This Kansas City business has closed. KS.City keeps its page on the record.

Cacao Restaurante was a locally owned modern-Mexican restaurant, a partnership of Kansas City restaurateurs Ivan Marquez and Victor Esqueda (the owner of Ixtapa), that opened in Prairie Village, KS in March 2016 and later relocated to 1046 W 103rd St in the Watts Mill Plaza in south Kansas City, MO — the space it later used as the production hub for the Taco Cacao food truck. The 103rd Street location has since closed; Mexico Lindo KC took over the space in March 2024.

Description

Cacao Restaurante served modern Mexican cuisine — “refined plates of modern Mexican specialties along with comforting street food favorites” — with an emphasis on preparing dishes the traditional way they are made in Mexico rather than in a Tex-Mex idiom.12 Signature plates included a Cacao steak rubbed with chilies and cocoa powder, mole enchiladas built on a chocolate-based sauce, and a modern jicama/shrimp taco, alongside street-food staples.1 The restaurant opened in Prairie Village, KS in March 2016 and later relocated across the state line to 1046 W 103rd St in the Watts Mill Plaza (former Applebee’s space) in south Kansas City, MO.13 While operating at 103rd Street, its kitchen served as the prep/production hub for the Taco Cacao food truck launched by the Esqueda family in 2021.4

Ownership and history

Cacao Restaurante was a partnership between Kansas City restaurateurs Ivan Marquez and Victor Esqueda.1 Esqueda is the owner of Ixtapa (opened 2004 with partner Alejandro Hernandez) and the operator behind several KC Mexican ventures, including the earlier Frida’s and Guadalajara Cafe, and later the Taco Cacao food truck.2 The kitchen was led by chefs trained in Guadalajara, Mexico who had also cooked in New York; the specific head-chef name is reported inconsistently across sources, so it is left unresolved here.1

The restaurant opened in March 2016 on 95th Street in Prairie Village, KS, and later moved to the former Applebee’s space at 1046 W 103rd St in the Watts Mill Plaza on the KC-Missouri side, just east of State Line Road.13 During its 103rd Street run it doubled as the commissary/production hub for the Esqueda family’s Taco Cacao taqueria-on-wheels.4 The 103rd Street location has since closed; Mexico Lindo KC opened in the same space in March 2024.3

Last verified: 2026-08-14 · Source: Cacao’s own website, cacaokc.com, recovered from Internet Archive captures (2016–2022)5 — used to establish what the operator did and did not publish; dish names below remain press-derived16 · Confidence: Medium on the dish names, none on prices. No first-party priced menu for Cacao Restaurante exists or is recoverable — see the ceiling note below. No aggregator prices have been used, and none should be added.

Documented ceiling — do not re-spend on this menu. A 2026-08-14 pass exhausted every first-party avenue:

  • Cacao’s own website never hosted an itemized menu. The operator’s Wix site carried a “Menu Peek” gallery of food photographs and routed all ordering off-site; the one archived /menu page (2017-01-05) is an empty JavaScript shell with no menu text.5
  • Both first-party ordering platforms are dead. The site’s own “Order Online” buttons pointed to ChowNow (ordering.chownow.com/order/25527) and SpotOn (ord.spoton.com/617837969adef37e0cf1e0ae). SpotOn now returns 403. ChowNow restaurant ID 25527 has been reassigned to an unrelated business in Fort Smith, Arkansas — any menu pulled from that ID today would be another restaurant’s, and it must not be used. The ChowNow menu endpoint for that ID returns an empty object. Archived captures of the ordering pages are 303 redirects with no menu body.5
  • The former domain is hijacked. cacaokc.com now serves online-casino spam and 301-redirects to an unrelated restaurant; the one archived site PDF resolves to spam HTML, not a menu.75
  • Facebook and Instagram remain up as archival presences but cannot be machine-read (Firecrawl explicitly refuses facebook.com). A first-party menu photograph may exist there; retrieving it would require a manual human look, not another agent pass.

“ — permanent. The only remaining path is a human review of the archival Facebook/Instagram photo albums, or a physical menu from a collector.

Dishes reported in press coverage (names only — no first-party prices)

  • Cacao steak — beef rubbed with chilies and cocoa powder; the dish the restaurant was named around. Price “.1
  • Mole enchiladas — enchiladas built on a chocolate-based mole sauce. Price “.1
  • Jicama taco — a modern taco with shrimp, pico de gallo, mango and chipotle cream. Price “.1
  • Street tacos — traditional street-food tacos; “Street tacos” is also the caption on the lead photograph of the operator’s own site gallery. Price “.15
  • Birria — birria among the street-food offerings. Price “.6

The operator’s own framing of the kitchen was “refined plates of modern Mexican specialties along with comforting street food favorites,” with the chef’s site note: “Food is my passion — my art is creating a delicious and surprising menu that will overwhelm your every sense.”15

Sources

Footnotes

  1. 1 Dapper Latino — “CACAO in Prairie Village.” — asserts: Cacao is a modern Mexican restaurant serving dishes the traditional Mexican way plus healthier veg/seafood options; owners/partners Ivan Marquez and Victor Esqueda; chefs trained in Guadalajara who also cooked in New York; opened March 2016 in Prairie Village on 95th Street; signature Cacao steak (chili & cocoa-powder rub), mole enchiladas (chocolate sauce), jicama tacos with shrimp/pico/mango/chipotle cream, and street-food favorites; turquoise-and-grey interior. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  2. The Pitch — “Ixtapa’s Victor Esqueda wants to change our expectations of Mexican cuisine” (Jan 2021) — asserts: Victor Esqueda owns Ixtapa (opened 2004 with partner Alejandro Hernandez; second location July 2020) and “also runs Cacao and the previous restaurants Frida’s and Guadalajara Cafe”; launched Tacos/Taco Cacao food truck ~Feb 2021 at 79th & Wornall; regional-authentic (not Tex-Mex) philosophy. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Brazen Gourmets (chuckeatskc) — “Kansas City Restaurant Openings, Closings, and News – March 2024.” — asserts: “Mexico Lindo KC opened this week at 1046 W. 103rd St. This in the former Cacao Restaurant and Applebee’s space in Watt’s Mill Plaza, on the north side of 103rd Street” — i.e., Cacao Restaurante had closed at that location by March 2024. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Feast Magazine — “Taco Cacao, a new taqueria on wheels…” (June 2021) — asserts: Taco Cacao is a sister/offshoot of Cacao Restaurante (103rd & State Line), where most of the truck’s food is prepped before finishing at the truck; Alfonso Esqueda named an owner of the truck. ↩ ↩2

  5. Cacao Restaurante’s own website, cacaokc.com — Internet Archive captures, retrieved 2026-08-14. Primary capture (103rd St era) — asserts: address 1046 W 103rd St, KC, MO 64114; telephone (816) 942-3247; hours Monday closed, Tue–Sun 10:00–21:00; contact email cacaokcrestaurante@gmail.com; site title “CACAO-RESTAURANTE | Best Taste of Mexican Food”; a photo gallery whose lead image is captioned “Street tacos”; the chef’s own line “Food is my passion - my art is creating a delicious and surprising menu that will overwhelm your every sense”; and no itemized or priced menu anywhere on the site — ordering was routed off-site to ChowNow (ordering.chownow.com) and SpotOn (ord.spoton.com). Footer carries a site credit “2016 by Ricardo Martin Marmolejo” (a site-design credit; not evidence of ownership — owners are sourced separately at 1). Supporting captures: earliest site capture web.archive.org and the only archived /menu page web.archive.org (an empty Wix JavaScript shell — no menu text rendered). Also asserts (verified 2026-08-14): the SpotOn ordering URL now returns 403; ChowNow restaurant ID 25527 now resolves to an unrelated business at 2401 S 56th St, Fort Smith, AR 72903 (via api.chownow.com) and its menu endpoint returns {} — the ID has been reassigned and is unusable as a Cacao source. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. Tripadvisor — Cacao Restaurante, Kansas City — asserts (weak corroboration): Cacao Restaurante operated at 1046 W 103rd St, Kansas City, MO; contemporary/modern Mexican with street tacos and birria; located in an unassuming strip-mall (Watts Mill) space. ↩ ↩2

  7. cacaokc.com (former official domain) — observed 2026-07-18 to return HTTP 301 redirecting to (an unrelated restaurant). asserts: the former Cacao Restaurante own-domain is lapsed/repurposed and must not be used as an official link (dead-domain flag). ↩

See also

  • Registry
  • Owner-And-History-Research-Toolchain
Categories

On the record — ks.city/registry/cacao-restaurante · record updated 2026-08-14