Featured photo: Somewhere in Winston-Salem, there is a secret taco house. (photo by Nikki Miller-Ka)
UPDATE: Monday, March 29: A GoFundMe has been started for the family after a neighbor reported the business to the city. Read more here.
Somewhere on the south side of Winston-Salem off Waughtown Street, deep in the maze of cross streets, lies an underground taqueria.
It lives, secretly, amid a mix of former palatial Queen Anne and Victorian mansions, industrial worksites, and a blue-collar Hispanic community dotted with dilapidated storefronts, Mexican restaurants and dollar stores. The neighborhood whispers to the Washington Park Historic District, with UNCSA looming on the horizon.
Finding the secret house felt like scoring illegal drugs: pulling up to a house only to wait for what seemed like an eternity for someone to emerge and help me out.
After 12 minutes, the only other car on the street, a late-model sedan, pulled off and another vehicle swung into the unoccupied space. My eyes constantly scanned the road ahead of me and the rear-view mirror, looking for cops or for a passerby to ask what I was doing there.
A sudden change in the direction of the spring breeze sent the aroma of braised beef and cooked onions into the sunroof of my car. Hunger and anxiety about the sketchiness fought for equal billing on my emotional marquee.
Finally, a tall, lanky teenager, emerged from the clapboard house. He descended down the steep front steps laden with four bags stuffed with Styrofoam boxes, delivering them to a car parked a little way up the street.
Then the boy headed over to me to take my order and repeat it back: one birria taco, one mushroom taco, one ramen (which comes with two tacos, the internet said). No pen, no paper, no trace. I hoped for him to get it right.
No ramen, he told me. Dang. I had to settle for a torta. I was going to be eating birria for days.
As I waited, more cars pulled up. Soon the crux of the intersection was filled with the cars of potential diners on the quest to for underground tacos.
Tacos, of course, are the centerpiece of this underground taqueria, called El Sabor Tabasqueno, on Instagram. Search the birria hashtag on Instagram and TikTok, and you’ll see how the dish became a viral sensation online. Birria is traditionally served in a bowl, with the tortillas and condiments on the side. The taco seems to have made its way from Jalisco, Mexico to our social media feeds and, eventually, to Winston-Salem.
Thursday through Sunday, diners can choose from four versions of birria-style tacos served on griddled corn tortillas dipped in birria consommé before being layered with cheese, braised and chopped beef, cilantro and diced white onions. Stuffed inside Styrofoam containers lined with aluminum foil sheets alongside pint-sized bowls of steaming hot broth, the tacos overflow with shredded beef, mushrooms asada or pulled chicken.
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So what’s the address?
What’s address of underground taqueria?
Don’t leave us hanging…where is it?
I must find the mushrooms!
Where is that place I like to try it
I’d be careful using the term “scoring illegal drugs” as a comparison to buying tacos from someone’s house. it’s not sketchy it’s just something common in latinx culture.
Her article got this business shut down yesterday. She’s now going to need a food truck to continue her business.
Hey y’all! There’s a place that sells really great tacos…somewhere. There’s also a place that sells great Chinese food, a fantastic pizza place and a place that sells burgers you wouldn’t believe! Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to wonder why nobody pays me to write.
The city beat wants to keep this place a secret by losing track after writing a lengthy review of this Taqueria!!
1st I want to say your descriptions are on point! U are every bit of poetry, love ur writing. Yesss! The food is EVERYTHING!!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
Ok. Where is it? All that reading for nothing.
Leydi.lopez28
That’s their Sapchat
The comparison of food to drugs is lazy and reductive and especially egregious when it’s latin food. Also if you didn’t know where the tacos were and had to ask multiple people on fb maybe it wasn’t for you to know. As the restaurant is now shut down.
Your article got her shut down yesterday. She san no longer sell her food. She has a gofundme now to raise money for a food truck.
We are following up this story right now. Can you drop the gofundme here?
https://www.gofundme.com/f/el-sabor-tabasqueo-a-food-truck-journey?utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer
Somehow you didn’t foresee her business being shut down when you wrote this article? You ruined her business.
To the contrary, her business will be further fortified by the community and other small business owners that did not know she existed before last week. If anything, the article shed a light on a very talented family-owned enterprise that will be able to thrive and survive off the notoriety of this unfortunate series of events.
Right!!!! What a damn idiot…. this is why you can’t tell everyone everything
why do they generate so much plastic, they should ban styrofoam
[…] the next section, which should cross Yanceyville Street, is already set to begin.Winston-Salem’s secret tacquiera opened this past January, but by March, the family behind the business was fighting for their […]