From Street Food to Fine Dining—
The Rise of the Taco

(Culinary) You can eat tacos at Central American street stalls in less reputable corners, with cumin-spiced beef dripping onto your fingers as heavy traffic honks and roars past. Or you can order vegan king oyster mushroom tacos with tahini sauce in trendy Scandinavian harbor districts, served in branded, compostable dishes among striped-shirt-wearing locals. Tacos also appear in three-star restaurants, perhaps in the form of a lightly steamed nasturtium leaf topped with snail caviar and charcoal mayonnaise, presented on a precious Japanese plate and introduced by the service with, “Please fold and eat with your fingers—here’s a verbena-scented refreshment towel for afterward.”

Round and flat and topped—these are the morphological basics of the taco genre. Despite these fixed traits, the originally Mexican street food is incredibly versatile. This—combined with its high recognizability—has propelled the taco to global fame in recent years. Anyone who dines out regularly can’t avoid it. Taco fillings range from red cabbage to reindeer brain, from sea buckthorn to char. Foodies now casually use terms like nixtamalization (in which the corn for the tortilla flour is treated with slaked lime to improve binding properties).

Playing with the taco format and varying its core features—it doesn’t always have to be a corn tortilla—has clearly become standard practice in today’s gastronomy. And it doesn’t matter whether the cuisine has any obvious connection to Mexico. Whether at Gaggan in Bangkok, at [aend] in Vienna (where special plates with elongated indentations have been made for tiny amuse-bouche tacos), or at Atelier Moessmer in South Tyrol—a taco can now appear almost anywhere, sometimes surprisingly.

Occasionally, there are indeed Mexican connections, such as with Swiss star chef Andreas Caminada, who, after a culinary trip to Mexico, served a taco made with grilled shoots of a souvenir cactus. Primarily, the taco is being reimagined at the top addresses in its country of origin—for example, at Pujol or Quintonil, where the tortilla is the centerpiece of the Taco Omakase Bar, or at explicitly Mexican places like KOL in London.

One chef who helped shape the taco hype outside Latin America is Rosio Sanchéz. The U.S.-born chef with Mexican roots was a pastry chef at the influential Noma in Copenhagen before opening the taqueria Hija de Sanchez in the Danish capital in 2015—years before the big taco wave hit (now with several branches and the award-winning Sanchez restaurant). She impressively demonstrates the unexpected flavors of heirloom corn varieties and how to weave Latino street food with Scandinavian design sensibilities. And as with so much in today’s gastronomy: What happens in Copenhagen doesn’t stay in Copenhagen.