tacobarn Opens in Newtown From Restaurateur David Boyajian

Andrew Dominick December 17, 2025

“I don’t know what got me looking, but I saw this building roughly 27 months ago for the first time, and I just fell in love with it.”

Once filled with random storage, a barn on Glen Road in Sandy Hook has new life as a taqueria thanks to Newtown local and restaurateur David Boyajian.

At the appropriately named tacobarn, Boyajian isn’t calling it traditional Mexican and he’s not even remotely pretending it’s that. And this particular nontraditional taco space is something he’s quite familiar with from his past as bartaco’s director of operations and part of that microchain’s expansion.

“I was pretty much employee number one at the first bartaco,” Boyajian says. “I was there through 2017 growing that brand shoulder-to-shoulder with my mentors Scott Lawton and Andy Pforzheimer. I wouldn’t even be where I am if not for those guys (and landing at Barcelona before that).”

With a passion for tacos (because who doesn’t, right?), and a lease signed to replace the barn’s storage with tortillas and tequila drinks, Boyajian, and the architectural-interior design firm that designed a lot of the bartaco locations, RDstudio, got to work.

“There are parts of this building that are over 200 years old,” Boyajian says. “All these beams in the wood rafters, when you go upstairs, those are original, about 225 years old. A big reason why it took so long is there were very thoughtful discussions with the landlord. Like, he didn't want me to paint, and if I painted, I had to paint one board at a time and go bring him in and show it to him. It took about two years. Now that it’s done, he loves it.”

*Upper left - chips, guac, and salsas*
*Bottom left - shishitos w/smoky corn purée and corn nuts*
*Right - shrimp ceviche*

*Duck taco - hoisin-tamarind glaze, pickled carrots, sesame pickles, onion*

Now that the two-floor barn is fully decorated, and outside, a furnished patio complete with string lights, and fire pits that’ll be a hit when the weather’s nicer, tacobarn is ready to rock, and what they’re serving is all created by a chef you know.

Four-time Chopped Champion, chef Adam Greenberg, who’s Boyajian’s business partner at West Hartford’s Sparrow Pizza Bar, and former fellow Barteca alum in his own right, has been hard at work creating, and still tinkering with tacobarn’s menu.

“I’m a lifer in the industry,” Boyajian says. “Busboy, bartending in college, and in 1999, I was actually studying for the LSATs and I told my mom I wanted to be an assistant manager at a restaurant. Tears were falling down her face.”
Before Barteca, Boyajian worked various jobs including with Scott Beck at Match Restaurant in South Norwalk, Bouley Bakery in NYC, SushiSamba, and came back to Connecticut to open Relish with Bill Taibe.

“I like to say if it tastes good on a tortilla, we'll make it, so it's not necessarily traditional Mexican,” Boyajian says of the menu. “We'll use influences from other parts of the world if it tastes good, like our duck taco is a hoisin and tamarind glaze that we stumbled upon. So, this cucumber salad that we serve, we shake that every two hours; tamari, soy, and sesame seed shaken, we realize that if you let them sit for a day, they make me really awesome pickles, so that goes on the duck taco. But we also have a carne asada. We will also have shishito peppers (smoky corn purée and corn nuts) that just tastes really good. Cauliflower and romesco, because it's a great combo. And, you know, Adam was from Barcelona, so we used romesco a lot, we use it at Sparrow, we use it here. It's a good condiment, so why not stick it in a tortilla?”

*Half roasted chicken, green rice, pickled onions, salsas, tortillas*

*Left to right - Baja fish, jerk shrimp (coconut sauce, pickled Fresno chilis), pork belly (chipotle glaze, pickled onion), mushroom (truffle crema, corn, cotija)*

Though, only a few weeks open as of press time, Boyajian says that besides the 11 different tacos offered, that the chips, big, crispy, well-salted tortillas with either fresh, slightly spicy guac, homemade salsas (green tomatillo, red chipotle, and yellow habanero), or queso have been popular, as have the salads.

“Some of the things are familiar (to bartaco), like the order cards, the hot sauces, but our small plates are a little more robust,” Boyajian explains. “If you've been to Sparrow, our salads are a thing there, and they're pretty good here, too. But the idea is to keep it super approachable, price wise. We want to see families, kids, young people. We want to see them three or four days a week. We don't want to be a special occasional place. We want to be part of the community, and also, not just Newtown. I think the mistake that so many Newtown restaurants make, and I'm not being critical, I just see it, is that they don't put themselves out there to try to pull down from Southbury, Middlebury, New Milford, Brookfield, Monroe. We're getting those people so far because we have a little bit more reach, so we're just trying to be something for everybody, to keep people happy, do what we know, what we've learned how to do, and continue to just kind of raise the bar for ourselves.”

*Top left - The Spicy Gardener - cucumber, cilantro, gin, Rockey’s Lime, Hellfire Bitters*
*Bottom left - Rosaya’s Law - rosemary, rum, papaya, Meletti Amaro, lemon, Angostura + Hellfire Bitters*
*Right - Smoked Sanguine - tequila, mezcal, Campari, blood orange, lime, orange*

*Desserts are these churros or Rich Farm Ice Cream or tres leches cake.*

By the time you read this, you’ll have likely already crashed tacobarn’s bar for a fresh juice (as in, squeezed to order) tequila cocktail, but there’s more, in terms of entrées on the way. They’ve since added family style hanger steak and roasted chicken (either half or a whole), served family style with pickled onions, salsas, herby-peppery green rice, and tortillas, but another, a whole crispy fried snapper, inspired by a spot Boyajian and his wife frequent when they visit Aruba, will soon be one of your choices.

And if there is one more teaser, it isn’t only that takeout will follow once the kitchen fully hits their stride…it’s that there might be tacobarns, plural, in the future. We’ll respect their reveal, whether that comes in a year or more, but first they need to find another barn.

6 Glen Road, Sandy Hook
475.324.8226, eattacobarn.com