Mexican family restaurants and food trucks in south Phoenix offer traditional birria de chivo, plus birria de res tacos and quesabirria.
Ask Maria Lopez what she puts in her adobo at Hola Cabrito and she'll tell you that's locked up.
Literally. She keeps the seasoning blend of chilies and other spices imported from Mexico in a locked safe at home. Hola Cabrito specializes in birria de chivo, and her recipe for the stewed goat dish comes from her mother in Guanajuato.
The yellow brick restaurant is painted with contrasting green accents and red lettering, beckoning drivers on 16th Street, between Broadway and Roeser Roads. Less than a miles away, a few streets north of Broadway, Lopez's brother Jose Luis Garcia runs a rival restaurant, El Güero Birria de Chivo.
Hola Cabrito and El Güero are two of several birria restaurants and food trucks that have sprung up among the llanteras, auto repair lots and sun-baked bus stops along Broadway Road in south Phoenix.
Lopez sees herself as a traditionalist — everything from how she cleans the goat hoofs to how she positions the meat in the pots, depending on body part and fat content, comes from her mother.
Some restaurants, such as Hola Cabrito and El Güero, serve the styles the owners have been familiar with since childhood, when birria was served for special occasions, tametada-style — lightly roasted and generously piled on a platter alongside warm, homemade tortillas and a bowl of consommé made from the goat meat drippings.
Others, such as food trucks El Lorito and El Humadero, added birria to their menus to fulfill a demand, one that was fueled further in recent years by Instagram and TikTok. For Lorenza Barrera Valerio, founder of El Lorito, the idea came more than a decade ago after witnessing the success of a birria restaurant in the neighborhood and fielding requests from customers, who asked for the dish.
Making birria using time-honored methods
Birria hails from the Mexican state of Jalisco, after Spanish colonizers introduced goats to Mexico in the 16th century. Typically made with chivo, or goat, the specialty can also be made with beef or lamb, called birria de res and birria de borrego, respectively. Traditionally, birrierias serve the slow-cooked meat in a rich broth or with the consommé on the side.
On a recent afternoon at El Güero Birria de Chivo, Moises, the son of owner Jose Luis, gave a tour of the kitchen to explain his family's process.
El Güero Birria de Chivo restaurant in south Phoenix
The cooks clean the meat and when it's time to cook, they marinade hunks of meat in a reddish-orange adobo flavored with guajillo, pasilla and other spices. The marinated meat go into steamer trays placed in 100-quart metal pots filled with a couple inches of water and dried laurel leaves. Banana leaves are used to cover the meat and lend aroma, Moises explained.
After a few hours, the cooks then heat the pots over a gas flame, leaving the meat to steam for around 8 hours. The juices from the cooking goat meat drips through the steamer pan and into the water, which will be collected later and served as a consommé. After the process is complete, the tender meat is removed, chopped and ready to serve on a plate with fresh tortillas, as a taco with cilantro, diced onions and lime wedges, or even as a torta.
Diners can request their consommé with or without garbanzo beans and even ask for specific parts of the goat, like just the ribs, neck or the head, which Garcia cuts open for customers. Moises said weekends are typically the busiest, with families placing large orders ahead of time.
It's all about the consommé
While purists will claim it's not birria unless it's goat, José R. Ralat, author of the book "American Tacos: A History & Guide" and taco editor for Texas Monthly, argues that it is the cooking process that defines birria — anything that can hold up in that process is fair game.
For Ralat, the most important element of any birria is the consommé. He especially enjoys eating birria in the consommé, with the sweet tang of cabrito, or young goat — though birria de borrego, or lamb birria, is the most popular style in the Dallas area where he lives.
"I prefer rich, mouth-coating but not oily, hot broth that’s got a little spice to it," Ralat said. "But it’s more about the flavor. It’s going to have the flavor of the meat. It should have a little of the meat in it. And it’s really great to drink out of the cup. I’ll just drink it like that, especially in the winter."
David Wallace/The Republic
David Wallace/The Republic
The rise of the Instagram-famous dunk
The birria that many people think of now, a greasy quesabirria taco dunked slow motion in a cup of consommé, took over Los Angeles before spreading out to the rest of North America, said Memo Torres, a journalist at L.A. Taco who grew up in Inglewood.
Beef birria, or birria de res, began trending in recent years, spreading from Tijuana taco stands to southern Californian taco trucks, such as Los Angeles-based Tacos y Birria La Única, where quesabirria — beef birria and cheese melted in a crisp tortilla cooked on a griddle in the fatty liquid skimmed from the top of the broth — was popularized.
Tijuana-style birria can be found on every street corner of L.A. and angelenos have already hit "peak birria," he thinks.
"It's very Instagrammable," Torres said. "People who look at it are like, what is this fried taco? What are they dunking it in?... Everybody wants to dip it, everybody wants to stretch the cheese."
It's completely different from the birria Torres grew up eating, he said.
Torres, whose family is from Zacatecas, described birria as an occasional treat for weddings, quinces, a Sunday morning hangover after a special event the day before. Birria was served with rice and beans on a plate with tortillas on the side, he said.
While quesabirria won't replace his family's traditions, he's proud to know the L.A. trend has taken off elsewhere, from Vancouver to Phoenix. In Los Angeles, many taco trucks have started adding birria to the menu, or rebranded from taco trucks to birria trucks, and seen sales go up as much as 50%, he said.
The owners of Phoenix food truck El Humadero can relate. Ricardo de la Vega and his wife Marcela Villalpando serve birria quesadillas the size of large frisbees, using birria de res stewed for a few hours and then stored in a bucket. El Humadero, located at 15th Avenue and Broadway Road, started off with just burgers al carbon on the weekends. When they upgraded to a food truck, they expanded the menu.
On Instagram, Villalpando saw the lines that stretched and zig zagged with guests waiting to place an order at Sabor a Mi, a Phoenix food stand that serves quesabirria and birriaramen. The latter is birria served with instant ramen, made using the consommé. It seemed like a smart business decision to add quesabirria and even the occasional birria nachos to the menu at El Humadero. It paid off. Birria tacos are now one of their top sellers, and they may add birria fries in the future.
On a recent afternoon at Restaurante Birria Estilo Michoacan, west of El Humadero, Mario Martinez and two coworkers from AZ Sun Services were taking a lunch break. Martinez lives nearby and comes to this restaurant twice a week for the consommé — sometimes he gets the birria tacos, sometimes the shrimp. He'll dunk just about any taco in the rich broth.
His grandfather used to keep goats in the backyard and would slaughter one for birria on major holidays, such as Christmas. He used all the parts, even the tongue, Martinez recalls. He and Brandon Figueroa, who had just polished off his plate of tacos, enjoy both the traditional and contemporary preparations of birria.
"I'm open to trying anything," Figueroa said, pulling out his cell phone to look up a food truck, Myredtacos on the west side. He then pulled up a video of a birria pizzadilla in the making, a quesadilla so massive it's cut into pizza slices.
South Phoenix has a history of birria
While birria de res is certainly having its pop culture moment in Phoenix, the Mexican dish has been around long before Instagram pushed it to the forefront.
A search of The Arizona Republic's archive brings Tono's as the first local birria restaurant mentioned in the paper in 1981. Formerly located at 24 E. Broadway Road, Tono's served both birria estilo Jalisco and barbacoa, barbecued goat meat, along with cabrito al horno, or oven-baked young goat, according to the article.
The now-deceased owners, Aurora Zepeda Cuellar and Jose Antonio Cuellar, operated the restaurant for 17 years, according to Aurora's obituary.
Taqueria y Birreria Jalisco, a bright green-and-yellow restaurant on the southeast corner of 7th Avenue and Broadway Road, has been open since at least 2005, when it was first mentioned in The Republic.
"The goat is tender and flavorful; the thin, cloudy broth is well-balanced with a nice, meaty richness; and the salsa is bright and hot with a little touch of citrus," described former Republic dining critic Dominic Armato in a 2015 article.
In recent months, the restaurant has mysteriously appeared to be closed more times than it's open, oftentimes with gates locked and phone calls going to voicemail. An employee who picked up the phone one day told The Republic the restaurant was open at irregular hours now.
Across the street, birria can be found at El Lorito, a cash-only food truck. El Lorito's founder Lorenza Barrera Valerio learned to make birria later in life so she could add it to the menu, according to her son Geraldo.
Barrera Valerio, an immigrant from Guerrero, moved to south Phoenix in 1993. There she started selling sopes, quesadillas and gorditas from a pop-up stand behind a bar before opening El Lorito food truck in the early 2000s. The family has since expanded to a west Phoenix restaurant, where they cook the birria and transport it to their south Phoenix food truck.
The birria tacos are one of many menu items, including Mexican breakfast plates, that draws crowds of families and workers who order from the truck and dine at plastic tables set up outside under rows of misters. The tacos come served on white paper plates with cucumber slices and plastic containers of dried red chilies sit on the tables — for those that want to bite into some extra spice, Geraldo said.
Garcia from El Güero Birria de Chivo opened Hola Cabrito in 2010, after the family had started with catering. He ran it for years with his sister Maria Lopez before selling the restaurant to Lopez in 2017.
These are just some of many restaurants and pop-up stands now serving the specialty in Phoenix. Birrieria Obregon has served birria stew since 1999, while newcomers, such as AZ Taco King near Melrose District, have designed their entire menus around trendy Tijuana-style birria de res. Pop-up stand Random AF Kitchen is marking its territory with birria grilled cheese sandwiches and even seafood restaurant Sr. Ozzy's Tacos y Mariscos have gotten into the birria game. Chino-Mex, a former Chinese and Mexican food buffet on the southside, rebranded during the pandemic and put a variety of birria on the menu, from quesadillas to nachos.
Hola Cabrito has also made adjustments. Lopez's daughter, Valerie, convinced her to add jackfruit birria tacos so people can bring their vegan friends. The restaurant also serves birria de res and for their chivo, they use halal goat meat to reach their small, Muslim customer base, she said.
Valerie added that she and her mom also discussed adding quesabirrias, but their current menu seems satisfying enough.
Ralat, who's eaten quesabirrias from coast to coast, said he's more than ready for a new taco trend to take over. But for now, the Southwest's appetite for birria on everything seems insatiable.
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Where to find birria along this south Phoenix corridor
Hola Cabrito: 4835 S.16th St., Phoenix. 602-513-8384, holacabrito.com.
El Güero Birria de Chivo: 3611 S. 16th St., Phoenix. 602-314-5180, orderelguerobirriadechivo.com.
El Lorito: 624 W. Broadway Road, Phoenix. 602-305-9294.
Taqueria y Birreria Jalisco: 615 W. Broadway Road, Phoenix. 602-268-1032.
El Humadero: 1339 W. Broadway Road, Phoenix. 832-836-1642, search 'El Humadero' on Facebook.
Birria Estilo Michoacan: 1711 W. Broadway Road, Phoenix. 602-253-6159, facebook.com/birriaestilomichoacan.
Birria elsewhere in Phoenix
Birria Obregon: 2500 N. 35th Ave., Phoenix. 602-455-9070. Also at 3146 W. Van Buren St., Phoenix. 602-442-5142.
Birrieria Tijuana: 3202 E. Greenway Road, Phoenix. 480-250-0274, birrieriatijuanaaz.com.
Sabor a Mi: Location varies. instagram.com/saborami_seasonings_salsas.
Random AF Kitchen: Location varies. instagram.com/randomafkitchen2020.
Myredtacos: 3836 N. 39th Ave., Phoenix. 623-999-8384, instagram.com/myredtacos.
What's your favorite food truck find? Tell the reporter at Priscilla.Totiya@azcentral.com. Follow @priscillatotiya on Twitter and Instagram.
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