The Building Has Made Tortillas Since 1947. It Just Started Again.
Tortillas Chiwas opened August 27 at 914 N. Grande Ave. in Barrio Hollywood — 38 seats, an on-site nixtamal mill, and a building making tortillas since 1947.
Phoenix restaurateurs Armando Hernandez and Nadia Holguin took the former Grande Tortilla Factory at 914 N. Grande Ave. and split its 1,800 square feet between a working mill and a 38-seat dining room.
One building in Barrio Hollywood has turned out tortillas since 1947, under three operators in a row. The newest opened Thursday, August 27, at 914 N. Grande Ave., with a Chihuahuan-Sonoran menu of about fifteen items, a liquor license still pending, and a nixtamal mill running in the back room. Tortillas Chiwas is the Tucson room for Armando Hernandez and chef Nadia Holguin, who have been named James Beard Award semifinalists three times, most recently in January 2026 for Best Chef: Southwest. What they took on is less a restaurant space than a piece of food-production infrastructure that a residential block grew up around.
- Aug. 27, 2026
- Opening day at 914 N. Grande Ave. in Barrio Hollywood
- 1,800 sq ft
- The burnt adobe block building, dining room in front and production in back
- 38
- Seats in the dining room; reservations are required through OpenTable
- 1947
- The year the Pesqueira family opened Grande Tortilla Factory in this building
- 7
- Restaurants the mill supplies — six in metro Phoenix, plus the dining room out front
Seventy-Nine Years, Three Tenants, One Product
Grande Tortilla Factory opened in 1947, and two generations of the Pesqueira family ran it for nearly 62 years before closing on a Saturday afternoon in late March 2009, after one last Christmas masa season that supplied hundreds of Tucson families. Art Pesqueira said at the time that the family would keep the building up for sale, and that the obstacle was financing rather than a lack of interest. A company operating as La Tortilla took the space over and made tortillas there for 16 years, closing late in 2025. The building sat idle for months, not years.
- Tortillas Chiwas (2026-) (38 seats, On-site nixtamal mill, ~15 menu items): Opened August 27, 2026. A tortilleria and Chihuahuan-Sonoran restaurant under the same ownership as the group's Phoenix-area establishments, milling its own masa on site.
- La Tortilla (2009-2025) (16 years, Wholesale production): Took the space over after the Pesqueiras closed and made tortillas in it for sixteen years, until late 2025.
- Grande Tortilla Factory (1947-2009) (Nearly 62 years, Two generations, Pesqueira family): Opened in 1947 and closed in March 2009, after nearly 62 years in the building.
What Fits in 1,800 Square Feet
The split is front and back: kitchen and 38-seat dining room in front, with the cooking line visible from the bar, and the mill behind. Hernandez has described milling all of their own nixtamal on site — whole corn cooked and ground into masa rather than bought in as flour — at a rate of hundreds of pounds a week, enough to carry the tortillas at the couple's six Phoenix-area restaurants as well as the dining room here. That ratio is worth sitting with: this is a production building with a dining room attached, not a restaurant that happens to press its own.
Until the liquor license clears, the restaurant is running a limited menu from 5 to 10 p.m., Thursdays through Saturdays. Hernandez expected it sometime in September, so the schedule is the detail most likely to have moved. Regular hours are tentatively set for Tuesdays through Saturdays, roughly 10 or 11 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. With 38 seats, reservations are required rather than encouraged.
Why It Took a Tortilla Maker, Twice
The property lesson in this timeline is not the one people usually draw from a restaurant opening. A single-purpose commercial building sitting inside a residential street grid is among the hardest things in a neighborhood to re-tenant. Most of its value is in fittings that only one kind of operator can use, and the tenants who come looking are usually every other kind. That is the shape of what the Pesqueiras ran into in 2009: interest was not the obstacle, financing was.
What resolved it, twice, is that the space found an operator whose business needed precisely what was already installed. Both tenants since the Pesqueiras have been tortilla producers, which is less coincidence than arithmetic: the equipment fits, the room is already built for the work, and the alternative is paying to gut it. For anyone watching property on the west side, the honest read is narrower than a story about a neighborhood changing. One commercial parcel on a residential block that spent parts of two decades in question is occupied and running again, and nobody can put a defensible number on what that alone does to the house next door. For a buyer looking at a house that backs one of these buildings, the question is not whether it gets redeveloped — it is who else could use it as it stands.
Quick reference (September 10, 2026): Tortillas Chiwas opened Thursday, August 27, 2026 at 914 N. Grande Ave. in Barrio Hollywood, in the 1,800-square-foot burnt adobe block building that housed Grande Tortilla Factory from 1947 to 2009 and La Tortilla from 2009 to late 2025. It seats 38, serves about fifteen Chihuahuan-Sonoran items, and mills its own nixtamal on site, supplying the owners' six Phoenix-area restaurants too. It runs 5 to 10 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays on a limited menu while the liquor license is pending, which Hernandez expected in September; regular hours are tentatively Tuesdays through Saturdays, roughly 10 or 11 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. Reservations go through OpenTable. Hours, menus and licensing change — confirm directly with the restaurant before making the drive.
Sources
Arizona Daily Star (tucson.com) — "Tucson tortilleria is now home to Chihuahuan restaurant" by Cathalena E. Burch (August 27, 2026) — tucson.com/life-entertainment/local/food-drink/article_e251923b-b247-474c-b62d-2aceb75c94bd.html — accessed September 10, 2026 (for the Thursday, August 27 opening at 914 N. Grande Ave. in Barrio Hollywood, the 1,800-square-foot burnt adobe block building, the 38 seats, the roughly 15-item menu, the 5-10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday limited hours through September, the tentative Tuesday-Saturday regular hours of 10 or 11 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m., the OpenTable reservation requirement, the hundreds of pounds of masa a week going to the couple's six Phoenix-area restaurants as well as the Tucson dining room, Hernandez's expectation of the liquor license in September, and the building's history under Grande Tortilla Factory from 1947 and La Tortilla for 16 years until late 2025)
Arizona Daily Star (tucson.com) — "This Tucson tortilleria is now home to a new Chihuahuan restaurant" by Cathalena E. Burch (September 1, 2026, updated September 3, 2026) — tucson.com/thisistucson/eat/article_f46dd6bc-ca54-41e7-8652-60aca70184e6.html — accessed September 10, 2026 (for Armando Hernandez and chef Nadia Holguin as owners, the front-of-building kitchen and dining room with the cooking line visible from the bar and the tortilla production in back, Hernandez's description of milling all of their own nixtamal, and the six Phoenix-area restaurants the couple owns or partners in)
James Beard Foundation — "James Beard Award Semifinalists" listings for 2026, 2024 and 2019, and the 2026 and 2019 nominee lists — jamesbeard.org/stories/james-beard-award-semifinalists-2026 — accessed September 10, 2026 (for the three semifinalist listings naming Armando Hernandez and Nadia Holguin — Best Chef: Southwest in January 2026, Outstanding Restaurateur in 2024, and Best Chef: Southwest for Holguin in 2019 — and for their absence from the corresponding nominee lists, which is why this post says semifinalists rather than nominees)
Tucson Foodie — "James Beard-nominated chefs bring Tortillas Chiwas to Tucson" (August 26, 2026) — tucsonfoodie.com/news/tacos-chiwas-owners-bringing-tortilleria-and-intimate-restaurant-to-tucsons-barrio-hollywood — accessed September 10, 2026 (for the tortilleria-plus-restaurant concept and the roughly 15 items drawn from the owners' other establishments, the liquor license still being secured, the Pesqueira family's founding of Grande Tortilla Factory in 1947, and La Tortilla's 16 years in the space before closing in late 2025)
Arizona Daily Star (tucson.com) — "Grande Tortilla Factory closes doors after six decades" (March 30, 2009) — tucson.com/business/grande-tortilla-factory-closes-doors-after-six-decades/article_b04f64d4-402d-57ea-8750-76064aa7b23f.html — accessed September 10, 2026 (for the closure on the Saturday afternoon of March 28, 2009 after nearly 62 years, the final Christmas masa season serving hundreds of Tucson families, the 914 N. Grande Ave. address, and Art Pesqueira's remarks that the family would keep the building up for sale and that financing was the obstacle)
Details are current as of September 10, 2026; restaurant hours, menus and liquor licensing change without notice, so confirm before relying on any single detail here. This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase real estate. Kyle Berglund and Tierra Antigua Realty fully support and comply with the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.
Topics
- New Business
- Barrio Hollywood
- Restaurants
- Adaptive Reuse
- Commercial Real Estate
- Small Business
- Tucson