On Oak Lawn Avenue, in the former home of a Rusty Taco, an explosion of orange moved in come September 2025. Tiled walls, chairs, façade, right down to the Jarritos bottles lined up on the counter. Tacos Juancho does nothing by halves when it comes to its visual identity. Add to that the neon signs, an open kitchen facing the dining room, a self-serve salsa bar, and resolutely uncomfortable metal chairs, and you get a decor that evokes the traditional taquería, reinforced by the plastic tables.
The menu, for its part, stays true to the spirit of Mexico City’s streets. At the heart of the offering are the classic street meats,asada, pastor cooked on the trompo, barbacoa, pollo, suadero, chicharrón prensado, campechano, and nopalitos, served as tacos or quesadillas. The signature quesadillas are worth the detour: pressed on blue corn tortillas and filled, your choice, with chicharrón, nopalitos, or huitlacoche (that famous “Mexican truffle,” the corn fungus). On weekends, the menu is rounded out with a birria. But the undisputed star is the gaonera de ribeye: a slice of beef on a blue corn tortilla, a griddled cheese crust in the costra style, avocado, raw onions, and crumbled cheese.
On the price front, Tacos Juancho plays the affordability card in an increasingly gentrified Oak Lawn neighborhood, where Michelin-starred and James Beard-recognized addresses are blooming just a few streets away. The classic tacos run around $3.50 apiece, depending on the protein chosen. The gaonera de ribeye, meanwhile, positions itself as the menu’s premium option at $8, more than double the price of a standard taco.
The restaurant weathered two break-ins within the span of five months, including a nighttime crowbar heist that cost the establishment more than $3,000 in cash. Despite these setbacks, recognition came quickly: in April 2026, Food & Wine named Tacos Juancho among the eight most exciting new taquerías in the United States.
My experience at Tacos Juancho
I started with the unmissable classic, the taco al pastor. The meat, marinated in a surprisingly mild adobo rojo, was cooked just right, dotted with small chunks of pineapple that brought that characteristic sweet-tangy edge. I did find it a touch too dry, though, probably the only false note of the meal. Luckily, the salsa bar was self-serve.
The barbacoa, on the other hand, needed no correction. Melt-in-your-mouth, it pulled apart under the fork with that almost confit-like texture you specifically look for in this kind of preparation. Exactly the way I like it.
Then came the item I was most curious about: the gaonera de ribeye, at $8. Served on its blue corn tortilla. The portion of beef was honest, and the taco itself was noticeably more generous than a classic one on the menu. It’s good, no question. But let’s be honest, the price gap compared to a $3.50 taco simply isn’t justified by an equivalent gap in quality. Here, you’re paying more for the concept and the reference than for a genuinely proportional leap in flavor.
It’s hard, though, to talk about the gaonera de ribeye without mentioning its origin. This style of taco, thinly sliced beef fillet, carefully made tortilla, takes its name from a tribute to Mexican bullfighter Rodolfo Gaona, and owes its worldwide fame to Taquería El Califa de León, in Mexico City. A 10-foot-wide hole-in-the-wall with no seating, which in 2024 became the very first taquería in the world to earn a Michelin star.
