95 Fun Facts About Taco

Which chopped fresh herb, paired with raw onion, is the standard garnish on a Mexican street taco?

Cilantro and chopped onion usually go on automatically at the stand unless the customer says no; the salsas are then left out for everyone to add to taste.

Aside from food, what does the Spanish word 'taco' also mean?

A plug or wedge: the Spanish word also covers a wad, a ramrod, a billiard cue and even a short, stocky person; the edible sense is a later Mexican innovation.

One popular theory says the culinary word 'taco' was coined by which Mexican workers?

Silver miners: the popular theory holds that 18th-century Mexican silver miners called their paper-wrapped gunpowder charges tacos, and the name passed to the wrapped food.

Before 'taco' became Mexico's national word, states such as Guanajuato and Michoacán called the same rolled snack by which name?

Burrito: an 1895 dictionary of Mexican Spanish defined it as a rolled tortilla with meat inside, known in Mexico City as a taco; the capital's word spread and burrito came to mean something else.

In 2024, El Califa de León in Mexico City became the first taco stand to receive what?

A Michelin star: the tiny stand has sold its beef Gaonera taco since 1968; within days of the award, a queue stretched down the avenue outside.

Tacos al pastor are cooked on what?

A vertical rotisserie: marinated pork is stacked on a spinning upright spit, charred on the outside and shaved off in thin slices to order.

Tacos al pastor grew out of the spit-roasted 'Arab tacos' that immigrants sold in which Mexican state in the 1930s?

Puebla: Middle Eastern immigrants settled in the city and served their spit-roasted lamb on pita-like pan árabe, the taco from which Mexico City cooks later developed al pastor.

What does 'al pastor' literally mean?

Shepherd style: pastor is Spanish for shepherd; the tacos were first made with spit-roasted lamb, and chile-marinated pork took over only later.

Where did fish tacos originate?

Baja California: fillets of the day's catch are dipped in batter, fried and served with shredded cabbage, a street-stand recipe that crossed the border into California in the 1980s.

Which U.S. chain is credited with first popularising fish tacos north of the border?

Rubio's: Ralph Rubio first tasted fish tacos at a stand in San Felipe on a college spring-break trip, then opened his own restaurant selling them in San Diego in 1983.

What are tacos dorados better known as in the U.S.?

Taquitos or flautas: instead of being folded soft, these 'golden tacos' are rolled tight around their filling and fried hard; flauta means flute, after the shape.

Tacos sudados, 'sweaty tacos', take their name from being kept warm in what?

A cloth-covered basket: made at home and wrapped in cloth, the tacos steam in their own heat, which is why bicycle vendors also sell them as tacos de canasta, basket tacos.

Tacos de lengua are made from what?

Beef tongue: lengua is Spanish for tongue; the meat is boiled or steamed for hours until tender, and the tough skin is peeled away before it is chopped for tacos.

What is a mulita?

Meat and cheese pressed between two tortillas: mulita means 'little mule', and the cheese melts between two corn tortillas like a small quesadilla, usually around al pastor or carne asada.

Birria, the stewed meat now famous in dipping tacos, comes from which Mexican state?

Jalisco: birria began there as goat stewed with chiles and spices, a soupy cousin of barbacoa, and its name is usually traced to a Spanish word for something worthless.

The quesabirria, a cheese-stuffed birria taco served with consommé, was first developed in which city?

Tijuana: the city's beef-birria taqueros, who had swapped goat for cheaper beef, began griddling cheese into the consommé-dipped tortillas, and the quesabirria spread north from there in the 2010s.

How is traditional barbacoa prepared?

Slow-cooked in a pit dug in the ground: the meat is wrapped in maguey leaves and buried over a pan that catches its juices, though city taquerías now often use a steamer instead.

Carnitas, 'little meats', are traditionally made by cooking pork in what?

Lard: chunks of pork simmer slowly in the fat until tender and browned, often with orange rind in the pot, which gives carnitas their deep golden colour.

Corn for tortillas is soaked in what before being ground into masa?

Limewater: soaking the kernels in an alkaline solution of slaked lime, called nixtamalization, loosens the hulls and frees the niacin that plain cornmeal cannot deliver.

Populations that ate untreated maize without nixtamalization risked which deficiency disease?

Pellagra: nixtamalization frees the niacin locked in maize, so when settlers in the American South took up the grain without the alkaline step, the disease became epidemic there in the early 1900s.

What does the word 'tortilla' literally mean in Spanish?

Little cake: tortilla is the diminutive of torta, cake; in Spain the same word means a thick omelette of eggs and potato, a different dish entirely.

Flour tortillas are typical of which part of Mexico?

The north: wheat came with the Spanish and flour tortillas became the tradition there, wrapping the region's grilled-meat tacos, while corn dominates farther south.

What is the stone slab on which nixtamal was traditionally ground into masa called?

Metate: cooks worked the soaked kernels under a hand stone called a mano on this slab; today most tortillas come from tortillerías, where machines do the work.

Where did the hard-shell, crispy taco tradition develop?

The United States: Mexican-American cooks were frying U-shaped shells long before fast food, and Mexican restaurateurs were patenting shell fryers in the 1940s, years before Glen Bell claimed the idea.

The Kogi truck drew crowds across Los Angeles from 2008 with tacos filled with which cuisine's barbecue?

Korean: Kogi, with Roy Choi as chef, took to the streets in November 2008 and tweeted where the truck would park next, so hundreds of people turned up at each stop.

Glen Bell got the idea for his tacos by watching the queues at which restaurant across from his drive-in?

The Mitla Cafe: Bell tried to reverse-engineer its fried tacos until the owners let him into the kitchen to watch, then sold a simplified version across the street.

In which California city did Glen Bell open the first Taco Bell in 1962?

Downey: the first Taco Bell, a 400-square-foot walk-up stand, opened there in 1962; due to be razed in 2015, the building was instead trucked overnight to the company's home office in Irvine.

What did Glen Bell sell at his first drive-in, opened in 1948, before he turned to tacos?

Hot dogs: Bell's Drive-In opened in San Bernardino in 1948, just down the road from the McDonald brothers, and Bell came to believe tacos could outsell hamburgers.

Glen Bell's first taco-shell fryer was a wire contraption built by a man who normally made what?

Chicken coops: Bell hired a coop builder to bend chicken wire into a fryer, so shells could be fried ahead of time and tacos assembled fast, at 19 cents each.

Which company bought Taco Bell from Glen Bell in 1978?

PepsiCo spun its restaurants off in 1997 as Tricon, which later renamed itself.

What was the name of the Chihuahua in Taco Bell's late-1990s ads?

Gidget was cast as the love interest for the first shoot until the director swapped her into the lead, so a female dog ended up playing the male mascot who said 'Yo quiero Taco Bell'.

In 2001 Taco Bell promised free tacos if which falling object hit a floating Pacific target?

The Mir space station: Taco Bell floated a 40-foot-square target off Australia and bought insurance in case it owed every American a taco, but Mir's debris came down elsewhere.

The 2012 Doritos Locos Taco first used a shell flavoured like which Doritos variety?

Nacho Cheese: the first Doritos Locos Taco, launched in March 2012 with Frito-Lay, used a Nacho Cheese shell; Cool Ranch followed in 2013 and was cut in a 2019 menu cull.

Which Taco Bell item debuted as a limited offer in 2005 and went permanent the next year?

Crunchwrap Supreme: designed to be eaten on the go without making a mess, it launched as a limited-time item in 2005 and sold so fast that Taco Bell made it permanent in 2006.

Which 1993 film used Taco Bell as a plot device, presenting it as the only restaurant left in the future?

Demolition Man: in the 1993 film's San Angeles of 2032, Taco Bell has won the 'franchise wars' and is the only restaurant left; overseas cuts dubbed it Pizza Hut instead.

Which Texas border city had a cafeteria advertising Tuesday tacos in 1933?

El Paso: the White Star Cafeteria advertised its Tuesday tacos in the Herald-Post in 1933, decades before any restaurant tried to trademark the phrase 'Taco Tuesday'.

Which Wyoming-born chain held the federal trademark on 'Taco Tuesday' from 1989 to 2023?

Taco John's gave up 'Taco Tuesday' in July 2023 after Taco Bell petitioned to cancel the mark, saying it would rather not pay lawyers millions to defend it.

A 'walking taco', a snack sold by vendors at sporting events, is eaten straight out of what?

A bag of corn chips: the bag is split open, taco fillings are piled over the Fritos or Doritos inside, and the whole thing is eaten with a spoon, no plate needed.

Which NBA star's 2019 attempt to trademark 'Taco Tuesday' was rejected as a commonplace phrase?

LeBron James had been shouting 'Taco Tuesday' in family videos on Instagram; his spokesman called the refusal a win, since a phrase too common to own is one nobody can sue him for using.

In Norway, the tradition of eating tacos is attached to which day of the week?

Friday: Norwegians call it fredagstaco, a build-your-own dinner that ends the working week, and Sweden's cosy Friday night in, fredagsmys, runs on supermarket taco kits too.

Which soda brand created a tropical flavour in 2004 that was sold only at Taco Bell fountains?

Mountain Dew: the teal tropical soda was devised to lift Taco Bell's fountain-drink sales, and for its first ten years it could be bought nowhere else.

Indian tacos, popular at pow-wows, are built on what instead of a tortilla?

Navajo tradition dates frybread to government rations issued during the Long Walk of the 1860s.

Henry's Puffy Tacos, which popularised the puffy taco, is in which Texas city?

San Antonio: Henry Lopez opened Henry's Puffy Tacos there, where raw masa is dropped into hot oil until it balloons; his brother Arturo ran Arturo's Puffy Taco in California.

Pico de gallo is also known as salsa bandera because its colours match what?

The Mexican flag: bandera means flag, and the red tomato, white onion and green chile line up with its three colours; the same salsa is also called salsa mexicana.

The word guacamole comes from the Nahuatl for what?

Avocado sauce: āhuacamōlli joins āhuacatl, avocado, with mōlli, sauce, the same root as mole; Spanish speakers softened it into guacamole.

Which dish is named after Ignacio Anaya, a maître d' in 1940s Piedras Negras?

Nachos: 'Nacho' is the Spanish nickname for Ignacio, and Anaya is said to have thrown the dish together for a group of American officers' wives when no cook was on hand.

A traditional chalupa from central Mexico is shaped like what?

A small boat: chalupa is Spanish for a small boat, and the dish is masa pressed around a mould and fried into a shallow crisp cup, unlike the fried flatbread sold under the name in the U.S.

Which garnish is typically set out alongside the tacos at a Mexican street taco stand?

Sliced radishes and lime sit out beside the salsas so customers can dress their own tacos; cucumber slices and grilled spring onions often join them.

Tacos de cabeza are filled with meat from which part of the cow?

The head: a whole steer's head is steamed for hours, and the taquero sells it by the part, from cachete (cheek) to sesos (brains) and ojo (eye).

Tricon Global Restaurants, Taco Bell's parent company, took what name in 2002?

Yum! Brands: Tricon took the new name in 2002 when it merged with the parent of A&W and Long John Silver's, growing from three chains to five.

Tacos al pastor descend from spit-roasted lamb brought to Mexico by immigrants from which country?

Lebanon: migrants sold their shawarma on pita-like bread, and the next generation swapped the lamb for chile-marinated pork, creating a taco now found all over Mexico.

What do Mexican taqueros call the vertical spit on which al pastor pork is cooked?

Trompo means 'spinning top', after the stack of pork, narrow at the bottom and wide at the top; in Nuevo León and Chihuahua the tacos themselves are called tacos de trompo.

Tacos árabes, the pita-wrapped cousin of al pastor, traditionally come with a sauce of which dried chile?

Chipotle: the smoky red sauce is spooned over marinated pork in pan árabe, a pita-style flatbread so central that one taco guide puts it bluntly: no pan árabe, no taco árabe.

Al pastor served with cheese on a flour tortilla is called what?

A gringa: al pastor and cheese are melted into a flour tortilla and grilled like a quesadilla.

Which Texas city is sometimes claimed, to the annoyance of its neighbours, as the home of the breakfast taco?

Austin: a 2016 Eater article crowned it 'the home of the crucial breakfast taco', and the backlash from a rival Texas city was so fierce that a petition demanded the writer's exile from the state.

In a 1996 April Fools' newspaper ad, a taco chain claimed to have bought which American landmark?

Liberty Bell was the supposed purchase, to be renamed the Taco Liberty Bell. Thousands phoned in before Taco Bell admitted the joke at noon, and the White House quipped that the Lincoln Memorial had gone to Ford.

A walking taco piles taco meat, cheese and toppings into which grab-and-go container?

A chip bag, split open, holds the whole meal. The dish is a close cousin of the Frito pie, whose oldest known recipe was published in Texas in 1949.

Which fruit, also used in the marinade, is diced over traditional tacos al pastor?

Pineapple sweetens both the spiced marinade and the finished taco, where it joins finely chopped onion on pork sliced thin with a large knife.

Chapulines, a crunchy snack and taco filling widely eaten in Oaxaca, are which toasted insects?

Grasshoppers are gathered from May to early autumn, toasted and seasoned with garlic and salt. The Seattle Mariners sold them as a novelty ballpark snack at their 2017 home games.

Astronauts use tortillas instead of sliced bread mainly because tortillas do not produce what?

Crumbs are the hazard that flour tortillas avoid, and they are shelf-stable too. Astronaut Sandra Magnus praised how much a crew can do with one.

Which country singer appeared in a 2022 TikTok musical about Taco Bell's returning Mexican Pizza?

Dolly Parton joined Doja Cat in the 15-minute show. It celebrated a petition of more than 170,000 signatures that persuaded Taco Bell to bring the Mexican Pizza back.

Taco Bell once sold a breakfast taco whose folded shell was which breakfast food, served with syrup?

A waffle wrapped scrambled eggs and sausage in the Waffle Taco. It was the top-selling breakfast item at the five restaurants that first tested it.

Which burger chain's most popular product is the taco, with 554 million sold a year by 2017?

Jack in the Box has sold tacos since its first restaurant opened in the 1950s. They are made in factories in Texas and Kansas, then frozen for the trip to each kitchen.

French tacos, a fast food from the Rhône-Alpes region, fold which side dish inside the tortilla?

Fries go inside with cheese and meat before the flour tortilla is folded shut and grilled. In France the dish keeps its final s even when you order just one.

In the picture book Dragons Love Tacos, which topping must never be served to the dragons?

Spicy salsa is the danger in Adam Rubin's bestseller. The dragons proved popular enough to return in a follow-up, Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel.

America's National Taco Day is celebrated on the first Tuesday of which month?

October hosts the American celebration. Mexico keeps its own Day of the Taco months earlier, on March 31.

Which ice cream brand marketed the Choco Taco until discontinuing it in July 2022?

Klondike dropped the taco-shaped treat as demand rose sharply across its other products, saying it needed to keep the rest of its range in supply.

Salsa verde, the green taco salsa, is traditionally made from which husked Mexican fruit?

Tomatillo, a nightshade also called the Mexican husk tomato, was already being cultivated in Mexico in the pre-Columbian era.

Nopales, eaten in tacos, salads and with eggs, are the tender young pads of which cactus?

Prickly pear pads are at their most tender and juicy in spring, and their Spanish name comes from the Nahuatl word nohpalli.

Pico de gallo, the fresh chopped salsa for tacos, has a Spanish name that literally means what?

Rooster's beak is the literal meaning. The salsa, also known as salsa fresca, is built on chopped tomato, onion and serrano chillies.

Taco Bell's flagship Cantina on the Las Vegas Strip began hosting which events in 2017?

Weddings began in August 2017 at the 24-hour flagship, which opened in 2016 serving alcohol and unique menu items with a DJ on hand.

Which streaming service premiered Taco Chronicles, a docuseries on each variety of taco, in 2019?

Netflix opened the Spanish-language series with an episode on al pastor, tracing the Mexico City street staple back to ancient Asia Minor.

Which conquistador hosted a Coyoacán banquet for his captains that is often called the first taco feast?

Hernán Cortés laid on the meal after Tenochtitlan fell, and his soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo later described the banquet in his chronicle of the conquest.

Which regional American cuisine of tacos and fajitas took its name from a railway chartered in 1875?

Tex-Mex began as shorthand for the Texas Mexican Railway. By the 1920s newspapers used it for Texans of Mexican ancestry, and it was not printed about food until the 1960s.

Which chef rose to fame with Kogi, the Korean-Mexican taco truck launched in Los Angeles in 2008?

Roy Choi came to be seen as a founder of the gourmet food truck movement, helped by Kogi's habit of announcing each stop on Twitter.

Taco rice, seasoned taco meat served on a bed of rice, was created in 1984 on which Japanese island?

Okinawa's Matsuzo Gibo introduced it at eateries a minute from the main gate of Camp Hansen, and it became a lunch and late-night favourite of American troops stationed there.

The taco gobernador, invented to impress a visiting Sinaloa governor, is filled with which seafood?

Shrimp was the governor's known favourite, so the story goes that a Mazatlán restaurateur folded it into a taco with melted cheese and poblano, then named the dish for his guest.

Traditional Mexican barbacoa is cooked under a covering of leaves from which desert plant?

Agave leaves, known in Mexico as maguey, blanket whole sheep or goats while they cook until tender. The meat is prized for its high fat content and strong flavour.

Which spice gives cochinita pibil, the roast pork taco filling, its vivid burnt-orange colour?

Annatto seed, called achiote in Mexico, stains the pork after it has marinated in strongly acidic citrus juice. The meat then roasts wrapped in banana leaf.

Carnitas, the simmered pork pulled apart for tacos, is credited to which Mexican state?

Michoacán is regarded as the home of carnitas, and it is also where cotija cheese comes from, named for the town of Cotija.

Which flat griddle, named from a Nahuatl word, is used across Mexico to cook and warm tortillas?

Comal comes from the Nahuatl comalli. The earliest ones were thin ceramic pieces, and examples found at archaeological sites in Central America date to 700 BCE.

Old El Paso, the brand behind supermarket taco dinner kits, belongs to which American food producer?

General Mills owns the brand, which Pillsbury acquired in 1995. The name looks back to the era when Texas was still part of Mexico.

King Taco, a Los Angeles chain founded in 1974, began as a lunch wagon converted from which vehicle?

An ice cream truck gave Raul Martínez his start, and within six months he had opened the chain's first restaurant, in Cypress Park.

In 2021, astronauts in orbit made tacos with which crop, the first of its genus grown off Earth?

Chile peppers of a New Mexico variety were picked that autumn for the crew's tacos. Of the 48 seeds planted, only four were kept growing through to harvest.

Which taco filling, promoted as the Mexican truffle, is a fungus that grows on maize?

Huitlacoche earned its truffle nickname at a 1989 James Beard Foundation dinner, staged to persuade Americans to eat a fungus their agriculture department had long tried to eradicate.

Tripas, a taco filling grilled until crisp, are which part of a farm animal?

Intestines are cleaned and boiled before they reach the grill, then dressed with chopped onion and salsa. English-speaking countries know them as chitterlings.

A true molcajete, the mortar used to grind taco salsas, is carved from a single block of which rock?

Basalt is full of tiny bubbles that wear down with use, so the grinding surface keeps renewing its own rough texture.

Taco, an Indonesian-born Dutch singer, had a global 1982 synth-pop hit with which old standard?

Puttin' On the Ritz carried Taco Ockerse, who was born in Jakarta and started his career in Germany, onto charts around the world.

Which FX sitcom features Jon Lajoie as Taco MacArthur, a perpetually stoned, unemployed musician?

The League follows a fantasy football league whose wild card, Taco MacArthur, cares so little about the sport that he tries to draft Canadian football players and placekickers.

Which Nerf Herder frontman wrote Raining Tacos, a viral children's song built on Pachelbel's Canon?

Parry Gripp calls it his most popular song. Released in 2012, it took off years later among Roblox players and was turned into a mobile game and a HarperCollins book.

Juvencio Maldonado, who patented a taco-shell fryer in 1950, ran a restaurant in which city?

New York was home to Maldonado, a restaurateur from Oaxaca who is sometimes credited as the original inventor of a machine for making hard-shell tacos.

Which fast-food chain opened its first restaurant in 1964 at Yermo, east of Barstow?

Del Taco traded at first as Casa Del Taco and took $169 on its opening day. The Casa was dropped from the name in 1973.

Mexico's own Day of the Taco, celebrated every March 31, was created in 2007 by which broadcaster?

Televisa invented the celebration, which also goes by the name International Taco Day even though America's own taco day falls months later.

Which baseball club played a 2015 game as the Tacos to honour its city's Taco Truck Throwdown?

Fresno Grizzlies players took the field in specially designed taco uniforms, a one-game stunt that drew national attention.

Which Mexican company, owner of Maseca and Mission, is the world's largest tortilla manufacturer?

Gruma, headquartered near Monterrey, also leads the world in the masa flour that tortillas start from, and runs plants across Mexico, America and Europe.