In Dallas, taquerias share spaces with gas stations and laundromats. Now you can add car shop to the list of unique places to buy great tacos. Oak Cliff Taco Garage offers car repairs, inspections and authentic Mexican takeout.
After running El Alacran Automotive in south Oak Cliff for 12 years, owner Pedro Sarmiento decided he would rather sell tacos than work on cars. Last November, he turned his office at the front of the building into a kitchen and started selling pastor, lengua, barbacoa and other street tacos out the window.
"Everybody love tacos," Sarmiento says. "I've always been an entrepreneur, so I decided to give it a try."
Located on South Beckley Avenue, Oak Cliff Taco Garage is essentially a taco hut with a covered patio attached to the shop. It may not be fancy, but a unique concept and catchy name alone can go a long way. Sarmiento got the name for his business from a regular customer at the repair shop who was a marketing student at the University of North Texas.
"I was working on his car and he was a college student, low on money. I told him maybe we could barter," Sarmiento says. "I put up the labor and parts and he came up with the logo and name. I was thinking Oak Cliff Taco Shop. I never thought about the garage. That was a cool idea."
Oak Cliff Taco Garage sells gorditas, tacos and sometimes homemade conchas, or Mexican sweet bread, if it's cool outside. The gorditas are freshly made to order, and a Facebook video of the Mexican flatbread being made from scratch has brought customers from as far as Texarkana. All of the food is made from Sarmiento's family recipes.
"We're not reinventing the wheel," he says. "Some taquerias try too hard to be different. This is just home cooking. We keep it simple."
But that doesn't mean it's easy. Sarmiento says making tacos is actually harder than working on cars.
"With a car, you go online and look at diagrams and schematics. You dissect the problem with information," he says. "But making tacos is very physical and you also have to be courteous and attentive to the customers.
"With a car, you can take a break to drink your water or make a phone call. But there is no stopping during lunch hour when you have customers in line and you are going a hundred miles an hour."
Oak Cliff Taco Garage is located at 2518 S. Beckley Ave., Dallas. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Friday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It's closed Sunday and Monday.