A Dearly Missed Austin Taco Food Truck Finds New Life as a Pop-Up

Chef Joseph Gomez, the creator of the acclaimed but now closed taco truck Con Todo, is back with a new pop-up.

Sana Sana Taqueria will offer a new multi-course dinner at North Austin sushi restaurant Tare. The menu for Sana Sana, which will pop up on weekdays when Tare is closed, will continue to tell the story of Gomez’s roots in the Rio Grande Valley. The son of migrant workers, he re-imagines food traditions from the Rio Grande Valley and Northeastern Mexico, like making mole using South Texas pecans. A preview dinner on March 11 included dishes like tamal de conejo with wild rabbit, mole amarillo, and fermented carrot; a spicy guiso de res with dry-aged wagyu beef, salsa morita, Mexican rice, and tortillas made with mesquite pods; and aguachile with dry-aged hamachi and mango from Gomez’s abuela’s house in South Texas. Gomez takes particular pride in sourcing native corn for his dishes from family farms in Mexico and nixtamalizing it in-house, taking it through a process that requires the maize to be soaked in a solution to improve its nutritional value and digestibility.

The pop-up, which has two seatings at 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m., will also feature cocktails from Tare’s forthcoming bar, Bare, which will be located beneath Tare when it opens at the end of this year. It will have drinks like the No Mames Whey, with tequila, sake, and edamame syrup. Tickets for the dinners are $150 and are now available for the month of March (and may continue into April).

Gomez worked with Tare executive chef Michael Carranza at Downtown Asian-Pacific restaurant She’s Not Here, which closed in 2020, so the pair of acclaimed chefs were excited to collaborate again (both Con Todo and Tare were Michelin-recommended this year).

Sana Sana also regularly appears at Gimmicks, a bar in North Austin. Its menu focuses on easy-to-eat bar food that Con Todo served, such as tacos and tamales.

The name Sana Sana refers to the Spanish saying, “Sana sana, colita di rana,” a phrase that literally means “heal, heal, little frog’s tail” but is a comforting saying to help ease pain. Gomez says it’s what his mom said to him when he was upset about closing Con Todo in January.

Gomez says he struggled with the decision to close the taqueria and food truck, which has received tons of recognition since its debut in 2021. The James Beard Foundation named Con Todo a semifinalist in its Best Chef: Texas category. Eater Austin deemed it the Best New Food Truck in 2022, and Eater.com named it one of its Best New Restaurants that same year. But ultimately the challenges of operating a food truck proved too difficult, Gomez says. He recalled regular break-ins, including when a thief stole beef cheeks Gomez had been marinating for days, forcing him to cancel an appearance at the Midnight in the Garden pop-up dinner series.

Gomez hopes these pop-ups will pave the way to a restaurant, but he’s taking it one step at a time, telling Eater, “As of right now, I am focusing [on] all these pop-ups and trying to get the word out there about what I do, the stories I like to tell, and my mission’s work to continue advocating for immigrants and migrant workers because they are the backbone of our industry.”