Inside Agave Bandido in Winter Garden

It's a new hotspot for tourists and locals in Winter Garden. It's a Mexican restaurant and tequila bar. It is called Agave Bandito. And there's a speakeasy hidden inside. Yeah, it's pretty cool. There's a really fancy door that you have to go through. David Martin is there and he's showing us how we can all enjoy this. Hi, David. Well, good morning to you Amy. Hello John. Hello Danielle. We are live this morning inside Agave Bandito. Agave Bandito is a relatively new restaurant here in beautiful Winter Garden, Florida. And there are four of them in the state. And this keeps expanding. They're headquartered in Miami. Say hello to Fabrizio. Fabrizio, good morning to you, my friend. Good morning to you. All right, so first of all, how do you describe the decor in here? Very much Mexican-inspired for the decorum that we have inside of the place. So you can see a lot of agave, a lot of skulls. Very vibrant art, so we want to make sure that we keep it fresh. I love it. Let's talk about something you might want to order in the main dining room here. Ooh, I like the look of this. What is that? Oh, those are going to be our barbacoa nachos right over there. So, that's always a nice fun favorite, especially if you're sharing with guests for appetizers. I love that one. Nice. Next to it. That one is going to be the quesadilla birria. So, that one's a really nice take. It's everything you love out of birria, taco, but made into a quesadilla. You have your consommé in the center. But that nice pull-apart shredded beef on the inside, juicy, crispy, everything you'd love. Very good. Let's say hello to your friend here, Sydney. Hi, Sydney. How are you this morning? Doing great. Fresh out the kitchen. What do you got in there? Right here, we have our pollo al carbón. This here is a grilled chicken. We have our grilled chicken with our chimichurri oil here. We have our Mexican rice. Can't forget our black beans and our pico de gallo with it. I just want to sit here. Eat and drink all morning. But alas, we must continue with the show. What is underneath that contraption? This is our smoked figado. So right here, we have a wonderful spicy drink for you. And here, it's going to be mainly with our Tajín rim. We top it with our dehydrated lime, as well as a chili pepper. And inside, you can't forget the ingredients. It's going to be our tequila, as well as just... That rich, smoky flavor with it. Got it. Put that plate down right now. We're going to take a walk. Because what people can do is make a reservation for, or if there's room, they can walk into something called a speak tiki, right? And that is Maya's secret. Who is Maya? Maya is the goddess. So Maya is our goddess here. And she has many secrets for us in here. Are you ready? I'm ready. Perfect. Ooh. Is there a secret code word, or are we not allowed to get that out? Chimichanga. We just did. And look at this room, John, Amy, and Daniel. I love the ceiling decor. That could not have been easy to make. It's gorgeous, though. How do you describe the theme of this Speak Easy tiki? So it's kind of in the name. You have the tiki vibe. So it's our speak tiki. We have our tiki vibe, our goddess Maya right here. Very much more of that, you know, vacation feel for it. So there you go. We like to bring that vacation in when you're also eating. I feel like we've stepped into maybe even the Yucatan Peninsula to some degree down here. Oh, 100%. Yeah, you have it, honestly. Come in, enjoy, it's a relaxing lounge. Take a drink and just sit back and relax. Right here in Winter Garden. Now, let's go behind the bar with Fabricio. Now, this is primarily a tiki bar, but you do serve food, right? I mean, I presume you have a menu for food back here. Absolutely. Are you continuing to make the drink? Do you have options for eating? Oh, 100%. Different menu in here. Completely different. So this is an exclusive experience. So what we have here is tapas style. So it's going to be more of a little bites, but don't be fooled by that. I do have some good items as well that can fill you up Alright, what are you going to make for us? What have you made already? I have the Aztec Goddess, so this is going to be kind of a play on a margarita, but with a bit of mezcal. What really makes it tiki-inspired, in my opinion, is you're going to be having orgeat as your sweetener. That's going to be an almond syrup, so it gives it almost an amaretto finish for the base of that. So I always love that. We go and top that with some Angostura bitters, which gives a little bit of spice to it. And I'm going to be finishing it off with some fresh mint. I'm going to turn that around for you, Paolo. Paolo collects tiki cups. Did you know that? Tiki mugs. I had no idea. Yeah, he has an entire collection in his home. He has an entire room dedicated to it. I might just go have to give him a gift. He's a little weird. That's weird. We love him anyways. All right. Oh, that's perfect. There we go for that one. Thank you very much. And you're open every day out here at Agave Bandido? Every day except for Sunday, that is. So Sunday's going to be the only day that we're closed. If God needed a day off, so do we. Amen to that. All right, so in the next hour, we're going to make something that smokes here. Does that sound good to you? Sounds great, my friend. This is Agave Bandido, open every day except for Sunday. You open late on Fridays and Saturdays? Yes, so we do our closing at midnight on Friday and Saturdays. Monday through Wednesday is going to be 10 o'clock, Thursday 11. Understood. Very good. All right, ladies and gentlemen, back to you in the studio. Pal, you can't take that home. Oh, it's gone. Paolo says, that is mine. And why not? It does look great. Thank you, David. Doesn't it look nice? Love it. Well, there is a new hot spot in Winter Garden. It's a Mexican restaurant, it's a tequila bar, and it's called Agave Bandito. Ooh, and it looks really cool inside. There is a speakeasy that is hidden there. Fox 35's David Martin shows us. Good morning, everybody. We are broadcasting from Winter Garden, Florida, home to a gorgeous Mexican-inspired restaurant called Agave Bandido. It's my pleasure to introduce you to the staff here. But first, look at this gorgeous lobby with these lit-up skulls. That's a way to greet diners. The dining room is beautiful. And someone who knows all about the design and the decor here is Sydney, waiting for us by the food. Sydney, good morning to you once again. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm an assistant general manager here. What do you do here? You do a fine job. How do you describe what's going on in the dining room? It's gorgeous. It is very gorgeous. So the whole design is based off of our Dia de los Muertos, which is based off of the Day of the Dead. If you look above, you'll see our bunch of the skulls. Those there are actually shaped after agave plants. And the reason why that's important, besides our name being Agave Bandido, is that we're also a tequila bar, and tequila is made from agave. Beautiful. And the cuisine here is Mexican-inspired. In the last hour, you showed us some great appetizers and a beautiful chicken-inspired entree. What do you have for this? So, we can't talk about Mexican-inspired food without bringing up tacos, so here we have a taco platter. This is our taco platter with three tacos. That first one there that you're seeing, from left to right, you have our pork belly, our shrimp, and then our fish. Then on our next one, we have our veggie taco, our adobo chicken, and then our barbacoa that's made with a secret ingredient. Beautiful. And for dessert? Now this dessert is one of my favorite. This is our plantain crunch roll. Fun little fact about this, our chef over in Georgia actually created this item. Nice. Yeah. You have four locations, three of them here in Florida, one up in Georgia, and you continue to expand, and I can see why. Speaking of expanding, you can expand your waistline if you go into the Speak Tiki, which is a reservation-recommended place. Speak easy, but with a tiki flair. It's Maya's secret, you call that right here. And this is the secret door. You revealed the secret code word in the last hour. Let's repeat it. Chimichanga. And you tell that to your server, and if there's room, you can go in. If there's room, you can come right in. We'll follow you in. And you guys are always welcome in. We're always welcome, she says. Very good. Look at the lighting package in here. You do feel like you've gone on vacation here to the coastlines. Yes. A beautiful Mexico. Oh, I love it. And behind the bar is another great staff member, Fabricio. Let's go back and talk to him as well there. Fabrizio, good morning to you once again. How are you feeling? I'm doing excellent, my friend. How are you doing? Good. Before you get into some fancy drinks, you've got a separate menu back here in the speak tiki. We do. It's completely exclusive. It's a complete different dining experience. What do you want to show off first? Let's go ahead and show off our hummus because I think that's going to be really cool for you guys to watch. Oh my goodness, he's put it on fire. Yeah, it's our flaming hummus. This is one of our best items here. It's a nice, very refreshing snack. All right, it looks great. To the left of that or to the right? To the right of that is going to be our pineapple shrimp bowl. Now as you can see, we do not waste anything here. We use the whole half of a pineapple, scoop it out because we use the insides for our pineapple salsa. We put our rice and we have our shrimp on it and it is to die for. Love it. I'll take it all. All right Fabrizio, what do you want to wash it down with here? Right over here we have a stash fortune. It's kind of a play on a rum runner. So it goes really over the top of the presentation. You can see the treasure chest right here. We open it up. straight over into a nice little smoke show it goes into our potion glass right over here and we're going to pour that table side into your drink over here isn't that beautiful a smoke show indeed that was Paulo's nickname in high school all right very good all right so this is agave bandido bandits open every day we found out except for sundays you take the lord's day off yeah well the day of sunday is to rest for our Maya goddess for here all right very good that's all right we'll And it's family-friendly, of course, I presume. So our Speak Tiki is a 21 and up restriction. However, our regular dining experience is open to all. Good to know. And again, you can make a reservation for the Speak Tiki if you'd like. Come meet us. Brucey and his staff Hey, thanks for making some food for us. Anytime for you, my friend. Wonderful drinks. Thank you very much, Sydney, the Assistant General Manager. This is Agave Bandido, open now in Winter Garden. We'll see you later. Bye now.