Cuantos Tacos
Suadero comes off a choricera, the domed lard pan of Mexico City street stalls, and the cut here is brisket standing in for the thin one between sirloin and lower flank.1
Why go
Beto Robledo is the cook, and Austin Monthly credits him with bringing Mexico City style tacos to this city.3 Jose R. Ralat's verdict, from a feature built on more than four hundred taquerias visited in six months: This truck is one of the few taquerias preparing and selling legitimate Mexico City–style tacos in Texas.
1 The choricera does the work, lard bubbling around longaniza, suadero and tripe, and the meat comes out roughly chopped and glossy. Robledo buys the tortillas rather than pressing them: 100 percent nixtamalized corn from the Colonial Tortilla Factory in San Antonio, barely three inches across, brushed with lard before they are filled.21 Nicolai McCrary scores the trailer 9.0 and calls it some of the best Mexico City-style street tacos in Austin
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Order this / avoid
- Order: suadero, which is the taco the state's taco editor named this place for.1
- Then: lengua, sliced into medallions, and the champinones quesadilla, which McCrary says might actually be his favorite thing here and which arrives with grilled onions alongside. Buche and cachete are on the same short menu.12
- Add the beans. McCrary on the frijoles especiales:
It's rare that a side dish like beans can make a lasting impression, but somehow Cuantos makes it happen.
2 - On a Wednesday, there is a weekly lengua special.2
- Avoid: the Justin Lane address. The announced Crestview brick-and-mortar has never opened and there is no counter there.
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary, page dated 3 November 2023, 9.0, which the outlet files as Best Of The Best. His account of the tortillas is the sharpest thing written about them:
Small, and barely three inches across – we'd wrap ourselves in a blanket of these if they were just a little bit bigger.
The finely diced meats get that blanket.2 - Texas Monthly, The 50 Best Tacos in Texas, 2024: on the list for its suadero. Only the top ten are numbered and Cuantos sits in the Austin group below them. Ralat is the named decider, and the piece states its own method: about 14,000 miles, more than four hundred taquerias, more than 1,200 tacos.1
- MICHELIN Guide Texas, 2024 (inaugural): Bib Gourmand, one of fourteen in the Austin selection, and it belongs to this trailer.5
- The Best of Austin finalist spot is a readers' poll and is not counted. Cuantos was a finalist in the 2026 taco category, which Veracruz All Natural won. Nobody tasted anything to produce that result.6
- Ali Khan, writing in Austin Monthly in July 2024, names the cook: Chef Beto Robledo, credited with introducing Mexico City style tacos to Austin, working the choricera as a deep-sided pan with a raised center in which he slowly simmers meats in lard. The same piece reports attention from The New York Times, Netflix and the PBS series Taco Mafia; none of those is an award and none is recorded as one here.3
- Matthew Odam's Top 40 Austin Restaurants does not carry it, which is an absence from a list of restaurants and not a judgment on a trailer.4
Good to know
- Where it is: a trailer in the Arbor Food Park at 1108 East 12th Street, on the east side.21
- Days and hours, as Texas Monthly printed them in 2024: Tuesday to Friday 11am to 10pm, Saturday 9am to 8pm. Treat a trailer's closing time as an upper bound.1
- The other Cuantos address is a building site. A brick-and-mortar was announced for 808 Justin Lane in Crestview, in a former Nugent Grocery by CapMetro's Crestview station, and Beto Robledo has given no opening date for it. Nothing has ever traded there and the Bib Gourmand does not travel with the name.8
- Hygiene: there is no inspection record, because this is a mobile vendor and Austin Public Health only publishes fixed addresses.7
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: Saved with no note; the note on my list belongs to the Justin Lane address.
Verdict
must-visit — Beto Robledo cooks Mexico City street tacos here on the actual equipment. The choricera is a round metal pan with high walls and a domed center, lard bubbling over longaniza, suadero and tripe, and Jose R. Ralat calls this one of the few taquerias in Texas selling legitimate CDMX-style tacos. The suadero here swaps the usual thin cut between sirloin and lower flank for brisket, chopped rough and glossy, and the tortillas are bought in from the Colonial Tortilla Factory in San Antonio, 100 percent nixtamalized corn, barely three inches across and brushed with lard. Nicolai McCrary scores it 9.0, which the Infatuation files as Best Of The Best, and it holds a Bib Gourmand from the inaugural 2024 MICHELIN Guide Texas. It is a trailer in a food park on East 12th, and it is cheap.