A highly-successful Sunderland food entrepreneur is set to launch a second restaurant in the city, following the hype of his first solo food venture in December last year.
Nick Kerry, 36, from Sunderland opened up TACO in Ledgers Convenience Store on Worcester Street as 2021 came to a close, after selling Tex-Mex creations from the comfort of his own home following the Coronavirus pandemic.
And after a brilliant opening week in which orders came thick and fast thanks to wide-spread social media promotion and tireless endeavours, business is still yet to slow down with Nick constantly revitalising his menu with tasty and exciting products each week.
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The mastermind has even seen his brand-new solo project rank at number one not only on food order service Sunderland Eats, but the number one food vendor across the whole country in terms of the Eats franchise, which has a service in most towns and cities.
Speaking to ChronicleLive on the success of Taco, Nick said: "I'm always innovating and I just like to keep ahead of the game. I do everything that people here aren't doing - I don't know what it is about Sunderland and this area but people have got a bit of a fear about doing something new.
"I don't know whether they think that it won't work or if they think that people want a certain type of food - but once you give them something different, they take it.
"The new items is just me expressing myself and my creativity is coming out in my food, which is what I love.
"The biggest compliment I can get is people ordering food. Even though we're as busy and as successful as we are, I'm still in the mindset that I'm not a chef. I'm a trained hairdresser and an ex-salon owner and I've came into an industry and it's blown up. Every time that an order pops through, every single one, I get this excitement running through me because people are choosing me.
"It's such a pleasure and such an honour that people love what I'm doing - the more people that order from me the bigger my confidence gets and the better the product gets because it's that extra boost every time."
Thanks to a loyal fan-base which has even seen one customer order food every day and night the business is open, Nick is now testing the waters with other cuisines - announcing the launch of Revenge: Burgers and Fries, which is also expected to land at the same address in three months' time.
Going back to his original roots, Nick hopes to create tasty burgers and wild-loaded fries for the people of Sunderland to enjoy - after initially launching the renowned BURGeR restaurant in Sunderland city centre with an ex-business partner a couple of years ago.
And with his new restaurant also comes a shiny and exciting theme which Nick alleges has never been done anywhere in the world thus far.
On his new venture, Nick said: "It's an exciting project. It's burgers and fries but we've hit a hole in the market that hasn't been done anywhere - not only in the UK but in the world.
"We're literally basing our menu on famous horror movie villains, and the moral of the story behind that is that no matter what anyone does that is bad, you can always turn it into good. You can always bring sunshine at the end of the storm, so it's going to be exciting.
"We've got a burger called the Demon Barber which we've based on Sweeney Todd. It's a burger with pulled pork and it has a full pork pie in it. As we know, the Demon Barber turned all of his victims into pies. We've also got Fright Night fries - it's an iconic 80s horror movie.
"We've got fries topped with sauces and chicken wings that have been tossed in a really deep red honey chilli sauce, so it's going to set the scene really with what we've got planned."
Among other spectacular new items is also the Hellfire based upon Freddy Krueger which features double smashed beef patties with charred smoked ham, crispy bacon, chillies, chipotle and topped off with lashings of marinara sauce.
The Samara (from the 2002 film, The Ring) is also another featuring product, which sees sweet and sticky Japanese crispy chicken coated in chilli mayo, peanut crumbs and onions.
And with a second business in the pipeline, Nick has also conjured up another idea in the future as he plans to build his food empire across Wearside. After rediscovering his love of creating pizza, he has purchased a mobile pizza oven and is planning on launching an authentic pizza parlour should Revenge also take off.
Nick continued: "I have history of making pizzas, I have a lot of unfinished business in this industry which I'm not looking to take away from anybody, but I'm coming for everything that I'm good at. This whole thing has made me so much more confident - not that I wasn't confident anyway - but I've got so much more confidence in everything that I do.
"There's a lot to be taken and I'm coming for it."
Taking a step back from his experimental twists on authentic dishes, Nick insists that the new pizza place will stick to it's natural roots - with thin and crispy pies with tasty and mouth-watering toppings.
"I don't watch TV, my wife is sick of me because all I watch is how businesses run. I don't watch them in Britain, I watch them in America because we are 10 or 20 years behind them with food. I've ben researching pizza for a good few year and there's a place called New Haven in Connecticut and it's known for the best pizzas in the world.
"Real thin and crispy bases and they're spectacular. I'm not going to say much more because I don't want to give my secrets away, but we've got something special. Something really special.
"I've got a plan, I always have a plan but I don't share them too deeply. Everybody knows that I can pull it off, and that it's going to work and it's going to be amazing."
Revenge: Burgers and Fries is expected to land in Sunderland in June 2022.
You can check out Nick's menu and current dishes from TACO at https://www.tacosunderland.com/
What's your favourite takeaway to order from? Let us know in the comments section below.
