The History of Tacos — The Street Food That Conquered America

Americans eat more than 4.5 billion tacos every single year. If you line them all up end to end, they would stretch for 490,000 miles, enough to reach the moon and come back. And in 2021, astronauts on the International Space Station made tacos using soft tortillas, fajita beef, and vegetables they grew in the station's own garden, which means the taco has officially left the planet. But here is what almost nobody knows. The taco is not some ancient tradition passed down unchanged for thousands of years. The word taco did not even originally refer to food, it referred to explosives. And the version most Americans grew up eating, that crunchy hard shell filled with ground beef and shredded cheese, traces directly back to one man who walked into a Mexican family's restaurant in San Bernardino, learned their recipe, and built a fast food empire without them. So how did a gunpowder charge from a Mexican silver mine turn into the most consumed handheld food in the United States? That story starts about 5,000 years ago with corn. Somewhere around 3000 BC, in what is now the eastern central region of Mexico, indigenous people in a place called the Valley of Tehuacan figured out how to crossbreed wild grasses into the corn plant. That might not sound exciting, but it changed everything. Corn was not just a crop to these people, it was the foundation of life itself. The Maya creation story says the gods literally made the first humans out of corn dough. They tried mud first, and it fell apart. They tried wood, and it had no soul. But corn worked. That is how deeply this grain was woven into the identity of Mesoamerican civilization. From corn came the tortilla. But making a tortilla is not as simple as grinding corn into flour. The indigenous peoples of Mexico developed a process called nixtamalization, where they soaked dried corn kernels in an alkaline solution made from water and lime, then ground the softened kernels into a smooth dough called masa. Without anyone understanding the chemistry at the time, this process dramatically increased the nutritional value of the grain. It unlocked niacin and amino acids that would have otherwise remained trapped inside the kernel. Entire civilizations sustained themselves on this upgraded corn. Thousands of years before modern food science existed, these people had figured out how to chemically enhance their most important crop through a process so effective that it is still the foundation of tortilla production today. Every tortilla you have ever eaten started with the same basic technique that Mesoamerican cooks perfected before the pyramids at Teotihuacan were built. From the tortilla came something very close to what we now call a taco. Long before any European ship appeared on the horizon, the Aztecs and Maya were already wrapping warm corn tortillas around small fish from the lakes of the Valley of Mexico, roasted meats, beans, and even insects. They had a word in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, called tlhco, which translates roughly to half or in the middle. It described the way you fold a tortilla around its filling, and that word is where many historians believe taco eventually came from. But the taco as we recognize it today did not crystallize until much, much later, and the path it took to get here is stranger than you would expect. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the early 1500s, they brought beef, pork, chicken, and cheese into the Mexican diet. The conquistador Hernán Cortés reportedly organized a taco feast for his captains in Coyoacán in 1520, which some historians consider the first taco party ever recorded by Europeans. The Spanish also brought wheat, which eventually led to flour tortillas in the northern regions of Mexico. So, the ingredients started to change, but the concept stayed the same. A tortilla wrapped around something delicious, eaten with your hands, simple, portable, and endlessly adaptable. For the next 300 years, tacos evolved slowly across different regions of Mexico. Coastal areas filled their tortillas with fish and shrimp. Inland regions used whatever meats and vegetables were local. Different states developed entirely different styles of salsa, preparation, and presentation. The taco became a canvas for regional identity, but the modern taco and the actual word taco applied to food did not show up in any written record until the late 1800s. And this is where the story takes a genuinely weird turn. Jeffrey Pilcher, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota and the author of a book called Planet Taco, has a theory about how the word taco jumped from concept to cuisine. In 18th century Mexican silver mines, workers used small charges to blast ore out of rock faces. These charges were made by wrapping gunpowder in little pieces of paper, and the miners called them tacos. If you think about it, the physical resemblance is hard to ignore. A thin wrapper around a filling, rolled tight, ready to go. The first type of taco that shows up in any dictionary or written archive is called tacos de minero, which literally means miner's tacos. These were the spicy, meat-filled corn tortillas that silver miners ate for lunch deep underground. So, the connection between the explosive charges the miners used and the food the miners ate seems more than coincidental. By the start of the 20th century, tacos of every kind had spread across Mexico and become one of the country's defining street foods. But the taco was about to undergo its most unexpected transformation yet, and it came from the other side of the world. Between 1880 and 1950, more than 100,000 Arabic speakers, most of them from Lebanon, immigrated to Mexico. They were fleeing political instability in the crumbling Ottoman Empire, avoiding military conscription, and looking for better economic opportunities. Many of them settled in the state of Puebla, just a couple hours south of Mexico City. And a large number of them were Maronite Christians, which is an important detail because it meant they had no religious dietary restrictions against eating pork. These Lebanese immigrants brought their food traditions with them. Specifically, they brought shawarma, a dish of seasoned meat stacked on a vertical rotating spit and cooked slowly over flame. The word shawarma itself comes from the Turkish word which means turning. The vertical spit had been a staple of Ottoman cooking since the 14th century in Mexico. Lebanese restaurant owners started serving this spit-roasted meat on a flatbread they called pan Arab or Arab bread. The dish became known as tacos Arabs, Arab tacos. But here is where it gets really interesting. The children of those Lebanese immigrants, born and raised in Mexico, started putting their own spin on their parents' food. By the 1960s, a culinary boom was happening in Mexico City. Trendy new restaurants were popping up everywhere. And these second-generation Lebanese Mexicans began swapping out the lamb for pork, which was cheaper, more widely available, and perfectly aligned with Mexican tastes. They marinated the pork in a blend of dried chilies, achiote paste, cumin, and local spices that turned the meat a deep reddish-orange. They stacked the seasoned pork on the vertical spit, just like their parents had done with lamb. And then they did something their parents never would have imagined. They placed a whole pineapple on top of the spit, so its juices would drip down over the meat as it cooked, caramelizing on the surface and adding a sweet, tangy contrast to the smoky pork. They served the whole thing on corn tortillas with fresh cilantro and diced onion. The result was tacos al pasta, which translates to shepherd-style tacos, a nod to the lamb-herding traditions of the Middle East. And they became arguably the most popular street food in all of Mexico. Today, you can find a taqueria with a spinning trompo of al pasta meat on practically every corner of Mexico City. The dish is so beloved that many people consider it the single most iconic Mexican food in existence. And it was invented by Lebanese immigrants fusing Middle Eastern technique with Mexican ingredients across two generations. The taco had proven something important about itself. It could absorb influences from anywhere on earth and still feel completely, undeniably Mexican. But the taco was not done traveling. While Al Pastor was taking over Mexico City's streets, the taco had already been quietly crossing the border into the United States for decades. Mexican workers had been migrating north since the early 1900s, taking jobs in the mines, on the railroads, and on farms across the American Southwest. They brought their food with them, and their wives and families often earned extra income by selling tacos and other Mexican dishes from pushcarts on the streets of Texas and California. In San Antonio, a group of these women became famous as the Chili Queens. Starting in the 1880s, they set up stands in the city's plazas, cooking over open fires under the glow of colorful lanterns, serving chili con carne, tamales, and tacos on simple wooden tables to workers and tourists alike. The Chili Queens became a genuine attraction. By the time the railroad started bringing tourists to San Antonio in the late 1800s, visitors came looking for two things, the Alamo and the Chili Queens. Mexico was considered a dangerous, exotic place, and the Chili Queens offered Americans a way to taste that sense of adventure without actually crossing the border. The food was spicy, unfamiliar, a little thrilling, and it was cheap, which mattered enormously to the working-class laborers who made up most of the customers. In 1893, San Antonio sent a chili stand to the World's Fair in Chicago, which introduced Mexican flavors to a massive national audience for the first time. Suddenly, people in the Midwest and the East Coast had tasted chili con carne and tamales, and they wanted more. The Chili Queens had not just served food, they had started something. The first mention of tacos in a United States newspaper appeared in 1905, right around the time that Mexican migration to the U.S. was accelerating. At that point, Mexican food was still considered lower-class street food, something foreign and a little rough around the edges. But the Chili Queens were planting seeds that would grow for decades. As Mexican-American families became more established in the United States through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the taco started to evolve again. Younger generations, born in America but raised on their parents' cooking, began experimenting with ingredients that were easy to find in U.S. grocery stores, but rare or unknown in Mexico. They added cheddar cheese instead of queso fresco. They tossed in iceberg lettuce and sliced tomatoes. They swapped out traditional slow-cooked meats for seasoned ground beef, which was cheap and available everywhere. And around the 1940s, someone figured out how to fry a tortilla into a crispy U-shaped shell that could hold all of these new fillings without falling apart. The hard-shell taco was born, and it changed everything about how tacos could be produced and sold. Hard shells could be made in advance. They could be stored. They could be filled quickly and served to customers who were already used to eating fast food with their hands. This Americanized version of the taco was not exactly traditional Mexican food, and plenty of people in Mexico would tell you it barely qualifies as a taco at all. But it was delicious, it was fast, and it was about to get a massive promotional push from a man who saw dollar signs every time he watched a line form outside a Mexican restaurant. In 1937, a woman named Lucia Rodriguez opened a small restaurant called Mitla Café on Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. She and her husband, Vicente Montano, built it into a beloved gathering place for the local Mexican-American community. Civil rights leader Cesar Chavez ate there when he was in town. Local business leaders held meetings in the booths. Community organizations even used Mitla Café to plan the legal fight that desegregated California's public swimming pools, a ruling that helped set the precedent for Brown v. Board of Education. Mitla Café was more than a restaurant. It was the living room of a community, and the food was incredible. Mitla became famous for its hard shell tacos, a Dorado style where the tortilla was fried crispy in a specific technique that Lucia had perfected over years. Across the street, a man named Glenn Bell was running a hamburger stand. Bell was a World War II veteran who had gotten into the food business with a hot dog cart on the border of San Bernardino and the town of Colton. He noticed something that would change American eating habits forever. Every single day, Mitla Café had a line of customers stretching out the door, all of them waiting for tacos. Meanwhile, his burger stand sat half empty. Bell became a daily customer at Mitla. He ate there constantly, studied the food, and befriended the staff. Eventually, Lucia and her family, in what the grandson later described as the generosity of their kitchen, showed him exactly how they made their signature hard shell tacos. They let him watch. They answered his questions. They welcomed him in. Bell took that knowledge and built an empire. In 1951, he started selling tacos at his own stand. He opened a place called Taco Tia in 1954, selling tacos for 19 cents each. His customers, most of whom had never eaten a taco before, called them Tecos. Bell kept experimenting through the 50s, opening different taco restaurants with different partners. One of his early employees, Ed Hackbarth, went on to found Del Taco. Another partner, John Galardi, founded Wienerschnitzel. Bell was surrounded by people who saw the potential in Mexican food for the American mass market. Then, on March 21, 1962, Bell opened the first Taco Bell in Downey, California. It was a tiny 400-square-foot walk-up stand with no indoor seating, designed to look like a California mission with adobe-style walls and a red clay tile roof. The menu was simple, crunchy tacos, burritos, tostadas, and beans. The first customer walked up wearing a suit. He bit into a taco and the juice dripped right down onto his tie. Bell thought he had lost the sale for sure. But the man came back to the window and Taco Bell grew faster than Bell probably imagined. He brought on his first franchisee, a retired Los Angeles police officer named Kermit Becky, in 1964. By 1967, the 100th Taco Bell opened in Anaheim. In 1970, Bell took the company public with 325 locations spread across the western United States. Then came the deal that changed everything. In 1978, PepsiCo purchased 868 Taco Bell restaurants for approximately $125 million in stock. With PepsiCo's distribution network, national advertising budget, and corporate infrastructure behind it, Taco Bell blasted out of California and across the entire country through the 1980s and 90s. By 2005, they had introduced the Crunchwrap Supreme, which became the most successful product launch in the chain's history. Today, Taco Bell has more than 8,000 locations worldwide. Meanwhile, Mitla Café stayed exactly where it was. Route 66, San Bernardino. Same family, same tacos. Michael Montano, Lucia's grandson, runs it today, more than 85 years after his grandmother first opened the doors. Journalist Gustavo Arellano, the author of a book called Taco USA, How Mexican Food Conquered America, was the one who uncovered the full story of Bell's connection to Mitla. But when asked about Glen Bell building a billion-dollar empire on his grandmother's recipe, Montano has been remarkably gracious about the whole thing. He told CBS News that he does not want people to feel like his family was taken advantage of or that they were not successful. His focus is on keeping Mitla going, serving the same community his grandmother served during the Depression. As he put it, come to my home, share a meal, and we will see you next time. But here is what makes the taco story so much bigger than any single chain or any single recipe. While Taco Bell was franchising its way across America, the taco itself kept evolving, and the next revolution came from a completely unexpected direction. On the night of November 19, 2008, a dented, sticker-covered food truck rolled through the streets of Los Angeles at midnight and parked outside a nightclub in Hollywood. Behind the counter was a chef named Roy Choi, a Korean-American born in Seoul and raised in LA. Choi had trained at the Culinary Institute of America and worked at Le Bernardin, one of the most prestigious restaurants in New York City. But fine dining had burned him out. He wanted to cook for the city he loved, not just for people who could afford a $200 dinner. Choi's concept was simple and, at the time, slightly insane. He took Korean barbecue short ribs, caramelized and marinated them in a sweet and savory blend of sesame oil, soy sauce, and fresh fruit, and stuffed them into corn tortillas with salsa roja, cilantro-onion-lime relish, and a napa cabbage slaw tossed in chili-soy vinaigrette. He called the truck Choi BBQ, and he priced each taco at $2. The truck used Twitter to broadcast its location, which in 2008 was still a brand new platform that most people had barely heard of. Followers would see a tweet saying Kogi was parked on a certain block, and within 30 minutes a line would form that stretched down the sidewalk. Within months, Choi was grossing $2 million a year from a single truck. Food & Wine magazine named him Best New Chef in 2010. And something much larger had happened. Choi had proven that the taco was not just fast food, it was a legitimate vehicle for world-class cooking. He called his Korean Mexican Tacos Los Angeles on a plate, and the description fit perfectly. Two immigrant cultures meeting inside a corn tortilla, creating something that neither could have made alone, Kogi kicked open the door for the entire gourmet food truck movement. Trained chefs across the country started putting their own high-end creations into tortillas and selling them from trucks. Soul Taco in St. Louis started as a single food truck and grew into a 10-location brand. Tacotarian in Las Vegas proved that plant-based taco concepts could thrive. The food truck industry exploded, growing at a compound annual growth rate of over 13% over 5 years. By recent estimates, there are more than 92,000 food trucks in the United States, generating close to $3 billion in annual revenue. And tacos lead the entire industry, accounting for roughly one in four food truck menu items. The taco had completed yet another transformation. Miner's lunch, to street food, to fast food, to fine dining, to mobile gourmet cuisine. Each time, it adapted without losing its essential identity. A tortilla, a filling, eaten with your hands, no reservations needed, no dress code required. Just good food served directly from the hands of the person who made it, to the person who is going to eat it. And while the food itself kept evolving, the cultural footprint around it was growing into something nobody could have predicted. In 1989, a Midwest taco chain called Taco John's trademarked the phrase, Taco Tuesday. For over 30 years, the company guarded that trademark fiercely, sending cease and desist letters to restaurants across the country that dared to use those two words together. In 2019, NBA star LeBron James tried to trademark the phrase for his own podcasts and social media, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office denied his application, calling Taco Tuesday a commonplace term that nobody should be able to own. Then, in 2023, Taco Bell went to war. The company filed a petition with the Patent and Trademark Office to cancel Taco John's trademark entirely, arguing that no single chain should have exclusive rights to a phrase that belonged to American culture. Taco John's CEO, Jim Creel, eventually surrendered, saying his company were lovers, not fighters, and that paying millions of dollars to just did not feel like the right thing to do. On July 18, 2023, the phrase, Taco Tuesday, was officially free for everyone to use. And maybe that is the most fitting ending to the trademark story, because the taco itself has never belonged to just one person, one company, or even one country. In 2010, UNESCO inscribed traditional Mexican cuisine on the representative list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It was the first national cuisine in the world to receive that designation. The recognition was not about any individual dish. It was about the entire cultural system behind the food, from planting and harvesting corn, to the ancient technique of nixtamalization, to the communal rituals of cooking and eating together. The taco, in all its forms, is part of that heritage. Today, the Mexican restaurant industry in the United States alone is valued at more than $100 billion. That number has been growing at a rate of over 8% per year. There are more than 52,000 Mexican food businesses operating across the country, from tiny taco stands in parking lots to white tablecloth restaurants, where a single taco costs $15. About 1 in every 10 restaurants in America serves Mexican food in some form. And the taco sits at the center of all of it, the single most recognizable and most ordered dish on the menu. Think about what this food has survived and absorbed along the way. It started with indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica, wrapping corn tortillas around fish and insects thousands of years ago. It picked up beef, pork, and cheese from the Spanish. It got its name from gunpowder charges in silver mines. It was reinvented by Lebanese immigrants who brought a Middle Eastern cooking technique halfway around the world and fused it with Mexican flavors. It crossed the border with migrant workers and was sold from pushcarts by women who became local legends. It was learned, some would say taken, by a hot dog vendor who turned it into a multi-billion dollar franchise. It was elevated by a Korean-American chef who put short ribs in a tortilla and changed how an entire country thinks about street food. And it was fought over in trademark court by corporations that each wanted to own a piece of its cultural gravity. Through all of that, the taco never stopped being what it was at the beginning. Something simple. Something you can hold in one hand. Something that brings people together around a table, a truck, a plaza, or a space station. The taco did not conquer America because some corporation marketed it into existence. It conquered America the same way it conquered Mexico, the same way it conquered everywhere it has ever been. Because it works. It is affordable, infinitely adaptable, and it carries the flavors and the stories of every culture that has ever touched it. That is the history of the taco. A food that started with corn and dynamite, traveled through silver mines and Lebanese kitchens and California hot dog stands, and somehow ended up orbiting the earth. Not bad for a folded tortilla. If you enjoyed this one, hit subscribe and drop a comment telling us your all-time favorite type of taco. We release new videos every week, and you do not want to miss what is coming next.