For Austinite Imad Ahmed it was never really about tacos, it was about having a place where everybody knows your name.
“Growing up I used to watch Cheers,” Ahmed told host Mando Rayo on the latest episode of the Tacos of Texas podcast. “There was a bar where everyone knows your name. They’re part of your community and they know your regular order or whatnot always really appealed to me, and I never had it.”
Then Vecinos opened in East Austin.
Ahmed was among the food truck’s first customers. He loved the food. The homemade flour tortillas reminded him of home. As a Pakistani, Ahmed grew up eating parathas — homemade flatbreads.
But there was a problem.
“I remember asking if they had lard in them,” Ahmed said.
For Ahmed, who is Muslim, and adheres to a halal diet that prohibits consumption of pork, pork products, blood and alcohol, lard meant the tortillas were off-limits.
Instead of walking away full of disappointment, Ahmed took a chance and asked the cook if they would consider making the tortillas without lard.
“I’m like … these guys are not gonna change the recipe for me,” Ahmed said, “but … it doesn’t hurt to mention it.”
Ahmed didn’t expect much to come from the question, but chef Jon Escamilla took the request to heart, and to his surprise, when he returned to Vecinos a few weeks later, he discovered the chefs had started experimenting to try and accommodate his request.
“I remember going to the food truck, and I think it was Jon that was telling me, ‘We’ve been messing around with a few recipes without lard,’” Ahmed said.
He was ecstatic. “I couldn’t believe that it had anything to do with my request. It was amazing,” he said.
After the tortillas were adjusted to be prepared without lard, Ahmed began to frequent Vecinos even more. So much so that he ended up connecting them with his local mosque to cater an event that included their lard-free tortillas.
At the event, the conversation shifted to other possibilities that would allow more of the Muslim community to partake in the cuisine that Vecinos was cooking up.
Escamilla was skeptical if it’d be possible. “Our conversation was like, dude, we can’t commit to fully halal because we cannot find beef cheeks,” Escamilla said.
But Ahmed saw too much delicious potential for his community and for Vecinos to give up without trying. “Give me five minutes,” Ahmed told him.
Moments later, Ahmed reappeared with a halal rancher. Then, a halal butcher.
It was at this point that Escamilla began to realize how similar Ahmed’s community was to his own.
“Because it’s so close-knit,” Escamilla said, “so much family and everybody knows everybody. They’re all like, ‘Let me help you out, let me help you.’”
When Escamilla switched to the new halal meat supplier, he and his staff at Vecino’s noticed that they were actually getting a better product to cook with.
Louise Min Van Assche
/
Identity Productions
Imad Ahmed and chef Jon Escamilla spoke with Mando Rayo on the Tacos of Texas podcast about how their love for food and community helped change the menu at Vecinos to serve more of their Muslim neighbors.
“We were cutting them open and it was like, ‘Bro, this is actually a lot better,” Escamilla said. “Beautiful color, nice and shiny like it wasn’t all grayed out. So I was like, ‘OK cool.’”
At that point, Vecinos decided to have a halal menu.
The significance of Vecinos going halal wasn’t just that Muslims could now eat their tortillas and meat, it was that they could eat Texas food.
“Just like anyone else in Austin we want to eat barbecue, we wanna eat tacos,” Ahmed said.
That was the opportunity he saw at Vecinos.
“To have an authentic taco spot with halal meat is something a lot of Muslims are looking for,” Ahmed said. “And so I let them know there’s a lot of demand here and it’s really untapped.”
Once Vecinos made the switch, the word spread through Austin’s Muslim community. People shared the truck in Facebook and WhatsApp groups, and Ahmed introduced the owners to the leadership at local mosques for catering gigs at community events.
Soon, Muslims were traveling to Vecinos from outside East Austin specifically for the tacos. The business had found customers it didn’t necessarily know were looking for it.
Perhaps the most tangible example of what changed Vecinos is sitting inside a breakfast taco.
For most Texans, Mexican chorizo is an ordinary breakfast staple but for Ahmed and other Muslims in Austin it was just something they heard others talk about.
“I’ve always heard from my non-Muslim friends how great chorizo is,” Ahmed said, “but I’ve never had the chance to try it.”
That was until Vecinos helped it become halal.
“With what Jon and Manny are doing, I’m able to have breakfast tacos with bacon on there, or with chorizo,” Ahmed said, “which has been amazing and a treat.”
Check out the full conversation with Imad Ahmed and chef Jon Escamilla of Vecinos Tacos on the Tacos of Texas podcast.
