Tocteres Tobar opened in the summer of 2019 in a small storefront on the west end of Garden City, just off the Greenbelt. Owner Kenneth Smock had spent the previous decade cooking in kitchens from Portland to Charleston, and came home to Idaho with one goal: build the neighborhood restaurant he wished existed when he was growing up here.
The name comes from a family word — a nickname passed down through Kenneth's grandparents — and the restaurant has always been treated like a family affair. His mother designed the dining room. His brother welded the bar rail. Half of the opening team is still on the schedule today.
The dining room
The menu is printed on Tuesdays because that's when the farm truck arrives. A dish stays on the menu as long as the produce holds — sometimes six weeks, sometimes ten days.
Purple Sage Farms, Ballard Family Dairy, Snake River Farms, Neckar Coffee, Alta Harvest. We tour every farm, ranch and roaster we buy from at least once a year.
Health insurance for full-time staff, paid time off, and one closed day a week that isn't used for prep. It's the reason our servers have been here longer than most restaurants exist.
If it wouldn't sit right with the couple that walks in from Charlie Lane every Wednesday, we don't serve it. Simple as that.
Kenneth grew up ten miles from Tocteres Tobar's front door. After culinary school in Portland, he worked lines at Ox, Le Pigeon and Husk before returning home in 2018 to open his own kitchen.
He is a member of the James Beard Foundation, a mentor with the Idaho Restaurant Association's youth apprenticeship program, and a two-time finalist for Boise Weekly's Chef of the Year. You'll usually find him expediting the pass on Friday and Saturday nights, or bussing his own tables when the room is full.
Contact Kenneth directly: kenneth@tocterestobar.com · +1 (725) 272-8402
Our team
The wood oven
The heart of our kitchen is a custom Grillworks Infierno wood-burning grill and a brick hearth oven that we fire every morning with red oak and almond wood. Almost everything that comes out of the kitchen — from focaccia to ribeye to a whole roasted cauliflower — touches those flames.
It's slower. It's harder on the team. It's the reason the food tastes the way it does.
