- [José] This is happening in Texas with Texas ingredients and it can only happen here.

It's an expression of home, growing up.

The chef's identity.

- [Fermín] I've lived longer outside of Mexico than I've been in Mexico, and I think the food reflects that.

- These memories drive New Tejano.

They're so New Tejano.

(music surging) (tranquil music) (uplifting dramatic music) (tranquil music) (keyboard tapping) (soft music) When it comes to food, there's always sense memory.

(soft music rising) This nostalgia for the foods that these chefs grew up with.

(birds chirping) (wind rustling) (soft music) (grill sizzling) (person speaking Spanish) (soft music ringing) This is happening in Texas with Texas ingredients and it can only happen here.

(birds chirping) [José] Hola, cómo estás?

[Server] Bien.

Okay Esos son los de borrego, y esos son de barbacoa de res - [José] Okay.

- [Server] Cabeza de puerco y bistec.

Okay?

Perfecto.

Muchas gracias.

Sí.

- So tacos are generally customizable.

Put a little onion, cilantro, squirt a lime.

This is very, very warm, it's fresh salsa.

This is probably chile de árbol, which means it's gonna be spicy and I'll probably get the hiccups.

Oops, I got a little heavy-handed with that, but let's go.

The green salsa's always the hottest one.

It will kill you.

(gentle music) And you'll love it.

Oh yeah.

Mm, that's really spicy.

(chuckles) (music whooshes) (gentle music continues) You will get messy.

You'll probably stain your shirt, but that's okay.

It's proof that you fell in love.

That first bite got me.

(coughs) Excuse me.

(chuckles) (light music) "Texas Monthly" covers the most important state in the country and covers every part of it.

The beautiful, the multifacetedness, the ever-changing, and part of that is Mexican food and culture.

The thing about Mexican food is you cannot know everything.

It is unknowable in the fact that the cuisine is hyper regional.

Takes hard work, it takes traveling.

It takes being connected to the people and the culture.

Every day I learn something new, getting to know who they are and I hear their stories.

I feel a responsibility to tell their stories and it was through that that I figured out there's a growing movement of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans who were fusing familiar flavors and preparations with Texas ingredients and bringing about this new but approachable cuisine that isn't Tex-Mex, that isn't Mexican per se.

New Tejano seemed like the best label.

(keyboard tapping) (light dramatic music) (light upbeat guitar music) The Rio Grande Valley, which is on the border between Texas and Mexico is significant to New Tejano for several reasons, but it's primarily the entry point for all things Mexican.

New Tejano started right over there and permeated across Texas through this fence.

(light upbeat guitar music continues) We're gonna go meet my buddy, Nathan.

He's the go-to source on all things RGV history and food.

Oh, good to see you, man.

This is a little jazzed up, right?

- [Nathan] For sure.

- Green spaghetti is usually just the pasta with the sauce.

- The side dish.

Not a lot of places will serve it on their menu, but it's a staple here in Brownsville and throughout The Valley.

- Green spaghetti is a home dish.

It feels like home.

It feels like your grandmother's kitchen.

It feels like Sundays.

(pan sizzling) (light upbeat music) it feels like holidays and that's when you really see a bunch of it.

But it's only within the last few years you see it showing up on restaurant menus along the border and further inland to New Tejano.

- Every time my wife and I are at a quinceañera or wedding, we'll like make a bet, like, "How much you want to bet green spaghetti is gonna be on the menu?"

(José laughs) - What do you think really defines how The Valley's food influences New Tejano and just Texas food in general?

- Here, a lot of the chefs left to go get that training and then decided to come back, and with the knowledge of that training, used what we have here locally, what they grew up on, and then created those dishes and those changes.

But to now have a movement where we're, "No, we're gonna like literally nixtamalize like the tortilla and make it here in the restaurant before it's served," is something amazing.

- Ana Liz Taqueria is not flashy.

It's in a strip mall.

You're going to pass it by unless you're looking for it.

When it first opened, there were four tables.

The chef owner of taqueria was working the register as well as cooking.

Her name would be Ana Liz Pulido and she's real quiet.

I walked in there and they were delicious.

And every time I went to The Valley, I went back to that place and it just kept getting better.

(dried corn rustling) (light music) Ana Liz Pulido was essentially born into food.

Her father had restaurants, snack shops.

And growing up, she tagged along while he shopped, and even helped run some of them.

- It's like a different childhood, you know what I mean?

But I really like that he gave me a snack shop when I was like 17.

- [José] So you ran your own business at the age of... - 17.

- Of 17.

She was a born entrepreneur, running the little snack shop that her father gave her wasn't enough for Ana.

She knew that there was more to learn.

(light upbeat music) - Well, honestly, my dad didn't want me to study culinary arts.

I didn't see myself in a office on a computer working all day.

- You're restless.

- Yeah.

- That's what the word, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Through her formal education at culinary school, she fused formal techniques with regional food and gave us one aspect of New Tejano, the chile relleno taco.

- [Ana] So it's a jalapeno pepper, and we cut it in half, take out the seeds.

We fried them, and then we put mozzarella cheese and then just fajita, and it usually comes in a corn tortilla.

- The chili's usually whole and filled because that's in the name, "filled chili."

But this is kind of deconstructed, which adds fun, which adds creativity.

But it's most often a big entree.

- No, and not even that, it's a different pepper too.

- Yeah.

- The chile relleno in Mexico is a chile poblano.

- Right.

With the corn tortilla, but not just any corn tortilla, a handmade nixtamalized corn tortilla.

Nixtamalization is the process by which dried corn is cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution, releasing nutrients.

The process itself originated about 4,000 years ago in Mesoamerica.

So she's really reaching back to the ancestors.

- People still think like we paint the tortillas.

- Really?

- Yeah, I'm like... And the best decision was that to put the display over there, the bags.

And I was like, "Go check the bags."

(both laughing) This is blueprint- - The proof is there.

- Yeah, the proof is there.

- I was reminded of walking through corn fields when I ate it and the smell of corn lingered on my fingers for hours.

(light upbeat music) - You know what I hate the most, is like Mexican cuisine or Mexican food, it has to be cheap.

- It has to be cheap.

- So if you see our menu, it's not cheap.

- No, but it's not expensive either.

- [Ana] No, but for down here in The Valley- - Yeah, yeah.

- It's a difference, like... - People want cheap Mexican food, but they don't understand what it takes.

- And we just open the restaurant for six hours for service.

So people doesn't see the behind scenes, you know what I mean?

- [José] Yeah, it's a lot of work.

- It's a lot of work.

But believe me, it's worth it.

When you try it, it's like, it's totally worth it.

(gentle guitar music) - The first time I had this taco, my world went silent and that's when I knew there was something really special about it way back in 2022 and it just gets better and better.

(José chuckling) She is the First Lady of New Tejano.

- I feel like here in this area, like next to the water, I feel like I'm kind of like in Mexico, but just like in another area, you know what I mean?

- Yeah, yeah.

No food can be stopped by a wall, by a body of water.

(gentle guitar music) Who doesn't want to get baptized in rich culture that blends so perfectly at the Rio Grande Valley?

Where you have a little bit of Mexico and you have a little Texas, and then you have New Tejano.

(gentle guitar music fading) (light music) One of the things you'll find with New Tejano is expected combination that at first leave you concerned about whether this is gonna be good or not.

It's gonna be great.

And it's this innovation that drives New Tejano.

- [Leo] It's like there's certain things, especially in San Antonio that you don't play around with.

You don't play around with the Spurs, you don't play around with fiesta, and then you don't play around with barbacoa.

(soft dramatic music) My grandpa would start barbacoa on a Friday and the rule was you had to go to church, you'd get to eat the barbecue.

My grandma would make fresh corn tortillas, árbol salsa.

He had a pecan tree in the backyard and then his favorite snack was just watermelon.

I just really remember that time being just a happy place for me.

- Like Ana, Leo Davila is a foundational chef in New Tejano.

His melding of childhood flavors with San Antonio standards... (bright music) It's an expression of his home, of his growing up.

He puts it all in with his professional training, with his own ideas.

(pan sizzling) (bright music continues) - We talk about an ingredient or a technique that's 500 years old, 100 years old, and I looked at it and said, well, they perfected that.

How can I add on to what they've already built?

(pan sizzling) What we're doing is we're paying respect to the process, respect to the ingredients.

I'm not detracting or deflecting what a taco is.

I'm just putting my spin on it.

And one day, I was just sitting there talking, and I was like, you know what?

Is it crazy to sub out the water and put Big Red?

- Big Red and barbacoa usually go side by side.

Leo Davila took it one step further.

He put the two together in a taco.

- [Leo] The sweetness from the Big Red into the masa comes together nicely with the fatty, fatty beef cheek that we're gonna pair it with.

So it's just really just an all-in-one-encompassing childhood memory.

- I went to Stixs & Stone for this Big Red and barbacoa taco.

I thought it was a gimmick.

It was freaking delicious, man!

It was so great, it worked together and you get these earthy notes from pickled watermelon and pecan pesto.

And then I realized it's not a gimmick.

It's an expression of the chef's identity, of him being Chinese-Mexican American.

- I didn't grow up Chinese enough, I didn't grow up Mexican enough, but I grew up San Antonio enough.

I grew up Texas enough.

Using a wok isn't traditional, but it's authentic to who I am and how I cook, and that's how we try to stay at the core of who we are.

We don't want to be anything different.

- [José] Pink tortilla doesn't scream Tex-Mex Mexican.

It is traditional to Leo Davila.

It's traditional to San Antonio, traditional to Texas.

That is traditional, that is him.

That is sincere, genuine.

- So Stixs & Stone started spring of 2021.

(bright brass band music) We just kind of ran with it and had fun.

Part of the first thing was getting on this list of the 50 best tacos in Texas coming in, and that just sparking where we were at, and then momentum just started to really flow for us.

James Beard semi-finalist nomination came in.

A lot of things were firing in all cylinders, which gave us a lot of great attention, and that attention attracted the owner of the hotel, Sid Greehey.

- [José] Stixs & Stone closed because Leo Davila got an opportunity to have a bigger restaurant, The St.

Anthony Hotel.

- You know, looking back and knowing that Stixs & Stone was on the side of town where we were in a strip mall, we were eight tables covered with butcher paper, we were 34 seats, small humble beginnings.

- [José] He brought his team, plus his menu to the new restaurant.

He's at the big show now.

- To know that these guests have traveled a world that present and look for a certain standard of what luxury means and what a hotel dining scene means, and to know that we can still serve our tacos, we can still serve food that's special to us... - [José] Four walls in a nondescript shopping center to a large hotel restaurant, it's obvious that Leo is in demand.

And with it, New Tejano.

- Traditionalism is great.

There's techniques that we need to preserve and we need to make sure are there, but also, I hope that there's chefs with like minds that are pushing what that cuisine looks like.

Traditionalism and how it's always been is important, but also understanding where food can go is how we kind of get to Big Red and barbacoa.

- Even today, there are prevailing myths that Mexican food is cheap, kind of dirty, it's best served in holes in the wall.

What New Tejano and all these restaurants are showing us that we can have a new way of looking at Mexican food while showing the diversity of Mexican food.

(gentle music) Este Garden is an open, small farm which connects Este with his sister restaurant, Suerte.

The driving force behind how these ingredients will match with other ingredients, using traditional Mexican ingredients to create a new plate grown here, that's very New Tejano.

(gentle music rings) (wind rustling) - I always say that Suerte, his first language is English, but is very fluent in Spanish.

And that's how I describe what we do.

- [José] Suerte has got a lot of beef, it's got a lot of masa, and Este is breezier.

Literally, it's breezier.

It's open, it's seafood dishes.

- I always jokingly say that Este is the Suerte of the sea.

- [José] And both restaurants are based on the garden that they share that they call Este Garden.

- Something clicked in me because it's in my blood.

My grandfather had a ranch in Mexico and he grew corn, and cotton, and veggies, and my dad would have to go and work.

- She's from the border.

She went to business school, but ultimately she wanted to farm.

She wanted to literally get back to her roots.

- Growing up on the border, it was that in-betweenness of being on the Mexican and American side, and it's not half of anything.

It's just like completely, it's 100% of both.

(laughing) Yeah.

- [José] Fermín is from Torreón in northern Mexico.

- Very industrial town, not very known for its food.

Undeclared major, 2.0 GPA.

Got put on probation twice back to back and somewhere along those lines, I read "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain and I realized that that was a part of life that I wanted to pursue.

- [José] He did work his way up from dishwasher to his current position as owner of two restaurants.

- [Fermín] Now you're seeing a lot of chefs that have a lot of experience of training in other kitchens that were not necessarily Mexican.

- [José] You had all these cooks and chefs rising through the ranks of kitchens, so they wanted to make their own food their way.

They wanted to make Mexican food, but they wanted to put their own stamp on it using Texas ingredients.

It was inevitable.

(dramatic music pulsating) (light guitar music) (light music whooshing) (light guitar music rings) - What I wanted you to come to Austin and miss that place from Austin, not come to Austin to remember a place that you went to Mexico.

And I think our tortillas represent that 100% because it's a technique that is ages old from Mexico with corn that's grown here from Austin, from Texas.

That, to me, is the basis of what we're doing.

- [José] Having the garden behind Este forces Fermín to ask Anamaria what she's growing, and then forces Fermín to use those ingredients.

- As a chef, it's almost better to have somebody tell you, "This is what you have to work with."

If Anamaria comes to me and is like, "I need you to make a dish with squash," I'm focused and I know exactly what I need to do.

That's the beauty of having something like a garden behind us and it also tastes amazing.

- [Anamaria] All flowering.

- Oh wow.

- Yeah.

- Do you have all kinds of flowering basil?

- These green beans, they're in our tamale right now, covered with the Hoja Santa, and then on top, we have these just a little grill, a little char.

- [Fermín] Instead of using like a traditional corn husk or banana leaf, we wrap the masa in the Hoja Santa.

- [José] Which is a big leaf that will grow just about anywhere and it gives it a vegetal, licoricely flavor.

- It's so beautiful.

The leaves can get really large, making it perfect to wrap your fish, masa, of course, like our tamale, or a quesadilla.

I tell volunteers to just crack an egg on it.

- Mexicans figured out how to use it, right?

I think that's what I love about being Mexican, is like nopales, right?

Like how hungry did we have to be that we said, we looked at this plant with spines and they said, "Let's take 'em off and and eat it," you know?

That's like, that to me is being Mexican at its best.

You just figure it out.

- The tamale has nothing in it but corn.

It's just corn masa with this roasted plant.

That shows us New Tejano doesn't have to be fancy.

(soft uplifting music) - [Fermín] I feel very Mexican to my roots because that's where I'm from.

But I also have to be realistic.

I've been in Austin for 15 years.

I've lived longer outside of Mexico than I've been in Mexico, you know?

And I think the food reflects that in a way.

But I still feel super Mexican and I don't want to ever lose that.

- Now I'm here and I am super grounded in the earth.

Through this, I've really gotten to connect with the history of our people, growing corn.

- What Fermín and Anamaria are doing together are not just assembling ingredients onto a dish.

They're taking their memories, they're taking their identities, their whims.

(uplifting orchestral music) (Anamaria laughs) We always go back to this.

We go back to these nice memories.

And these nice memories drive New Tejano.

People love good food.

New Tejano is good food, but it's also familiar enough that they get interested in anything in a tortilla.

And once they take a bite of it, they're in love.

(uplifting orchestral music) (crowd chattering indistinctly) I look at them, all of them, and I think to myself, tacos are everywhere.

They come from everywhere, but they also want to go to the people.

And tacos are a force for good.

(gentle music ringing) (gentle guitar music) When I write about Mexican food, it's my responsibility to show where we come from, where we are, and where we're going.

New Tejano happens to be evolving.

My writing centers on the people who make that food.

- Tamalito.

- Cool!

They innovated, they did what they could with what they had.

They created genius.

And got to meld what they learned in the kitchen with what they knew growing up, and it's beautiful.

It's special, but it's of home and it's where New Tejano comes from.

(soft guitar music rings)