La Tejana

For Ana-Maria Jaramillo and Gus May, selling breakfast tacos in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood is a way to nourish their community and share their cultures. Ana grew up eating breakfast tacos in the Texas border town of McAllen, while Gus "lost his mind" when first eating delicious tacos with Ana in Austin. As their relationship evolved, Mount Pleasant became their next home and, in August 2022 after many successful pop-ups throughout the city, they opened  La Tejana  on Mt Pleasant St NW in order to serve breakfast tacos and contribute to the already vibrant immigrant community in the neighborhood.

In late 2022, Ana and Gus shared their experience and their hopes for La Tejana. Whether through partnerships with other local food businesses, such as  2fifty Texas BBQ , or by making sure both regular and intermittent customers feel welcome, they hope to share breakfast taco flavors and culture from the Texas border with Washingtonians (new and old) and to provide fresh, hand-made, delicious meals.

La Tejana began as a pop-up with Ana and Gus selling breakfast tacos from their front porch in Mount Pleasant in 2019. They pursued this enterprise because they couldn't find breakfast tacos in DC and Ana needed that part of her culinary life. Gus also knew there would be a demand for them.

At that first pop-up they sold 100 tacos in three and a half hours and confirmed Ana's sense that someone in the neighborhood must have had breakfast tacos before. Sure enough, their third customer had eaten them in Texas. Over the next year, they continued to perfect their recipes and hosted pop-ups throughout the city. The pop-ups in Mount Pleasant were always the most well-attended and customers were so supportive. In one example, instead of being sad when the days supply of tacos ran out before they got there, customers congratulated the owners on their success.

In August 2022, they made their presence in the neighborhood permanent by opening a brick and mortar business at 3211 Mt Pleasant St NW. They are open Wednesday-Sunday from 7:30am-1pm with plans to eventually expand into brunch and other offerings. But, in looking to the future, they want to be sure to stay true to the scratch-made offerings that remind Ana of home while supporting the long-standing culture of Mount Pleasant as welcoming to all cultures and mom-and-pop shops.

For many living in Texas border towns and big cities, breakfast tacos are an everyday staple. They have a wide variety of regional variation and exact origins are unclear. Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA, columnist for the LA Times and former editor for the OC Weekly,  found  the first newspaper reference to breakfast tacos in the The Arizona Republic in 1975, but many recognize that they were likely being consumed throughout southern Texas and northern Mexico long before then.

While breakfast tacos are also popular in Austin, and debates about who does them best rage between Austin and San Antonio, their centrality to daily eating in Southern Texas is clear. Ana explained: "San Antonio takes the credit, but I truly think because of the influence of northern Mexico and them having the flour tortilla that it just sprinkled across the border, and so breakfast tacos for me...were something that I was eating every single day of my life." Further, Ralat (author of American Tacos) points out that "There is no such things as Austin-style breakfast tacos...They come from South Texas towns like Laredo, Brownsville and Corpus Christi, and thrive in all their creative glory in San Antonio" ( Galarza, 2022 ).

Importantly, Hernandez-Ehrisman ( 2016 ) locates the Austin-San Antonio debates in broader inter-city feuds between a "Mexican" San Antonio and "white" Austin, which resonates with Ana and Gus's desire to share not only breakfast tacos with DC residents, but also to embrace Ana's Latin American identity grounded in life in Texas/Mexico border towns.

Ana and Gus have also called Mount Pleasant home for many years and see La Tejana as embracing the neighborhood's Latin American and small business identity. Mount Pleasant has been known over the past many decades for its concentration of Latin American (largely Salvadoran) residents and its fight against chain restaurants that are viewed by many in the neighborhood as harbingers of gentrification.

Starting in the early 1900s, Mount Pleasant evolved from a predominantly White, middle and upper-class street car suburb to the heart of the Latin American immigrant community (Cherkasky et al., 2006). Characterized by Colonial Revival mansions, row houses and older apartments, the neighborhood maintains a small neighborhood feel. Although, the cost of living in the neighborhood has been increasing steadily for many years.

The retail landscape, especially along Mt Pleasant St NW, also retains a small, convivial feel with the presence of many mom-and-pop businesses. Its foodscape is dotted with affordable and high end options showcasing food from around the world. A 2021 Washington Post  article  dubbed the street "a veritable United Nations of carryout." The maintenance of this foodscape, however, has not occurred by accident. Organized groups of residents have fought against chain stores and corporate-owned condos for many years, in what  Morley (2021)  calls a "national model for resisting gentrification".

La Tejana was founded in this culinary and neighborhood community. It came to life, in part, through support from relationships in the food industry. Gus had a long history of working in the food and beverage industry in multiple capacities (including time at  Ellē  in Mount Pleasant). He explained the importance of this culinary community: "A lot of the people who worked at Ellē at the time have since left Ellē and have gone on to open up new places around town that are really cool, so we just had a lot of support. Ellē was kind of like an industry hub for us. So we got connected to a lot of folks who worked in the restaurant industry and still have a lot of those connections." Through his experiences at different businesses and in starting the breakfast taco pop-ups, they built important relationships that supported their efforts in opening La Tejana (including getting honest feedback on early flour tortilla recipes).

At the same time, La Tejana found its home and heart in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Gus moved into a group house in the area in 2016 and when Ana moved to DC, it was the only neighborhood where they looked for an apartment. Ana reflected that she needed to live in a diverse neighborhood where she could hear Spanish while walking on the streets, find services and goods in small mercados and mom-and-pop businesses, and otherwise feel welcome. And Mount Pleasant provided that comfort. She explained: "I felt like if I'm going to move to DC, and I'm going to sacrifice my life in Texas, I need to be in a neighborhood where I feel my identity uplifted. I'm proud to be a Latina...and this is where I feel at home." At the same time, the young families moving into the neighborhood, the vibrant farmers' market, and other evolving amenities maintain the neighborhood's dynamism.

Recognizing the ever changing retail and residential landscape in the neighborhood (and city), Ana and Gus operate La Tejana with a focus on sustaining those communities and contributing to the neighborhood's cultural vibrancy. These efforts are evident in their partnership with  2fifty Texas BBQ , from which they source brisket wholesale for weekday taco specials. They are also evident in the support they provide their staff (including hosting staff holiday parties to make clear, as the  La Tejana Instgram account states : "We come to work as human beings first and participants in capitalism as a distant second") and in the relationships they maintain with their customers. Ana and Gus reflected on the relationships they build with regulars as well as the new customers that help sustain them (both economically and socio-culturally). "Everyone fits here and we celebrate that."

References

Arellano, G. (2012). Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America. Simon and Schuster.

Arellano, G. (2016) Who invented breakfast tacos? Not Austin - and people should STFU about it. OC Weekly. Feb 23. https://www.ocweekly.com/who-invented-breakfast-tacos-not-austin-and-people-should-stfu-about-it-6992058/

Cherkasky, M., Freundel Levey, J., Meyer, J.B., Weary, B., and Rollins, A. (2006) Village in the City: Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail. Cultural Tourism DC.

Galarza, G.D. (2022) The best breakfast tacos are the ones made at home. The Washington Post. Jan 20. https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/01/20/easy-breakfast-taco-recipe/

Hernandez-Ehrisman, L. (2016) Breakfast Taco Wars: Race, history and food in Austin and San Antonio. The End of Austin. Sept. 22. https://endofaustin.com/2016/09/22/breakfast-taco-wars-race-history-and-food-in-austin-and-san-antonio/

Morely, J. (2021) The Mount Pleasant Miracle: How one DC neighborhood quietly became a national model for resisting gentrification. The Washington Post. January 25. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/01/25/mount-pleasant-washington-dc-gentrification/

Ralat, J. R. (2021). Breakfast Tacos From dawn until whenever. In American Tacos (pp. 17-44). University of Texas Press.