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Margarito “Mago” Pérez remembers the part of his childhood spent in Ville Hermoso—just outside Matamoros, Brownsville’s sister city—well. The one-room home had no air-conditioning, running water, indoor plumbing, or roof.
Pérez’s father supported his wife and children by working as a mechanic at the garage he owned. Unlike his male cousins, who were told to go outside and play, Pérez stayed in to assist the family matriarchs in the kitchen, grabbing ingredients for dishes. “I knew it meant snacks,” Pérez says. “I got the first tortillas, the first slice of carne asada off the grill.” He also rode his tricycle to pick up limes. He didn’t know it at the time, but such occasions made him the taquero he is today.
Pérez, who now owns Paprika ATX, a taco truck in Austin, was five years old, when his mother convinced his father that it was time to immigrate to the U.S. The family settled in Logansport, Indiana, which might seem like an odd choice for a young blue-collar Mexican family, but they were following Pérez’s grandparents, who had already been in Indiana for a few years and worked at a meat-processing plant.
Looking back, Pérez recalls that the catalyst for immigrating was the promise of the American dream. “You hear the expressions, the exaggerations, like you don’t even have to wash clothes in the U.S., you just buy new clothes every day,” Pérez says. “And it’s like all these promises of things that take advantage of people with fewer resources.”
Life in the U.S. was nothing like they had been told. To make matters worse for soccer enthusiast Pérez, when colleges approached him to talk about athletic scholarships and asked for his Social Security number, he didn’t have one to give. Pérez was undocumented. “It changed everything for me,” he says. “I didn’t feel welcomed and started to see things differently.” Not that life in the Rust Belt is easy for anyone. Pérez shares tales of parents working in industrial facilities to give their children better lives and the opportunity to attend college—only to have them working in the same plants. “It’s just this hole that swallows you up,” Pérez says.
In 2010 Pérez left most of his family to move to Austin. In October 2019, after years of working for cash in different kitchens, he opened Paprika ATX. Other than watching his family cook, Pérez had little knowledge of preparing and serving tacos. But he did have his mother at his side, an unshakable work ethic, and the determination to not repeat the mistakes of his elders or put himself in dire straits. He knew what hunger felt like, and he wasn’t about to feel it again. Regardless of the quantity available, the food his family ate was high-quality and delicious. “That’s what I’m chasing,” he says of his mission. “That’s what we’re trying to do here.” That mission got a easier when Pérez married his wife, Hayden, in 2020 and got his green card.
Naturally, there were mistakes early on. Paprika ATX was open too frequently with too large a menu. Customers could order everything from ceviche to chips and queso. It didn’t help that the truck was parked at a different spot each day. To alleviate these issues, Pérez shortened the hours of operation, landed a permanent spot on North Lamar Boulevard, and narrowed his menu.
He decided to focus on tacos served on thick, fragrant nixtamalized corn tortillas from El Milagro. Customers could add crispy, cheesy costras to their tacos, which paired well with the fillings, particularly the vegetal nopalitos. He slimmed down the salsa options to a spicy, creamy green salsa; a smoky, tingly red salsa; and an addictive salsa macha. The last—an oil-based salsa with nuts, seeds, and charred or dried chiles—has a more intense heat but is still delightful. The suadero taco, which features beef braised in its own fat, has soft and juicy meat that falls in clumps from the tortilla. The carnitas taco, with pork cooked confit in lard, shows off chopped-up meat that is sweet-tinged and crispy-edged. On Saturdays Pérez serves tacos al pastor from a trompo.
Pérez didn’t want to be a taquero when he grew up; he wanted to play professional soccer. With tangles of black hair barely contained by a cap, a long beard, and an Austin FC jersey, he looks the part. Hayden, a former schoolteacher, sparkles when Pérez brags about her picking up recipes and traditions so well that she’s taken over kitchen duties. She wears a traditional, colorful embroidered apron called a mandil bordado. “The nopales in the taco, that’s all Hayden,” Pérez brags. Hayden beams like a revered cocinera tradicional, the vaunted position given to women who shepherd regional gastronomic culture from one generation to the next. “It’s an honor!” she says, poking her head though the pickup window. Then she directs her husband to get more seasoning. He obliges.
The couple experienced a more serious hiccup earlier this year. On July 24 Pérez announced that Paprika ATX was temporarily closing. He went on to write in the post’s caption that he needed to file new papers with the Austin Health Department as a result of an error in the address of the commissary kitchen. In all caps, Mago explained, “Our hope is that we can return sooner than later but we don’t have an exact timeline.” It also meant the closure of Paprika ATX’s window at Long Play Lounge, a bar a few minutes’ drive from the truck, where the couple served dinner.
At the time, I was finalizing my list of the 50 Best Tacos in Texas and planned to include Paprika ATX, but I had to omit it. I’ve been a fan of the Pérezes’ great tacos and aguas frescas (my favorite is the guava) for quite some time, so I was relieved when Paprika ATX reopened on August 17.
About two months later, the truck was serving tacos alongside La Santa Barbacha and the Austin Taco Mafia at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. The Pérezes usually declined offers to participate in large events. “We weren’t ready back then, but the opportunity at ACL just felt right,” Mago Pérez says.
The activity at the taco booths was a wild throwback to Mexican mercados. “Rosa [of La Santa Barbacha] and I were shouting, ‘¡Pásale! ¡Pásale! Tacos! ¡Pásale!’ ” Pérez says. For those of us familiar with the street hawking calls of food vendors in Mexico, it was a siren call. To others, it gave them a bit of Mexico’s sounds. Festivalgoers started to get excited. Soon the other taquerias joined in, he recalls. For ninety minutes, Pérez felt immersed in the reminder of home. “That’s always been the goal,” he says, after “not being able to go back to Mexico for the longest time and wanting to have a little piece of it here.”
Paprika ATX
6519 N Lamar Boulevard, Austin
Phone: 512-716-5873
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11–3
Paprika ATX at Long Play Lounge
704 W St Johns Avenue, Austin
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 6–sold out
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