Mijas Taqueria

A TASTE OF MONTERREY

Mijas Taqueria offers authentic Mexican cuisine

Story by TINA-TIEN NGUYEN | Photography by KATHY TRAN

THE SOUNDS OF CUMBIA

AND SPANISH ROCK music fill Mijas Taqueria, a new neighborhood Mexican restaurant.

“When you come to Mijas, it’s like coming to a part of Mexico where you can try different plates and flavor profiles that you find in Mexico,” owner Walter Rosales says.

You won’t find much TexMex at Mijas Taqueria. It’s solely authentic Mexican cuisine and dishes, primarily from Rosales’ hometown of Monterrey.

“It seems like there were a lot of taco restaurants, but they were more on the side of Torchy’s and not really on the authentic side,” Rosales says. “So we are trying to bring a little bit of our culture to Lake Highlands.”

Customers can select from an array of fillings for street tacos — carnitas, tinga, barbacoa, trompo, shrimp, carne deshebrada, cochinita pibil, tripas, veggies and chicharron. Served on either freshly made corn or flour tortillas, the tacos come with chopped cilantro and onions, and house-made mildly spicy tomatillo verde salsa and a spicier, hot roja sauce made with sesame oil and chile de arbol. For special plates, the restaurant serves gringas, campechanas, sopes and flautas.

“We always make everything fresh, but besides the food, we will always focus on personalized service and making everyone feel at home,” he says. “If you take that away, it kind of just becomes another big chain restaurant.”

Authentic soups on the menu are frijoles charro beans, caldo de res, pozole and menudo, which is traditionally only served on weekends. The recipes came from Rosales’ mother, who died five years ago.

“You know, it’s funny that growing up, every Sunday, my mom used to have barbacoa, menudo or pozole. I grew up eating that soup and it has a lot of sentimental value,” Rosales says.

“It’s like I have my mom sitting right next to me every time I eat it.”

Rosales started working in restaurants when he was 14 years old. He spent 21 years at Mi Cocina, starting as a dishwasher and working his way to region manager, traveling to different cities and opening new locations.

“Being in the restaurant business is something I love to do,” he says. “That’s why if I have to work here seven days a week, I don’t feel it because I enjoy it.”

Some of his West Village Mi

Opposite page: Trompo tacos with mildly spicy tomatillo verde salsa and a spicier, hot roja sauce made with sesame oil and chile de arbol.

Cocina regulars now live in the neighborhood and frequent Mijas. His wife, Erika, manages the original Wylie location. They opened a second location in Rowlett that shuttered last year before opening the Lake Highlands spot.

“I’ve only been here for three weeks and never been to a place that is so welcoming,” he says. “It just makes us want to go above and beyond even more to give back to this neighborhood. We’re so blessed to have great people around us.”

Craving breakfast items? Mijas Taqueria serves breakfast all day, too.

“I’m a breakfast kind of guy,” Rosales says. “So at 6 or 7 p.m., I’m in the back eating breakfast tacos.”

Dessert includes Mexican flan, frescas con crema, tres leches cake and the “volcano” — churros served with vanilla ice cream, caramel and chocolate. The restaurant brings in empanadas from local bakery Three Sisters.

“If you go to a fine dining restaurant, you’re already expecting great service. But when you go to a taqueria restaurant and get the same exact great service, it kind of goes above and beyond what people expect,” Rosales says.

“The people are not just customers, they also become our friends. So attention to detail is a must, along with making new friends who later become our family members. The bigger the family, the better our community.”

Mijas Taqueria, 9901 Royal Lane, 469.372.2324, @MijasTaqueria, mijastaqueria.com

Above: Tacos tlaquepaque comes with five barbacoa tacos served with housemade sauce.

Right: The taqueria is named after Rosales’ daughters 16-year-old Mia and 14-year-old Mya — mijas is Spanish for “my daughters,” which is reflected in the restaurant’s logo.

Cutline + Photography by sentence. No photo credit if byline.

Eighth-grader Chloe Clemens told her mom she was concerned about one of her friends as she was getting ready for bed one evening. At Richardson North Junior High that day, Chloe’s friend told their teacher she was worried about a book she was reading that had “so many F-words in it.”

The book, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, was among 10 books that students could choose to read and discuss for an assignment in the gifted and talented English, language arts and reading class. The F-word appears in the story 39 times.

Chloe’s mother, Sherry Clemens, knew about the assignment because some of the books on the list could only be read with consent from parents. Chloe had chosen a book that didn’t require parent permission, and Sherry assumed the books that came with permission slips explored “hot topics” or were “a little more mature,” she said in an October interview with Blaze Media . (Sherry Clemens, who is running for the RISD District 2 seat, declined to be interviewed for this story.)

When Chloe made the comment about her friend, Sherry’s curiosity was piqued. She began researching the books her daughter was exposed to in school, Googled a few, and told Blaze she “couldn’t believe it.”

A former elementary teacher in Forney ISD, Sherry Clemens started asking questions of the Richardson North Junior High and the RISD administration — including Lindsay Mikulas, the director of English language arts. Eventually she made her concerns public at the Sept. 20, 2021, RISD board meeting.

“How is it my daughter could be reading books with major profanity and sexual content that in the end, [Mikulas] said because it was the goal of RISD to reach all students,” Sherry Clemens said at the meeting. “I demand better for my children. You focus on education. I would tell you to stay in your lane, but guess what, you’re not even in the right direction.”

That wasn’t the end of the discussion. Parents, including Sherry Clemens, started sharing graphics on social media, warning families to avoid books they find pornographic, obscene or traumatic.

But other parents take the opposite view.

Mother Julie Robinson, who has a seventh-grader in RISD, recently started a banned book club called Fahrenheit 450. Any books that have been banned at some point or another are fair game.

“The effects of banning books are catastrophic since it limits knowledge, the right to free speech and freedom of thought,” Robinson says.

Sherry Clemens started the discussion that led RISD to evaluate its guidelines for selecting books at a time when groups throughout the country are wrestling with the same issue: Who can determine which books are appropriate for which children. And these debates over what makes it on the library shelves are wrapped up with religious beliefs, political ideologies and social issues.

books in question

Earlier this year, a post warning RISD parents to prevent their children from reading 17 books circulated on Facebook:

• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe • All American Boys by Jason

Reynolds & Brendan Kiely • Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina • Parachutes by Kelly Yang • Far From The Tree by Robi Benway • Everybody Sees The Ants by A.S.

King • All Boys Aren’t Blue by George

Matthew Johnson

• Flamer by Mike Curato • Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and

You by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X.

Kendi

• Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender • George by Alex Gino • Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison • Class Act by Jerry Craft • Every Day by David Levithan • Fighting Words by Kimberly

Brubaker Bradley • How It Went Down by Kekla

Magoon • On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

RISD’s response A fter the board meeting, RISD looked at the book list and decided that two of the books, Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina and Everybody Sees The Ants by A.S. King, were inappropriate for junior-high students. They were removed from the classroom, and RISD