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Dining News: Now Open - Ancho Mexican Grill

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I've never more tweets or e-mails inquiring about a new place than Ancho Mexican Grill.

Located at 9th & J, the fast casual restaurant replaced Una Mas Baja Fresh at the bottom of one of Sacramento's high rise buildings about five weeks ago.

I stopped by on Monday evening and interviewed Jimmy Moore, the manager of the place.

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According to Moore, the owner of the restaurant determined that the Una Mas Baja Fresh concept where everything was cooked to order didn't serve his lunchtime clientele quickly enough. His average service time under Una Mas Baja Freshwas 20 minutes - precious minutes for his lunchtime crowd of state and federal workers with an hour for lunch.

To solve that issue, he decided to come up with a new concept that borrows from the Chipotle/Subway assembly line method of creating food. The food was just as fresh, Moore said, but prepared much more quickly and at a similar price. This new system has cut his service time to just 6 minutes.

While I didn't have the opportunity to try the food, given the similar ownership group, price point and style of Mexican food, if you like Una Mas Baja Fresh, you'll probably like Ancho Mexican Grill too.

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For now, Ancho is the first outpost for this concept, but if it catches on, the owner may expand to other locations.

Ancho Mexican Grill is located at 980 9th St., with the entrance on the J street side of the building. You can order via phone at 916-594-7171 or fax, with ordering by e-mail available once they get their Web site up and running.

* Corrected name of chain Mexican restaurant that previously occupied the space.

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Comments

"Borrowed from" Chipotle? It looks more like they belatedly copied them, period.

* Blatantly

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