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“You can’t win ‘em all, right?”
That’s chef Troy Guard on his decision to close Mister Tuna, his wood-fired, Hawaiian-inspired restaurant on Brighton Boulevard. To be fair, the guy’s been on a bit of a winning streak, with a new DTC food hall and brewery in the works, a Bubu expansion, and the success of his growing Los Chingones mini-empire.
“For whatever reason, it just didn’t click,” Guard says of Mister Tuna. “I think Brighton Boulevard is tougher than maybe I’d anticipated…When construction started, things went downhill.”
Mister Tuna is the second restaurant to close inside Brighton Boulevard’s Industry building within a couple months. (Izakaya Ronin closed in August.) But Guard isn’t giving up on the location entirely—he’s turning the three-year-old restaurant into an urban event space called COMMISSARY.
By the sounds of it, it’ll be one of the tastiest urban event spaces in town—COMMISSARY will source its food from all of TAG Restaurant Group’s menus. That means you can pass around TAG’s taco sushi before sitting down to Guard & Grace’s oak-grilled carrots and steak. Or have a brunch reception courtesy of HashTAG, or a full-on Los Chingones-catered fiesta.
Guard says they’re not doing a whole lot to change the existing space, as it already has a desirable open layout and anchor mural by local artist Lui Ferreyra. Besides events, Guard and the TAG Restaurant Group culinary team—which includes pastry chef Joy Williams and chefs Jorel Pierce and Korey Sims—will host pop-ups, test new concepts, and present guest chef collaboration dinners.
“It was a hard decision to change it out,” Guard says of swapping Mister Tuna for COMMISSARY. “We’re taking a negative and making it a positive.”
Mister Tuna will serve its last supper on Saturday, November 2, after which COMMISSARY will be ready to host your soirée. If you’re hungry to have a Troy Guard-themed wedding, holiday party, or any old celebration, COMMISSARY will be able to seat 80 of your nearest and dearest for a seated dinner, 150 for a cocktail reception, or 300-plus for an indoor/outdoor affair.
