The Bay Area is a place where various food trends have started — it has brought us the Sushirrito, the Ramen Burger and now: birria tacos.
Over the summer, birria tacos took the Bay Area by storm. You may have seen the dish on your friend’s Snapchat or Instagram, or maybe even on your “For You Page” on TikTok.
Although they only began gaining popularity in the states recently, birria has been a staple in Mexico for centuries. What differentiates birria tacos from other kinds of tacos is the way they are cooked and assembled.
The cooking process is fairly lengthy. There are a few steps one must take to achieve the distinct flavor for which the dish is known. Birria tacos do not resemble a prototypical street taco — the tortillas are dipped in the sauce the meat is cooked in, the meat and cheese are then added onto the top of the flat tortilla and fried in a pan. Lastly, the taco is folded in half, forming something similar to a taco shell. This results in quite a flavorful bite.
Birria originated in the Mexican state of Jalisco in a city called Cocula. According to Alberto Pineda, co-owner of Tacos el Patron, a Bay Area restaurant famous for their birria tacos, “Birria is more of a soup in Mexico. Most people don’t eat it as a taco.”
The birth of birria can be traced back to the 16th century when Spanish conquistadors came to Mexico. The goats the Spanish brought with them became a nuisance to the Mexican native people as the goats quickly increased in numbers, roamed freely and fed on the endemic greenery and domestic crops, leading to a famine. The abundance of goats and lack of food ultimately led to birria’s creation.
Tacos el Patron opened their first location in Pleasant Hill, a city in the East Bay, in February of 2018 and in October 2019 opened a second location in San Francisco’s Mission District. Pineda recalls being apprehensive about putting a fairly unknown Mexican dish on his menu. He said, “At first, I didn’t know it was going to be so popular. It was the last taco that we put on the menu when we started. But it came to be the first option for people.”
Photo by Alberto Pineda
He said that within the first few months of their Pleasant Hill location opening, the dish began to gain in popularity. Tacos el Patron used to sell about “three birria [tacos] per one Asada [taco], which was the next most popular. But now, it’s like 25 to one.”
Pineda attributes the success of El Patron’s birria tacos to “the flavor, the uniqueness, the broth [and] the toasted tortilla. Everything about the taco is good.” Their unique twist on the traditional taste is achieved by cooking the meat using bay leaves, some spices, a lot of chiles, some of the grease from the beef as well as some additional secret ingredients.
In Mexico, the meat of choice when making birria is goat, but in the Bay Area, it is more common to see beef or pork used. Pineda said, “we use beef because it’s more accepted by everyone. A couple of weeks ago we tried the goat birria. It was okay, but it wasn’t as requested as the beef.”
One of the most common recipes for making birria tacos is to first lightly sear the meat of choice on each side. Then, add the meat to a pot along with water, various types of chiles, a few garlic cloves, half an onion and some bay leaves. After 30 minutes, take out all the vegetables and blend them together along with some broth from the pot and additional seasoning. When the blending is complete, add the sauce back into the pot and let it cook for three more hours. Finally, dip the tortillas into the broth, put the tortilla into a pan, add the meat and cheese and let them grill to your satisfaction.
The consommé, the broth the meat is cooked in, can be incorporated into the dish in multiple ways, but most people use it as a dip for the tacos. When asked if it was supposed to be used that way, Pineda said, “yes and no. It has become popular that people dip the taco in it and that’s also okay but what I usually do is sip it, one bite of the taco and one sip of the broth.”
Will O’Brien ’21 is an avid cook who enjoys testing out new recipes. He first remembers seeing birria tacos on his Instagram feed a couple of years ago but recently noticed an increase of popularity around them on social media.
According to O’Brien, what inspired him to make birria tacos at home was that “I had made basically every other kind of taco and then [a video about] how to make birria popped up in my feed” on Instagram.
His personal recipe consists of beef chuck roast, fire-roasted tomatoes, peppers, citrus, a lot of seasoning and, of course, bay leaves. To cook the birria, he has used both a Dutch oven as well as a crockpot and said that both work well.
From their conception to the present, birria tacos have been satisfying tastebuds and filling stomachs, and it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon.
As a person who eats Mexican cuisine two to three times a week, I became aware of birria tacos about a year ago and have been a big fan ever since. My personal favorite place to get birria tacos is Tacos El Patron, where I enjoy both the birria as well as the Patron Tacos, Pineda’s favorite. Patron Tacos are essentially Birria Tacos, but with shrimp instead of beef or goat.
Alberto Pineda’s Tacos el Patron can be found at 2290 Monument Blvd. Pleasant Hill, CA, 1500 S Van Ness Ave. San Francisco, CA, Los Guisados Del Patron and 601 S Van Ness Ave. San Francisco, CA.
Other Mexican restaurants in San Francisco I frequent, though they don’t have birria, are Taqueria El Farolito as well as Casa Sanchez on 24th Street in the Mission District, Don Ramon’s which is located near SoMa, Gordo Taqueria on Clement Street and on 9th Avenue next to Golden Gate Park and La Victoria Taqueria in San Jose.
