On South Main St., inside a restored 1930s building that has weathered nearly a century of Fort Worth change, Tinie’s is preparing for something it hasn’t quite had since it opened six years ago — a reset.
The restaurant, named for Christina “Tinie” Castillo, the mother of founder Sarah Castillo, will reopen next week with a new menu, a refreshed sense of purpose, and a familiar but newly empowered figure at the helm. Adrian Burciaga — best known locally as the co-founder of Don Artemio — has stepped in to oversee daily operations and steer Tinie’s back toward its original ambition.
Castillo, whose résumé also includes Taco Heads and the fast-growing La Pulga Spirits brand, says the decision was driven as much by necessity as by trust. “My other partnership with Tinie’s, we decided to go different ways. I took over Tinie’s and was looking for a strong managing partner to help run it. And of course Adrian came straight to mind.”
The timing was perfect, given Burciaga’s departure from Don Artemio in Oct. of 2025.
“I just texted him one day, and I was like, ‘Hey, what are you up to?’ she says. “After that, we met a few times, and I told him my goals for Tinie’s.”
Those goals had been delayed almost from the start. Tinie’s opened one week before COVID shut the world down. Survival mode followed, and ambition took a back seat. “We had to survive that, and then we just never could catch up,” Castillo says. “Things were just slipping, and quality was dropping. We just needed a shakeup and a revamp.”
What Castillo wanted — and still wants — is to offer diners a transportive culinary journey. Basically, to take diners out of Fort Worth and put them in a space that resembles the culinary style of Mexico City.
Burciaga understood immediately. He has known Castillo since 2013, when she was still running Taco Heads out of a food truck on West Seventh. “Ever since then, we have stayed in contact,” Burciaga says. “She’s a good friend.”
When Castillo reached out last fall, Burciaga had recently left Don Artemio and was weighing his next move. “I kind of put my cards on the table on what’s next,” he says.
Tinie’s, he says, felt less like a pivot and more like an obligation. “Sarah, in her case, she said, ‘I need help. Can you actually partner and be part of us and help us all from the ground up?’”
By mid-November, Burciaga Hospitality Group had assumed management. Burciaga partnered with wine aficionado Martin Quirarte on operations, while Burciaga’s wife, Maria Jose Cervantes, oversees marketing and storytelling. Since taking over, Burciaga and his team have made incremental changes.
“We started adjusting a few recipes, training the team on expectations for hospitality — creating a base for the bigger plan.”
Castillo jokes that Burciaga has another name for it. “Adrian calls it an intervention, a subtle intervention,” she says playfully.
The most visible changes are coming quickly. Downstairs, Tinie’s will offer a full, chef-driven menu under the leadership of Chef Ix-Chel Ornelas Hernández, a culinary researcher from Oaxaca dedicated to preserving ancestral techniques. “We’re technically changing the entire menu under Ix-Chel’s leadership,” Burciaga says. “She’s coming to train the kitchen and put her print on the menu.”
Upstairs, Escondite (Spanish for hideaway), will lean into its original intent as an agave-focused bar. “It’s not necessarily a speakeasy, there’s no hidden door,” Castillo says, “but it is just a cool mezcal tequila bar with small bites.”
There are physical changes, too. The downstairs patio will be enclosed in glass, greenhouse-style, allowing for private dinners year-round. “These are some things that we’ve been wanting to do,” Castillo says. “We’re just prioritizing it now.”
If the partnership feels unusually seamless, both say that’s because it’s built on something rare in the restaurant business — mutual respect without rivalry. “Adrian and I, we both come from very similar concepts,” Castillo says. “But we both supported each other. We weren’t competing.”
Burciaga echoes that sentiment. “I think our goal is just to get [Tinie’s] back to what Sarah had in mind in the first place six years ago,” he says. “We don’t want to change a lot of the vision that she had in the first place, but we want to correct the route moving forward.”
Tinie’s is expected to reopen to the public next week, with a soft rollout beginning Tuesday, Jan. 13. For Castillo, the timing feels like relief. For Burciaga, it feels like a purpose. And for Fort Worth, it feels like a familiar restaurant finally getting its second act.
As Castillo puts it, summing up the partnership, “I have so much respect for Adrian, and I know the way he works, and I feel that he has respect for me as well. The feelings are so mutual that it was just so easy to partner.”