Quintanas and Arribas
1977 Texas Girl meets Newfoundland Boy
The heavenly match up begins with girl craving the food of South Texas! Rebecca McCoy and Leith Quinton decided to take advantage of Rebecca’s experience in restaurants and her desire to indulge in her native Tex-Mex cuisine. We opened Casa Grande Restaurant in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1980. Three beautiful Children and 34 years later we are still going strong with the help of our family and wonderful customers.
Casa Grande Newfoundland’s first Tex-Mex restaurant was a small two-story house on Duckworth Street in downtown St. John’s. The first day we had what is called a ‘soft’ opening October 2, 1980. We cooked for 40 potential customers whom we hoped would have heard by word of mouth that we were opening…a hundred and forty showed up to sample our Tex-Mex Margaritas, enchiladas, burritos, and chilli rellenos! We ran out of food and told the remaining customers that we could cook more but it would take about three hours…they waited!
Through the years we opened and closed two satellite locations to help with the demand and finally in 1991 we opened Quintanas de la plaza in Churchill Square – we could not hope to copy the atmosphere and ambiance of the small two story house on Duckworth so we couldn’t call it Casa Grande instead we used our last name Quinton with the Spanish spelling. Later we renovated the building and opened our top floor for a bar and extra seats to accommodate our customers and Arribas was born.
In 2006 When Rebecca got cancer we had to slow everything down and decided to sell Casa Grande because we owned the building and rented the location in the Square. Rebecca has since recovered and we never looked back. Quintanas & Arribas continues to move forward with the changing food & service demands of the 21st century. We have amazing long time customers who started coming to enjoy our food since they were in kindergarten and are now coming in with their own families.
Over the 36 years of service to the people of Newfoundland & Labrador our deep commitment to quality ingredients and the strong emphasis on great service has been the foundation of our business. We continue to be thankful for our customers who -with their continuing feedback- keep us striving to give the best food and service we possibly can. We are proud of over three decades in business and the opportunity to introduce an entire island to the taste and flavors of Texas & Mexico! Ole!