La Pachanga Eatery’s ACL Debut

In its 22-year history, Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACL) has boosted numerous local vendors, providing food from some of Austin’s staple restaurants for both Austinites and tourists alike. This year’s festival saw a surge of Austin’s renowned taco spots, with newcomers such as La Taquicardia and Veracruz All Natural.

The newly created La Pachanga Eatery highlighted local minority-owned businesses, focusing primarily on taquerias. The Eatery featured eight local restaurants, a collective created by Luis “Beto” Robledo, owner of Cuantos Tacos and Cuantas Hamburguesas and Anthony Pratto, Discada co-owner.

The 2023 ACL Fest was Robledo’s first, both as a vendor and as a homegrown Austinite. Knowing the festival’s scale, Robledo was anxious in preparation for his restaurants’ debut at ACL.

“Luckily, you know, our team is very solid, so once we saw how the first day went, we were able to ramp up immediately, right away for the next weekend,” Robledo said.

Robledo started Cuantos Tacos in 2019, and since then the taco truck nestled into the Arbor Food Park in East Austin has amassed steadfast support throughout the city, with Robledo being featured on the Austin PBS show “Taco Mafia.” Cuantas Hamburguesas was part of the inaugural La Pachanga Eatery, while Cuantos Tacos remained in the ACL Eats section.

First-time vendors, such as La Taquicardia, also prepared for the transformation of their business for the festival, which spans two back-to-back weekends in October.
La Taquicardia, which is named in honor of the heart-racing experience the owners seek to inspire with their tacos, first opened in 2022 in the Southern Heights Brewery, now having expanded to four locations throughout the city.

Noe Ramirez, brother to La Taquicardia co-owner Mayra Ramirez, delineated the preparation process his family went through, including scaling their restaurant into the festival-provided booth and menu planning. As a family-owned business, securing locations for their restaurants is a top concern, especially in a city that is facing rapid gentrification and urbanization.

“We’ve worked in food establishments our whole lives. And we [have seen] how places that we used to work in get bought up,” Ramirez said. “That’s one of the reasons that we ended up switching to our own business, because we realized that we couldn’t necessarily rely on something that we thought was stable. [This] propelled us to start.”

Ramirez says his family works to encapsulate his mother’s traditional Mexican cooking while dually paying homage to their Austin roots.

“Our barbacoa is marinated with beer from Southern Heights [Brewery], our first location,” Ramirez said. “I always tell people that our ‘racoa is very Austinite, because it also tells our story of where we started and how receptive people were to it. People love the idea that they can taste our stories essentially with what we use in our food.”

Robledo’s business model also remains loyal to authentic cooking, as he says he denies bringing items like chicken fajitas and chips and queso to his menu per customer demand. He views the city’s rapid growth as beneficial and increasing Austin’s diversity, but remains clear in his vision for Cuantos Tacos as he looks to expand into a brick and mortar restaurant.

“One of the things that I’ve always done in most of my professional career is I stick to what I know and what I know that I’m capable of being able to do consistently,” Robledo said. “Having that foundation and never steer[ing] away from it.”