Mexico City taco shop El Taco H dreams of being ‘Best Patio in Denton’

A new terrace restaurant near Denton Square, El Taco H, offers a Mexico City-inspired greatest hits menu.

Each dish comes with a keepsake for co-owners Mexico City-born Raul Enciso and Nick Bitz, a Bedford resident who has been to Mexico City several times with his friend and business partner. The al pastor – slow-roasted pork cooked on a trompo and topped with pineapple, onion and cilantro in a corn tortilla – is inspired by a restaurant in part of Mexico City; the roast beef taco suadero recipe came from another. The bar’s namesake drink, a mix of mezcal, pineapple, jicama and rosemary syrup, matches a memory Bitz has of sitting on a patio in Mexico City near Alameda Central, the oldest park in the continent.

“I think I’m about to recreate it,” Bitz says of the cocktail. They said that about other recipes too.

El Taco H is a pun. When pronounced in Spanish, “el taco ax” sounds like another Spanish word, “tlacuache”. It means opossum in Spanish, and El Taco H has an opossum as its logo. It also has a slang pronunciation, “takuache” – a word that Enciso says is used to describe Mexican men.

The logo on the restaurant, of a wild-looking red opossum, is a licensed replica of a graffiti they found on a wall in Mexico City during one of their trips. Bitz’s wife was able to track down the artist and they paid him to use the art at Denton.

“We didn’t want to compromise what Mexico means,” Enciso says of the menu and the restaurant.

El Taco H opened on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. But, Bitz says, the concept “started five years ago — in our heads.”

Enciso and Bitz are former roommates and restaurant workers who eventually got into the mortgage business together. They wanted to open a Mexico City-inspired food truck selling tacos stuffed with carne asada, al pastor, and nopales (dried cacti).

The food truck plan was scrapped for a very different start: the restaurant is a 7,000-square-foot juggernaut with a back patio and, possibly, an alfresco venue off to the side. (Currently it is used as a haunted house and maze for the annual Day of the Dead festival in Denton, October 28-29, 2022.)

Owners of El Taco H scrambled to open in time for the festival, which draws large crowds to Denton Square. The coffin race takes place right outside the front door.

Enciso and Bitz moved into the empty address with the help of Radical Hospitality, Denton County’s most prolific restaurant group that owns Barley & Board and LSA Burger Co. The El Taco H address was supposed to be a loaded barbecue and mac and cheese named H2Oak. The restaurant plan was canceled during the coronavirus pandemic.

The H2Oak team left behind neon signs that say “hickory” and “oak” on two walls – once a nod to two types of wood used for barbecuing, but also a nod to the two streets that border the Denton restaurant.

The restaurant features original brick walls, cacti hanging from the ceiling, and lucha libre masks displayed at the bar. Clay bowls offer serve-your-own salsas like chili de arbol, creamy jalapeño, and molcajete. The orange colored habanero salsa was my favorite.

The back patio could possibly be this taco shop’s secret weapon. Past a wall of garage doors, outdoor picnic tables provide plenty of room for horchata, micheladas, sangria, and margaritas.

“Eventually this will be the best patio in Denton,” says Bitz.

El Taco H (pronounced in Spanish as “el taco ah-chay”) is located at 213 E. Hickory St., Denton. It opened on October 26, 2022.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.