Luis Silva didn’t settle in Kansas City to work on the railroad. But he did move because of it.
By the time Silva, an immigrant from Guadalajara via Omaha, arrived in 1922 to sell insurance, Mexican workers accounted for more than 85 percent of the Kansas City-area railroad labor force, according to the Kansas Historical Society. For decades, his fellow mexicanos had traveled to the metropolis to work for companies like the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (aka the Santa Fe) and in meatpacking plants like Armour and Company, where they toiled alongside generations of Italians who had long dominated the industries. Before that, there were the vaqueros, who drove cattle northward from Texas and whose cowboying skills were recounted in “El Corrido de Kiansis,” a Mexican folk song that dates to the 1860s.
Silva forged a successful career. But in 1958 he saw a new opportunity and opened Spanish Gardens Taco House. On the restaurant’s menu were enchiladas, tamales, chili, and a regional specialty that developed as a result of the proximity of the area’s Italian and Mexican communities: fried tacos topped with a ketchup-like “taco sauce” and Parmesan cheese.
Tacos reflect and represent their time and place. In the early 20th century, immigration from the Middle East to Puebla, Mexico, led to the creation of tacos Árabes, cooked on the vertical spit known as a “trompo”; that gradually morphed into Mexico City’s iconic taco al pastor. More recently in the United States, market demand, population shifts, and ingredient availability gave rise to the Korean taco in Los Angeles, which was given a national platform by Roy Choi and his Kogi BBQ food truck in 2008.
Similar forces were instrumental in creating the Kansas City taco in the mid-20th century. Asked how her father came to use Parmesan, Jean Silva Miller says that “it was the cheese that was around.” But even though the Parmesan-covered taco was borne of Mexican immigrants, becoming a local staple of Mexican restaurants in Kansas City, Missouri, today, demand for more “authentic” Mexican food threatens to wipe it out.
The Silvas seasoned the ground meat filling simply — salt, pepper, garlic, red chile powder — and cooked it before spooning it onto corn tortillas. Next, they folded the tortilla and sealed it with toothpicks to prevent the meat from spilling out during the frying process.
“I pinned hundreds of those each day at the restaurant,” Silva Miller says.
The tacos were fried with the toothpicks, which were removed before serving. Up to this point, there isn’t much difference between the fried tacos of Kansas City and Mexican tacos dorados (literally, “golden tacos”).
They’re not so different from the first taco recipes published in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, either. But then come the garnishes: lettuce, salsa, and a flurry of Parmesan. “My dad would buy big blocks of the cheese,” Silva Miller says. “My hand would go round and round, grinding and grinding all day.”
Silva Miller still makes them like that today. However, she no longer cooks them at the restaurant. After opening a second location, Spanish Gardens Taco House expanded into the food manufacturing business, adding Spanish Gardens Foods, which produced jars of taco sauce and spice mixes at a Kansas City factory near the original restaurant location. Both restaurants closed soon after. Silva Miller’s son, Andrew, now oversees production at the company.
Silva’s taquería didn’t invent deep-fried Parmesan-topped tacos. Local legend says Los Corrals, which opened in Kansas City in 1949, was the first Mexican restaurant to serve them. In-A-Tub opened in 1957, the year before Spanish Gardens, though it now uses the sort of bright-orange cheese powder you’d find in boxes of stove-top mac and cheese, rather than grated Parmesan.
The popularity of crunchy, toothpick-sealed Kansas City tacos only rose throughout the 1960s and ’70s. Humdinger Drive-In — down the street from Los Corrals — began dishing out burgers, milkshakes, Italian sandwiches, and tacos in 1962. About the only thing that’s changed is the addition of a flashy food truck. Augustin and Teresa Medina opened La Fonda El Taquito in 1972 as a post-retirement venture. (In 1999, the restaurant relocated from its original 20-seat diner to spacious Westside digs; it’s co-owned by the couple’s daughters, Maria Medina Chaurand and Sandra Medina.) Kansas City native John Ponak opened his place, Ponak’s Mexican Kitchen & Bar, in 1975. These restaurants had other specialties riffing on Mexican dishes — carnitas remains a popular menu item at La Fonda El Taquita, while Spanish Gardens, the restaurant, specialized in chili — but the Kansas City taco was and continues to be the common denominator.
Manny’s Mexican Restaurant, one of the most prominent Kansas City Mexican eateries still selling the Kansas City taco, didn’t arrive until 1980. When Manny Lopez, a second-generation railroad worker, and his wife Vivian first opened their restaurant, there were only five dishes on the menu. One was spaghetti and meatballs. Another was the Mucho Tacos, a plate of tacos based on a Lopez family recipe created by Manny’s mother, Lucy, during leaner times.
“My grandmother made tacos with peas and with potatoes,” says David Lopez, the general manager and a second-generation owner-operator of Manny’s, “because if ever ground beef got expensive — which it tended to — maybe my grandma and grandpa couldn’t afford to get as much ground beef.”
But there was plenty of Parmesan cheese. “The Parmesan was cheap and around,” Lopez says. It should be noted that another Parmesan taco existed in California at the same time as the Kansas City-style taco. Jimboy’s Tacos, based in Sacramento, has been selling its version, with a Parmesan-encrusted tortilla, since 1954. Neither Lopez nor Jean Silva Miller say their parents were aware of Jimboy’s when their families’ restaurants opened. “All of our recipes originate from how my grandma made her food,” Lopez says.
I first came across Kansas City-style tacos in Dallas, at a pop-up in the parking lot of a home goods and design store. The tacos, served by Lisa Martinez as Tacos & Art, were snappy, with light ground beef kicked off by salty, tangy grated Parmesan. On my plate, they looked like crunchy, cheesy grins. I ordered more before finishing my first.
For Martinez, who moved to Dallas from Kansas City for her daughter’s education, those tacos are a tangible reminder of home. Her aunt began to sell them in 1985 at P.R.’s Place, the Kansas City bar her grandfather, Pat Rios, opened in 1974 in the neighborhood of Westside. “They’re made the same way she made them for me when I was growing up,” Martinez says. “Come Sunday or Monday, all us ladies, and my uncle sometimes, but mostly women, we used to all sit around the table at my grandmother’s house and stuff tacos for like three hours. We would stuff about hundreds and hundreds of tacos.”
When it comes to the current state of the taco at P.R.’s Place, Martinez’s voice softens. Although they continue to sell out of tacos and the business still has its steadfast regulars, fewer people line up for tacos at her family’s bar these days. “It’s not the same,” she says. “[Kansas City tacos] take time to prepare. You must have the right corn tortillas, seasoned meat, and toppings. A lot of places want to sell fast tacos.”
Andrew Miller has also noticed the steady downturn in the popularity of the Kansas City taco. “There aren’t a lot of restaurants that make them anymore,” he says. “Everyone’s making street tacos or wants to use 80 ingredients in their tacos.”
Lopez also sees a growing preference for trendy dishes over the comfort of the Kansas City taco, pinning its decline in part on the viral nature of media like Yelp reviews that claim the taco is not truly Mexican.
“All the Yelpers and Food Network fans across the country have put their ‘knowledge’ on things they have zero experience in culturally or emotionally,” he says. “Access to Twitter or Yelp does not make you an expert on how my grandparents made our food.”
This next chapter in Kansas City’s Mexican cultural and culinary community is in line with national trends in Mexican food — high regard for craft and history, a hyper-focus on Mexican cuisine’s regionality, and well-intentioned but ill-informed presumptions of “authenticity” that come at the expense of Kansas City’s own Mexican identity and its native taco. Simply put, the Kansas City taco isn’t cool anymore, even as tacos are more popular there than ever before, cooked by Americans and Mexicans alike.
Taking a cue from Mexican meat markets, Bichelmeyer Meats, a German-style butcher that’s been around for more than 70 years, offers taco options on Saturdays like carne asada, lengua, and barbacoa. Beach bum-themed Tiki Taco serves vegan barbecue jackfruit tacos under a thatched awning.
And February of this year saw the opening of Guy Fieri’s Dive & Taco Joint. It’s a modern taco shop outfitted with an American roadhouse-inspired design, tacos al pastor, “Boulevard ginger lemon-glazed pork tacos (with chipotle, sweet onion, grilled pineapple-serrano salsa, cilantro, cotija and an avocado-tomatillo salsa),” and potent drink specials like the “KC Ring of Fire (tequila with a hot sauce pellet that sinks to the bottom).”
Yoli Tortilleria is among the pioneers of the new Mexicanization of Kansas City. Established in 2017 by Marissa Gencarelli, a native of Sonora, and Mark Gencarelli, her Kansas City born-and-raised husband, Yoli supplies tortillas made with non-GMO blue, red, white, and yellow corn to greater Kansas City-area restaurants, newfangled taquerías, and specialty food shops. They are also available at Yoli’s stand at the Overland Park Farmers Market in Overland Park, Kansas, where small-batch bags of tortillas infused with the likes of squid ink or chiles sell out by 10 a.m.
Shortly after moving to Kansas City, Marissa Gencarelli went to Manny’s — “the Parmesan taco place,” as she calls it — for the Mucho Tacos platter. The pride in and the love for the tacos didn’t go unnoticed by Gencarelli.
“[Adapted versions of traditional Mexican tacos] are a reflection of culture and traditions adapting to new environments,” she says. “You use what you got, you adapt. They hold a special place in my heart.”
Regional expressions of the taco — be they modern interpretations or the Kansas City taco — don’t need to be relegated to the realm of nostalgia as contemporary Mexican trends rise. Barbecue jackfruit tacos and tacos imported from Flavortown can succeed without edging out the locally established specialty.
But some longtime purveyors of the Kansas City taco are concerned they’ll need to relinquish culinary territory in the face of an evolving Mexican food landscape. “There is a crossroads coming,” David Lopez says before adding a positive note. “True comfort food will never go away. There are people in this beautiful country who appreciate and need that comfort to help put a smile on their faces. That is why we do what we do.”
José R. Ralat is the Dallas-based food & drink editor of western-lifestyle magazine Cowboys & Indians and the author of the forthcoming book American Tacos: A History and Guide to the Taco Trail North of the Border, due out spring 2020, from University of Texas Press.
Katie Currid is a photographer based in Kansas City.