Nancy Allen Roper comes from a long line of good cooks. In the early 1970s, Nancy and her family moved from Connecticut to New Mexico and there her future was set. As a teenager, she apprenticed for a chef in Albuquerque and quickly discovered her love of cooking on a professional level.

After college, Nancy graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and opened Nancy Allen Rose’s Food Caterers in Greenwich, CT. Twelve successful years later, a new dream began to emerge slowly but clearly—to replicate the cantinas of her childhood “where you walked into a friendly place and they seemed genuinely glad to see you.” At the time Boxcar opened in 1994, Greenwich lacked a casual restaurant with good quality ingredients.