Culture meets the kitchen at Taqueria el Barrio

Earlier this month, Hispanic Heritage Month invited us to reflect on the contributions and influence of the Hispanic and Latinx communities, Time Out Market’s Taqueria El Barrio stands as a celebration of culture and heritage. Founded by Servio Garcia, a native of Sonora, Mexico, and Chef Alex Garcia, Taqueria El Barrio is a family-run, Sonoran-style taqueria where the story runs deeper than what’s on the plate. 

After the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to make the difficult decision to close their first location, they pivoted to selling their raw flour tortillas and salsa macha at grocers in the Boston area. They immediately gained a cult-like following, with stories of people driving over a half hour to buy six packs of their tortillas to stock their freezers. Since opening their second location within Time Out Market, they’ve continued to carve out their own corner of Boston’s culinary culture, one that proudly centers their heritage and family traditions. 

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we sat down with Servio and Alex to learn more about how they’ve built this community around authentic flavor and resilient entrepreneurship. 

What first inspired you to open Taqueria El Barrio? 

Taqueria El Barrio was inspired by the culture and food of Sonora, Mexico, where Servio comes from.

Most of us crave the food we grew up with because they are associated with nostalgia and memories. We spoke a lot about this when we were working together at Bisq, and we eventually came up with the idea for Taqueria El Barrio. We worked together to curate a menu and an atmosphere that would showcase the best of those memories and the food we grew up on. 

Do you have any formative food memories from growing up that shared your love for cooking? 

We both grew up in families where food was an important part of our upbringing. Whether it was a celebration or just an ordinary day, family and food were always at the center. 

I’m from Peru and Servio is from Mexico, and both of those cultures hold powerful traditions around their cuisine. We both have mothers, grandmothers and aunts who dedicated themselves to the art of food.

I have fond memories of watching mine cook, listening intently and helping whenever I could. The stove top was always full of pots and pans, there was always something baking in the oven and the sinks were always full of fresh herbs and vegetables that had been freshly picked.

You describe Taqueria El Barrio as a family-run, traditional Sonoran-style taqueria, and note that Servio is from Sonora. How do you bring elements of Sonoran cuisine and culture into your menu and operations? 

I’m not sure if you know this, but each region of Mexico has its own special type of tortillas. We have always made our flour tortillas by hand in the Sonoran tradition, and they’ve become the signature of our taqueria. 

We also make salsas that are specific to the Sonora region, like our salsa macha, tatemada, and salsa roja that are made more to the style of this region. 

For people unfamiliar with northern Mexican/Sonora-style cuisine, which dish do you feel best encapsulates your identity and story - and why? 

The dish that best epitomizes Sonoran-style cuisine is birria. Specifically, birria made with goat. It’s a dish that has become so popular, and everyone has their version. But for a while, we were the only place around where you could get it, and people flocked to us. At the time we only offered it on weekends, and that created quite a demand. People couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. It even caught the attention of a well-known Boston food critic.

For those who don’t know, you once had a location on Commonwealth Avenue that unfortunately had to close during the COVID-19 pandemic. You made the decision to pivot to retail, which ended up paying off in the end. You’ve since reopened at Time Out Market. What was the hardest decision you had to make during that time, and what kept you going? 

Losing Comm Ave. was one of the hardest things we’ve had to go through. For me personally, it was my first time losing something like that. 

It was out of our hands, and that helped me come to accept the fact that it wasn’t our fault. We had given it our all, and the universe had other plans. 

After we closed, we realized that the people who had come to know and love our tortillas still wanted a way to get their hands on them, and they wanted to support us and our staff by buying as much as they could. So we decided to move to another location where we could make our flour tortillas, and began selling them in neighborhood markets in the Boston area. 

The name “el barrio” means “neighborhood”, which is always something we wanted our restaurant to represent. We’ve always wanted it to be “your neighborhood taqueria”, somewhere you could always run into your neighbor enjoying a good meal. 

Our tortillas sort of gained a cult following, and now they are sold in over 40 locally owned neighborhood markets and restaurants. 

What does it mean to you to be able to share your culture through food, especially during Hispanic Heritage Month? 

For us, every single day is a celebration of our culture and food. It doesn’t need to be a specific month. It’s always nice to be recognized, but Servio and I work every day to give back to our staff & community. We are still a very young company, and we are still learning how to be better every single day.