This is what Taco Cabana's new restaurants will look like, inspired by San Antonio

The new prototype for Taco Cabana's restaurants draws inspiration from the interior of Mexico and Alamo City artists have helped design and fill the walls with authentic-style architecture and photography. The new prototype for Taco Cabana's restaurants draws inspiration from the interior of Mexico and Alamo City artists have helped design and fill the walls with authentic-style architecture and photography. Photo: San Antonio Express-News Photo: San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 42 Caption Close This is what Taco Cabana's new restaurants will look like, inspired by San Antonio 1 / 42 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — The new prototype for Taco Cabana's restaurants draws inspiration from the interior of Mexico and Alamo City artists have helped design and fill the walls with authentic-style architecture and photography.

The first San Antonio restaurant in the new design opened this week on the Northwest Side near Loop 1604 and UTSA campus. Each of the restaurants' nearly 200 locations will undergo remodeling in the next year to resemble the prototype, which will be the model for all new locations, said Todd Coerver, Taco Cabana's chief operating officer.

"We wanted to echo that modern Mexico feel throughout the restaurant," he said. "There's not anything like it out there."

Coerver and a exploratory committee from the restaurant traveled to Mexico to draw inspiration for architecture, furniture, music and new recipes, Coerver said.

New features include a Mexican modernist building design, slit windows, photographs shot by the late San Antonio photographer Rick Hunter on the streets of Mexico, music from Mexican artists and furniture and lighting imported from the United States' southern neighbor.

Coerver said the restaurant wanted to convey the patio feel to the inside of the restaurant with stone columns, string lighting and metal trimmed in the style of papel picado throughout the restaurant.

There are about 45 Taco Cabana restaurants in the San Antonio area and the first Taco Cabana, which is still in operation, opened on San Pedro and Hildebrand in 1978.

The design for the outside of the building was developed by Davis Sprinkle, a San Antonio architect who worked with the revered Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta on the enchilada red Central Public Library.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area has eight locations in the new style and Houston has one.

kparker@express-news.net

Twitter: @KoltenParker