Big Poppas Tacos owner Jacob Gomez commissioned artist Roger Maximo to paint a mural honoring George Floyd on an exterior wall of his San Antonio Mexican restaurant. “I just want it to symbolize peace and progression,” Maximo says of his work. “Just having him here with a lot of company is just something that eases my mind,” Gomez says.

Comadre Panaderia, Nixta Taqueria, and Suerte are among the food operations donating to groups that support black communities and protesters.

The new DFW Black Owned Restaurants Facebook page allows gives social-media users to support small businesses in the black community, tacos included.

Also in Dallas, Tejana-owned and -operated CocoAndre Chocolatier raised money for Mothers Against Police Brutality.

Texpat Josef Centano, owner and executive chef of lauded Los Angeles restaurants such as Tex-Mex eatery Bar Amá and author of a recent cookbook, expressed his full support of protesters despite vandalism at his businesses, reports the New York Times’s Tejal Rao.

San Antonio’s craft breweries are collaborating to produce their own versions of a “Black Is Beautiful” stout, aimed at bringing “awareness to the injustices that many people of color face daily.” The latest brewery to join is Four Corners Brewing Co.—one of whose three cofounders, George Esquivel, is Tejano. Houston-area breweries are also involved.

Cuantos Tacos announced it needs to find a new location from which to serve its Mexico City-style tacos. The lot on which the truck is currently stationed is being put up for sale by the landowner.

El Remedio, a popular birria de res taco truck in San Antonio, announced plans to open a second location.

San Antonio’s acclaimed modern Mexican restaurant in a freight car, Mixtli, briefly transformed into a taqueria during the pandemic. Now it’s accepting dine-in reservations beginning June 16.

It’s not all good news coming out of San Antonio. North Side institution El Bosque is closing after more than forty years in business. COVID-19 contributed to the restaurant’s struggles, according to owner Carmen Gonzalez. She hopes to reopen at a smaller location next year.

Tatemó, a new Houston pop-up, is almost ready to sell nixtamalized tortillas to order.

 

The Magik Theatre in San Antonio will resume its theatrical adaptation of the hit children’s book Dragons Love Tacos. The first show is set for Saturday, June 13, and includes COVID-19 precautionary measures such as social distancing and mandatory masks for audience members older than two years old. You can purchase Dragons Love Tacos and its follow-up, Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel, here.

Zuriel Barradas Picazo, of Dallas’s Nomad Tacos pop-up, was a guest on the Line Cook Thoughts podcast.

Off-Site Kitchen is permanently closed, but the Dallas burger joint’s wonderfully old-fashioned, freshly fried hard-shell taco has found a new home in owner Nick Badovinus’s Vantina pop-up at his Desert Racer restaurant.

The co-owner of Cuchara, a Mexican restaurant in Houston, apologized after receiving criticism for an offensive Facebook post. Charlie McDaniel had referred to a protest march in response to George Floyd’s death as a “parade” and suggested that since social distancing measures and masks weren’t required for all marchers, they shouldn’t be mandatory at his restaurant. He later wrote, “Someone, with malicious intent, twisted my words to attempt to show racism.”

Currently closed longtime Austin favorite El Primo will reopen sometime this month in a new, bigger trailer. Owner Jose Luis Perez says the additional space will allow him to meet increased customer demand.

After a delay because of COVID-19 restrictions, the first Louisiana outpost of Torchy’s Tacos finally opened in Shreveport for dine-in service.

Employees at a Condado Tacos location in Columbus, Ohio, walked out rather than prepare an order for members of the Ohio State Highway Patrol. “Because we understand that emotions and tensions are raw right now, we offered those employees the option to sit out making that order, without repercussion, while other team members handled it,” the restaurant’s managers said in a statement.

Latino fandom of the Dragon Ball Z anime franchise is on full display with this tweet from the Spanish-language actor who voices one of the series’s villains, Frieza. The post promotes the food from Mexico City taqueria chain Taquearte.

 

Don’t tell the creators of the Taco vs. Burrito card game that they should rename their product “Taco vs. Taco.”

After spending nearly three hundred days in a Dallas hospital, a stroke patient wanted tacos upon discharge. Medical City Dallas staff got him Torchy’s.