Cinco de Mayo celebrations are happening all weekend in Southwest Detroit, and Friday kicks off their Taco Tour and Tequila Crawl. A total of 16 authentic Mexican restaurants and taquerias are participating in this crawl, that has four pre-planned routes you can choose to go on. There is no cost for participating in this event.
One of the stops along the way is the very authentic restaurant, Taqueria El Nacimiento.
"We try to serve the most authentic food we can, If you want more authentic food the next stop is Mexico," says Joel Padilla, El Naciemeinto's manager, and the owner's son.
Joel and his father have been serving up the real deal for many years now. His father originally owned his own taco stand in Guadalajara, Mexico in the 1980s. He eventually moved to America and found his way to Detroit in the 1990s.
"My dad had seen Detroit was full of opportunities. He'd seen this building, the building used to be a hardware store. He acquired it in 2000, he bought it, we started working on it, and we opened our doors in June of 2001," explained Joel.
Joel has been working with his dad since he was little, and now he helps manage the restaurant. He says this experience taught him a lot along the way.
The name, El Nacimiento, is a reference to the ranch his father grew up on in Mexico. His food has family ties too, with a lot of them being family recipes. They serve traditional Mexican food, along with some dishes with their own twist like their take on a Surf 'n Turf, Mar y Tierra. They have a large taco menu that is served the classic way with corn tortillas, meat, onions and cilantro with limes and salsa on the side.
Taqueria El Nacimiento is located at 7400 Vernor Hwy, in Detroit. For more information on the festivities happening in Southwest, visit their Business Improvement Districts website.