Edible Food Finds: Taqueria El Barrio Tortillas de Harina

Photos by Kristin Teig

In the interest of celebrating diversity (rather than adding to divisiveness), it is more than OK to acknowledge that people can have pretty specific culinary preferences. Most of us tend to lean savory or sweet, creamy or crunchy, spicy or mild. When it comes to Mexican food, corn and flour tortillas both have their devotees. Alex Sáenz, chef and co-owner of Taqueria el Barrio and BISq Meats & Sandwiches in Boston’s Time Out Market and Hemlock at the Robert T. Lynch golf course in Brookline, says he was always in the corn camp until his business partner, Servio Garcia, and their staff showed him the light. And now we can all enjoy the taqueria’s fresh, authentic northern Mexican flour tortillas at home.

Taqueria el Barrio’s team, mostly from Mexico’s Sonora region, has been making flour tortillas in-house since the restaurant first opened on Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University in the summer of 2019. (They buy corn tortillas from Hadley’s Mi Tierra.) The decision to sell the tortillas outside the restaurant was both customer- and COVID-driven.

Sold raw, 12 to a package, “it’s not something you find on the market,” says Sáenz, explaining that most other packaged tortillas are already cooked. They are also vegetarian, made with oil instead of lard. Taqueria el Barrio tortillas start to crackle and sizzle as soon as they hit a hot skillet. Then they puff up, bubbles rising first in the middle and spreading outward. It takes less than two minutes to cook each flaky, soft and delicious round. “It’s part of the flavor profile you’re eating,” the chef explains.

In what Sáenz describes as “an emotional roller coaster that I’ve never been through,” he and Garcia were forced to close the Commonwealth Avenue taqueria fairly early in the pandemic. Fortunately, they already had a BISq location established at Time Out Market. The market management team offered them a second location, for the taqueria, and they relocated in the summer of 2020.

As they were getting ready to move, Formaggio Kitchen approached Sáenz and Garcia about selling their tortillas in the Huron Avenue store. In the early days of the pandemic, the partners had set up a Taqueria el Barrio pop-up at BISq with Sáenz’s wife, Rebecca Arnold, also a chef. They sold take-home kits that included the tortillas, which gained almost cult popularity. By late summer 2020 the team began wholesale tortilla production, initially in very small quantities, for Formaggio.

When Time Out Market went into COVID hibernation in December, Taqueria el Barrio shifted its tortilla production to BISq Cambridge. “[Making tortillas] was the one thing we could keep doing that would allow our staff to work and keep getting a paycheck,” Sáenz explains. The staff tweaked the recipe a little so the tortillas would travel better and have a longer shelf life in the refrigerator.

With the restaurant closed and customer demand building—Formaggio’s Kendall Square and South End locations had begun carrying the tortillas—Sáenz began going door-to-door with his restaurant’s unique product, adding vendors and delivering products personally. Typical customer feedback Sáenz receives goes something like, “I’ve finally eaten a flour tortilla for the first time,” he says.

He promises, “Until you try one at home you don’t know what you’ve been missing.”

For a list of markets carrying the tortillas and more, visit:

@taqueriaelbarrioboston
taqueriaelbarrio.com

This story appeared in the Summer 2021 issue.