Tasty Tacos
An entrepreneur tackles a favorite food,
TEXARKANA — With Taco Tuesday, taco memes, taco runs and tacos, tacos, tacos, the versatile Mexican dish remains a cultural force in our culinary dreams.
Texarkana has plenty of tasty tacos to consume, whether it’s the beloved institution Tacos Mi Pueblo, a food truck like Taco Trip or ever-popular chains like Tacos 4 Life and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop.
In recent years, tacos have become well represented in T-Town’s eatery landscape, both in numbers and in style.
But there’s always room for one more, and one more approach to tacos is Chef Key’s Birria Tacos, which in the past couple of months has boomed with interest via its online presence on Facebook. Through his online group, you, too, can order tacos with meat simmered for hours before they’re wrapped in tortillas.
Chef Key’s Birria Tacos is the brainchild of a young entrepreneur with a dream, Keyon Cooksey. With a little help from friends, his business has become an online sensation with catering and special orders since debuting in August.
Cooksey doesn’t even have his own commercial space yet, having used other kitchen space available to him, but his tacos sell like hotcakes, you might say. They go quickly, no matter how he gets them to customers.
This taco maestro and master of his own spin on the birria style recently set up oneday temporary shop in a former bar location downtown, and a line stretched out the door. He’s looking for his own space at the moment.
With birria tacos, Cooksey is working within a taco tradition of stewed and marinated meat like beef, lamb and goat with roots in Jalisco, Mexico, often prepared for special occasions. Birrierias serve the dish in Mexico.
But Cooksey says his birria tacos are done his way, not in the traditional manner. No matter, they’ve earned rave reviews from fans.
At his business page, customers express when they miss his birria tacos, or they brag about getting six plates worth of them. One fan described them thus: “Da bomb.”
Another true story told of a woman who backed her truck out of a local chicken chain restaurant’s drive-thru line after seeing an online announcement about his tacos. She maneuvered her rig out of there and headed downtown to get Chef Key’s tacos for herself and her husband.
Social media is where Chef Key himself learned about the birria tacos, so he ventured out and sampled them.
“As far as my tacos, I first learned about them from social media. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the tacos, so I went and tried several places,” Cooksey said. “Cooking has always been a thing of mine.”
After trying the birria tacos, he wanted to make them at home, so he looked at six different recipes and put together the ingredients he likes. He wants them to taste like what he felt they should taste like.
He loves tacos, and his version of birria tacos still retain many of the same traditional spices and the soft meat.
“Tweaked it my own way,” Cooksey said. “They’re not authentic.” It’s not goat meat, for example. “It’s my version, it’s my twist. I’ve used what I’m accustomed to, which is beef, pork and chicken. It’s jumped off. It was a super hit, you know.”
He didn’t anticipate that, but now he’s looking for the next step.
“I’m looking for a building or really like a food truck that I would like to travel and go different places,” Cooksey said. He’d like to be open just a few days throughout the week, not every day, and be open to catering jobs. He wants to keep it hot, just like what happened at the downtown event.
“It was amazing. I loved the outcome. As far as taking the pre-orders and stuff, that’s great, but working in restaurants and growing up in the kitchen, I loved the fact that people were coming in, ordering. They didn’t mind waiting because the wait time got up to 40, 45, 50 minutes,” Cooksey said. Lines wrapped around the building.
That’s the excitement he wants to bring to Texarkana. Customers message him in the middle of the night with orders. It’s tacos, tacos, tacos that they want.
“I was not expecting that outcome, and I loved it,” Cooksey said, noting he’s focused on taking orders for weekends right now.
He’d love to be able to meet the need and get everybody, but there’s no way he can serve all of Texarkana in one day, he quipped. He aims to be open more, though.
“I’m going to start doing things like Taco Tuesday,” Cooksey said.
His menu can vary. For example, a recent menu available sold the 3.5 Taco Plates with three birria tacos, elotes corn and a birria dip, or there was what’s called the Loud Pack, which gives customers a dozen birria tacos and dip. A Sunday special offered loaded nachos with two tacos.
Cooksey, a Texarkana native who’s cooked since he was a second-grader, appreciates the friends who’ve volunteered their time to help them.
“It’s my baby, it’s their baby, too,” he said, noting he started cooking with his grandmother in the kitchen. Eventually, that led to restaurant jobs.
“I have a lot of things under my belt. I’ve had a lot of jobs in different types of restaurants,” Cooksey said, noting he’s still learning every day.
And in birria tacos, he’s found the right match.
“I love the unique style of the birria tacos. It’s just different from a Tex-Mex taco, as far as what I grew up with, crunchy shells and hamburger meat. It’s different from that. I love it,” Cooksey said.
Growing this into a franchise would always be a goal, but for now he enjoys bringing his tacos to Texarkana.
“I feel like Texarkana needs that type of vibe, needs that new energy. Texarkana, I would love for it to start off here and grow. This is the base. This is where I would love for it to start off at,” Cooksey said. “And it’s doing a great job so far.”
To find out more about his taco business, check out Chef Key’s Burria Tacos on Facebook.