The only taquería in the world to obtain a Michelin star now celebrates that badge and some surprises a year. To start, at this time, the barbecue has started. Arturo Rivera, who believed that he had won a game of tires when he was notified of the Michelin award, he has gone to look for other horizons: “They dizzy, bought it, the sun, the moon and the stars lowered him. “It was believed to rockstar”The success of the establishment is still stern wind, but it has had to overcome other inconveniences, very typical of Mexico: the mafias. Many people who gathered at the doors of the premises have caused disorders with the merchants of neighboring premises and street stalls.” And since this is a mafia, or you straighten or straighten you, ”he says. Its employees adopted a new logistics for the waiting row.
“Do not change what you do not need arrangement,” is Mario Hernández’s maximum (Mexico City, 66 years old). But there are things that have had to modify. Now she is a woman, Gloria, who carries the grill of the reputed Tacos de Gaonera. And about the problems with the neighbors on the riverbank of San Cosme, he comments: “We entered negotiations. At first it was difficult, but we implied that this splashes, this generates.” One of the premises together with the Taquería adapted a handful of tables so that customers eaten, others made sweatshirts, shirts and caps of the taquería and Mr. Michelin, white, round and good -natured. The business, however, still lacks space for so much customer.
The first push that León Caliph had at the top of success happened at the end of 1993. On November 28 ,. The next day, the journalist Gabriel Parra published in Ovations The news and closed the piece with a chronicle in which he had that he met the politician eating two steak and two rib tacos, in the 80s, on the sidewalk in front of the taquería. The Caliph was already known, already made more money in five minutes than any other postin restaurant does throughout the month, according to Parra, but on November 29, after the news and the chronicle, the popularity of El Caliph raised one more step.
More than 30 years later, this time in May, another push that catapulted them to the stars came to the taquería. Upon returning to Earth they brought one, the Michelin. The recognition changed the surrounding dynamics: the place together adapted some tables; street stalls in front of the grill with the official merchandise; A logistics for the waiting line was mounted; Now, it is the favorite site of celebrities such as and Rolando Romero, American boxer. The only thing that did not change was the taquería.
In 2024, Hernández confessed to being surprised to become the first Mexican taquería. He said then that he wanted to talk to the representatives to know why they, being that the recipe is nothing more than grain and lemon salt. Then he learned that this information is secret. “The representative told me: ‘This is not a recipe, we cannot give them how or why they won the star, because it would be a formula,” he says. But this explanation did not leave him calm about Rivera. “If the Lord had gone to a kitchen school, I had a chef title, I would take my hat out. But it was all because he was born in the business,” he says.
The secret
The cut of the meat is the best saved secret of El Califa de León. “Perhaps it is the only secret we have,” says Hernández, who uses one of his hands to explain. “If you bite this way,” he says while holding the right palm in the air with your fingers pointing to the sky, “”. He does as if he bit the index and medium finger. “On the other hand, if you do this way,” now with your fingers horizontally, “you deepen the bite in the fiber and make it smoother.” Repeat the gesture of bite and fingers, effortlessly, separate from each other. “99% do not know how to cut it. My dad worked sixty and so many years and found the perfect cut.”
Recognize that it is jealous of this information. When the star arrived, Hernández presented his employees, whom he refers throughout the interview as his family, a confidentiality agreement. The majority agreed, except one. “The smoke rose to the head. He believed himself a rockstar… God bless you, ”ditch seriously. However, Rivera’s exit has it calm because, he repeats, in the preparation of the taco there is no secret and the people who make these cuts did signed the agreement.
On May 16, 2024, when Michelin granted them the star and a horde of journalists came to talk to Hernández, he said he felt it was a dream of which he did not want to wake up. “It was a phrase that occurred to me at the time,” recalls nostalgic. “The dream continues. If God gives me life, I want to achieve another star. I also think about expanding the business, mainly a. And why not? Madrid, London, Paris. Dreams are fulfilled.”
