Renovated Columbus restaurant reopens with new menu and leadership. See inside
Bytes and Brews has transformed into Bytes Taqueria after undergoing recent renovations, a new menu and leadership changes.
The restaurant closed for a few weeks to make the changes. It reopened April 8.
Columbus native Ben DiQuattro partnered with Ben MacMinn and Jack Resenhammer in March, becoming the chief operating officer and working to revamp the retro gamebar. DiQuattro tried to find ways to improve the customer experience.
The restaurant, bar and arcade concept opened in Jan. 2024, combining dining with entertainment. And this renovation makes the different aspects of the business operate more efficiently, DiQuattro told the Ledger-Enquirer.
“Once I got in here and got a look at everything, it was clear that we were doing a few too many things and mixing up what we wanted,” he said.
New experience
A big change from the renovation is that the business has separated the dining experience from the games.
Now, when customers walk into Bytes Taqueria, they are met with what appears to be a restaurant and bar. The mural painted by Columbus artist Jori Kent remains untouched, but changes at the bar made more of the mural visible to customers.
Bytes and Brews had eight tables with 16 seats. Now, Bytes Taqueria can seat 100 people downstairs with the expanded tables and bar.
All the games have been moved upstairs, DiQuattro said, and none were removed in the renovations. A pool table and several televisions also were added to the upstairs arcade, he said.
But a big change for the upstairs arcade is that it now has its own fully functioning bar that will be staffed, he said.
The bar upstairs previously served only bottles and cans, DiQuattro said, and customers typically had to go downstairs to get food or drinks before returning to their game.
“If you’re like me, that’s a 20 minutes round trip,” he said. “The stairs are no joke. So, with the fully functioning bar, we can staff it with the bartender every night and provide a service upstairs that has not existed here in the past.”
New food
The name change to Bytes Taqueria is explained by major changes to the restaurant’s menu.
Before, Bytes and Brews offered typical bar food. Since March, DiQuattro has worked with bar manager Mikela Howard and kitchen manager and chef Elias Torres to develop new menus for the bars and food.
The new menu goes in a new direction with street tacos and craft tacos, DiQuattro said.
“It’s more like a craft taqueria,” he said. “But we don’t at all claim to be authentic Mexican food by any stretch of the imagination. We are just a fun, funky place with funky ideas wrapped in taco shells.”
Some of the craft taco options include chicken teriyaki, surf and turf and mango barbacoa. A couple popular items from the previous menu were revived with a twist on the new menu. For example, the reloaded fries transformed into a reloaded burrito.
“We really wanted to be able to bring some of that with us to where we’re going,” DiQuattro said.
With the restaurant being the only thing downstairs and a new menu that can be served quickly, DiQuattro hopes Bytes Taqueria can become a quick lunch option for people in downtown Columbus.
New drinks
For the bars, the cocktail menu has been expanded upstairs and downstairs, Howard said, with a focus on margaritas.
“I wanted to bring fun and fresh margaritas that you probably won’t get in another restaurant downtown,” she said. “It’s been really fun.”
The signature cocktail menu that’s being rolled out has a drink for every liquor, Howard said, including some espresso and dessert cocktails.
Bytes Taqueria will have eight drafts and 28 different canned and bottled beers that they hope to expand further, she said. Torres also makes many of the bar’s syrups and juices in-house, Howard said.
They will bring back some of the game-themed drinks that were on the original menu in the coming weeks, DiQuattro said. Customers should expect some of the menu to continue expanding over the next couple of weeks, he said.
“We had to stop for three weeks,” DiQuattro said. “But our bills didn’t stop, so we had to get the doors back open as soon as we could.”
DiQuattro and his partners are happy with what they have done upstairs in the arcade and downstairs in the restaurant, he said. Seeing Kent’s mural every day sets a standard for the Bytes Taqueria team, DiQuattro said.
“This is just a beautiful, beautiful painting,” he said. “I love the colors and the theme of it. … We can’t let this mural down, and what we’re doing, for me, this is my art — the team building, the collaborating and giving everybody everything they need to make this painting in a plate.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2025 at 10:38 AM.
