restaurant Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar.

Bringing bold flavors, signature margaritas and a festive atmosphere, the celebrated taco and seafood destination opened on Feb. 28.

The beautifully decorated new restaurant marks Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar's first foray outside the Boston area where they have two restaurants.

Owner Mike Shaw started the restaurant in 2015 and said that the idea from the start was to "... create a place where people could escape. It was always a neighborhood taco shop that played great music, had fun staff, and damn good margaritas. We fell in love with West Palm over the past few years and think it is the perfect city for our next taco shop."

The menu at Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar hits all the classics you would expect at a great taco shop. From seasoned chips and guacamole that are made in-house to tacos including roasted cauliflower, braised short rib, tinga verde, Baja fish, and maple-bourbon pork belly, all served on house made tortillas, they've got a solid foundation. Add in appetizers like the Mexican street corn, served with off the cob with chips, as well as burritos and quesadillas, and your southwest cravings are covered.

The seafood side of the offerings include a raw bar helmed by chef Pap Wongsakorn Amorncharoenchai. With Locos Taqueria & Oyster Bar for 10 years, Amorncharoenchai is originally from Palm Beach County.

The restaurant will feature two to three oysters from the Northeast, a nod to their roots, as well as two or three local varieties. Amorncharoenchai said they will go through approximately 4,000 oysters per week. Part of that impressive volume is their $1 oysters on Mondays and fried oyster tacos, available on select taco Tuesdays.

The raw bar will feature fresh hamachi that is flown in from Japan weekly and sourced from a single fisherman.

In Boston, Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar is known for their margaritas and overall cocktail program and they aim to bring that reputation south with them. In addition to wildly popular drinks like their signature Coco, which blends blanco tequila, fresh lime and homemade coconut mix, they have designed several new cocktails specifically for the West Palm Beach location.

Two of these include the Two to Mango, featuring Ghost Tequila, mezcal, fresh lime, mango and habanero agave, and the Clear Lime Pie made with dark rum, amarula, key lime, graham cracker and vanilla egg foam. General manager Chris Hill gushed over the Clear Lime Pie, it's "like key lime pie in a glass."

To help ensure a smooth opening, Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar's manager Hill along with more than a dozen waiters, waitress and bar staff were all brought down from Boston. They even enlisted a few former workers who had moved down here on their own and jumped at the chance to work for their former employers again.

The new restaurant is beautifully landscaped and features a stunningly decorated main dining area along with a massive covered patio.

The two sections are seamlessly connected via large, glass-paned doors that are open when the weather isn't too hot. Also, when the weather cooperates, the entire roof over the patio opens to the stars via a louver system that gives guests an open-air experience.

With a clean slate to work with, Shaw said that the West Palm Beach location "pays homage to the original in Boston." He added that "we wanted to evoke a feeling of familiarity."

They even brought in artist Sam Malpass who did murals at their Boston locations to paint two pieces here, though the time of paying her in gift cards and Coronas has passed as her profile has risen, Shaw joked.

Should a chill muscle its way down here again, the patio has built-in heaters. "A friend encouraged getting heaters," Shaw recalled. "After the last month (when temps fell to a bracing 37 degrees one morning)… I'm glad we did."

They regularly adjust their seafood offerings and make seasonal changes to the menu, Shaw said. Shaw and his family plan to split their time between West Palm Beach and Boston while overseeing the restaurants.

Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar

Where: 840 N. Railroad Ave., West Palm Beach

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Friday; 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday

Information: locotacoshops.com/location/west-palm

Eddie Ritz is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.