A Detroit restaurant that has picked up James Beard semifinalist honors, an Esquire Best New Restaurants nod, and a spot on The New York Times' list of the country's greatest Mexican restaurants is bringing its heirloom-corn cooking to Cleveland. Vecino, the modern Mexican restaurant that opened in Midtown Detroit's Cass Corridor neighborhood in April 2024, is expected to open a second location inside Tremont's Driftwood building in November 2026, with the entrance expected to open in the first week of November 2026.
The expansion comes after co-owners Adriana Jiménez and Lukasz Wietrzynski had been hesitant about growing the brand beyond its original 66-seat Detroit dining room, according to Cleveland Scene, which first reported the Tremont opening. That original location, founded as a partnership among Jiménez, Wietrzynski and designer Colin Tury, transformed a long-vacant commercial building in Detroit's Cass Corridor, according to Hour Detroit. Vecino has since been named Restaurant of the Year by the Detroit Free Press and received widespread public and critical acclaim, per Cleveland Scene's reporting.
The Tremont location will occupy space inside the Driftwood building at 1111 Fairfield Avenue, a development from J Roc Development featuring 102 apartments and four hotel suites. Adam Comer, J Roc's senior manager of development, said Vecino fits the company's hospitality, design and food standards, according to Cleveland Scene's report. The new dining room is expected to feature 17-foot ceilings, exposed concrete and a stately corner entrance, the outlet notes.
A Founder's Personal Ties to Mexican Cuisine
Jiménez, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Detroit, told Cleveland Scene that she was unable to visit Mexico before adulthood because of her DACA status — though she later lived in Mexico City for a year and a half. Her mother operated two Mexican eateries where Jiménez worked, an upbringing that informed Vecino's approach to modern Mexican cuisine, which the restaurant's team describes as blending local seasonal foodstuffs with Mexican flavors and techniques. Jiménez said Tremont's hospitality industry has welcomed her as she and Wietrzynski prepare to split their time between Detroit and the new Cleveland outpost, per the same report.
Vecino's culinary reputation rests heavily on its dedication to traditional tortilla-making, a technique the restaurant's chefs say is roughly 3,000 years old. The kitchen sources heirloom corn from Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Sinaloa and other regions of Mexico, according to Cleveland Scene, and Vecino separately imports 200-pound shipments of heirloom varieties like Pink Xocoyul, Cacahuazintle, Jala Amarillo and Blue Bolita directly from Mexico, per Metro Times. That corn is processed overnight through an in-house nixtamalization program — soaking, draining, drying and grinding the kernels with volcanic stone — that yields roughly 80 pounds of fresh masa daily, the outlet reports. Nixtamalization transforms dried corn into masa, which is used to make tortillas, tostadas, tlayudas and other corn-based dishes, and the kitchen also employs live-fire cooking throughout the menu.
National Accolades Fueled the Timing
Vecino's move into Tremont arrives on the heels of a run of national recognition. The James Beard Foundation named the restaurant a semifinalist in the Best New Restaurant category in January 2025, according to ClickOnDetroit. Esquire magazine also named Vecino among its 35 Best New Restaurants in America 2024, singling out dishes like a blue-corn sope topped with pork belly and an epazote-maitake quesadilla, per Patch. Most recently, in August 2026 The New York Times named Vecino as Michigan's sole representative on its roundup of 41 greatest Mexican restaurants in the country, a list that emphasized a broader national shift from traditional Tex-Mex toward upscale regional Mexican cooking.
Executive Chef Edgar Torres, who previously served as chef de cuisine at Chicago's three-Michelin-starred Alinea and at Roister before joining Jiménez and Wietrzynski, is part of Vecino's culinary team. The word vecino itself means neighborhood in Spanish — a name the owners have said reflects their approach to building community around the table.
Fitting Into Tremont's Dining Legacy
J Roc Development, the Cleveland-based firm behind Driftwood, is the developer of Vecino's planned Tremont home. Vecino now joins a neighborhood long known as one of Cleveland's historic dining enclaves — home to newer neighborhood revivals like Edison's Pizza Kitchen, as Hoodline previously reported. Tremont is a neighborhood where Vecino's arrival adds another chapter. Tremont's population is also part of the neighborhood context surrounding Vecino's arrival.
