language. There have been a lot of people who have traveled to Austin and discovered what wonderful tacos we have and have written about it and done stories about it. For the longest time, our own community didn’t know what a gem they had, which was our whole culture and our food. Mexican food is so varied. Every taco is a little piece of art. I get into the kitchen, and a customer might ask me how much are you going to put of that ingredient? And I say, well, put on some music and lemme see. That’s how I personally do it. I’ll remember recipes from my mother or that I’ve seen elsewhere. It’s a creative endeavor. When someone comes in, they can tell that. They can look at a taco, the greens, the reds. It’s colorful like a Mexican flag or a Mexican costume. When people visually see the presentation of the taco, they get excited, and when they put it in their mouth, they say, “Wow, I’ve discovered something.” And every time someone tries it, I can tell people enjoy it. It’s a very rewarding experience to make someone happy. It’s a very basic instinct in all of us that if you satisfy someone’s hunger or a craving for delicious food, you make them happy. And they want to come back. And they want to share that with their friends.

I just want to add that I think it is wonderful that we are finally being recognized as a culture and that we are able to share this wonderful food, and these wonderful tacos, with so many people from Austin and from outside Austin and outside the country.

(Book cover photo by Joel Salcido)  

Robert Vasquez, Tamale House Airport Boulevard

Breakfast Tacos Take Off

I don’t think anyone was selling breakfast tacos when I opened up. I think I was in business for five or six years before I actually started selling breakfast tacos. It means you gotta get up at four o’clock in the morning to make a breakfast taco. When I started in 1985–86, I started selling them. A neighbor down the street was selling them, too. So I started a taco war. My tacos went down to forty-five cents each. So he went out of business, and I kept going. About that time, my mother and my sister started selling breakfast tacos, too. Now, if you look around, everybody’s selling breakfast tacos. Everybody. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell. They never used to do it before. It’s something that’s caught on...I make all my stuff in-house. We don’t have anything imported. It’s all made right here in our kitchens. The only thing we buy are the tortillas, but they’re local.

Eating Tacos, Then and Now

You wanna know what it was like as a kid eating tacos? If I took tacos to school, everyone would say shame on you. There was a lot of shame eating a taco back then. You had to hide them. You couldn’t eat them in front of nobody. And this was among a school that was 80 to 90 percent Anglo and very few Mexicans. So I had to hide my food. But now, 80 to 90 percent of Anglos eat tacos! I would say 80 to 90 percent of my customers are Anglo. And they eat tacos like they’ve never had anything before in their life! So things have changed. I think to myself, I remember a time when I would get made fun of. And now everybody’s eating tacos. It’s not just Mexicans anymore.

Carmen Valera, Tamale House East

(Pictured at left, Robert Valera, Diana Valera, Juan Valera and Carmen Valera. Photo by Dennis Burnett)

Tell us your story.

It all started in 1912, when our great-grandfather Antonio Villasana escaped the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution with his parents and siblings and settled in Austin, Texas. He was only thirteen years old at the time. By the 1920s, he had opened a small restaurant in what used to be a Mexican-American neighborhood located near present-day Austin City Hall. He called it Tony’s Café.

By 1935, Antonio was the owner and operator of Tony’s Tortillas in the Guadalupe Church neighborhood of East Austin. He quickly established a second tortilla factory in Houston. Tony’s Tortillas was one of the very first tortilla factories in the state of Texas. His products were distributed to supermarkets and restaurants across Texas and throughout the Southwest.

Combining the tried-and-true traditions of family values and hard work, all of our great-grandfather’s children worked at Tony’s Tortillas. His oldest child, Carmen, our grandmother, started working at a very early age alongside her mother.

Carmen made candies and tortillas. In 1961, our grandmother Carmen and her husband, Moses Vasquez, opened up the Original Tamale House at the corner of Cesar Chavez Street and Congress Avenue. This take-out business soon became a successful and iconic Austin staple. Rumor has it that President Lyndon Baines Johnson used to have Grandma’s tamales flown to the White House. A fact is that he would send his limo driver to pick them up for him when she was in town. They sold the restaurant in 1988, making history in Austin real estate and even making national news.

Then, in 1977, Carmen’s oldest child, our uncle Robert Vasquez, opened the Tamale House #3 on Airport Boulevard. His place was soon to become one of Austin’s best-known Mexican food take-out restaurants with a nationwide reputation. He made the New York Times for being one of the first to sell breakfast tacos. A musician friend once said that the Tamale House has fed more musicians and starving artists (literally) in Austin than any other place.

Uncle Bobby has operated his business for thirty-five years and has been a mentor and supporter of the Tamale House East. He is also one of the last remaining veterans of the 1980s’ infamous Austin Taco Wars. Without his support and help, the Tamale House East would not be