Cooking from the Heart

Beto Robledo Serves Up Authenticity At Cuantos Tacos

WORDS BY CHRISTINA GARCIA | PHOTOS BY RALPH YZNAGA

Other cooks put love in their food. At the yellow food truck called Cuantos Tacos on E. 12th Street, Luis “Beto” Robledo adds something more — authenticity. He’s created a daydream. The name means, literally, “How many tacos?” and the easiest, most mouth-watering answer may be the best: try them all. At a mere $12 for all six tacos on the menu, the price seems miraculous. What Robledo gets out of the bargain is a shot of adrenaline. After all, he isn’t allowed to get it any other way — he has a heart condition. Cooking gives him “a rush,” he told us. We think you can taste it in the food.

The longaniza, cachete, buche, suadero, carnitas and champinones tacos come cradled in soft yellow corn tortillas. They steal your heart. They wake you up. They offer a grounding moment of presence with their earthy, bright flavors. The Mexico City-style street tacos become a quick obsession. It’s not just the meat. It’s the fluttering layer of cilantro and fine dice of white onions like a sprinkle of crystals. It’s the green and red salsas, protected by NDA agreements signed by each employee. But the verdict is clear. Dozens of “Best-Of” and “Must-Try” lists confirm: these are possibly the best Mexico City-style street tacos in Austin.

When we met Robledo for dinner at his home on the East Side, he confessed two surprising facts: despite his Mexican background, he first tasted many of the meats he subsequently decided to serve at Cuantos in 2018 during his first visit to Mexico City. He also got close to a heart rupture in 2020 that could have killed him.

If a time machine took Robledo back to meet his younger self, the child would be stunned. While he’s got a sophisticated palate now, he tells us kid Robledo was “capital P” picky when it came to eating. “I didn’t eat vegetables. No vegetables,” he said. “I wouldn’t eat onions. I would just eat meat, rice, potatoes and beans. Very cut and dry.”

A native Austinite, Robledo saw his future in skilled trades before he ever considered food as a profession. Family members worked in construction and automotive repair and he planned to join them. At age 16, his first job at KFC changed those goals. A manager who arrived toting textbooks from Le Cordon Bleu stoked Robledo’s curiosity enough that he scheduled a tour of the culinary institute and never looked back. The first challenge he faced at school, he told us with a laugh, was learning to properly chop an onion. Robledo interned at Uchiko to wrap up his coursework at Le Cordon Bleu. The exacting, precise standards of an internationally renowned Japanese kitchen fascinated him. Japanese technique, he explained, scaffolds his cooking style today, along with French and Mexican techniques. For example, Cuantos cuts with thin, sharp knives — like the Japanese. Raw onions and cilantro at Cuantos are never bulky, crushed, bruised or limp. Especially for cilantro, he said, more processing destroys the flavor.

“It tastes totally different,” he says. Cuantos knives are sharpened regularly.

Robledo also uses a wide pan with a domed center — a chorizera — from Mexico City at Cuantos. The pan allows meat to cook in its own fat in a confit technique with French roots, he says.

Just as influential in his cooking, a personal family trinity looms large. Robledo’s hand at seasoning, mixing and palate are heirlooms from his late aunt, late grandmother and mother. With a strong, delicate palate, Robledo’s aunt taught him to first smell and then taste food. He uses a ladle instead of a whisk or spatula — like his grandmother — incorporating air from the bottom of a pot to create a blender-like vortex.

As the stove bubbled with a pot of pork ribs in his kitchen, Robledo worked in batches, blending and adding bouillon and salsa. He then gently dipped a spoon into his boiling pot directly over a bubble and brought it to the sink to taste. The pork’s collagen had begun to break down, imparting a velvety texture.

“I can smell when something is too salty or needs salt,” he tells us. “That’s not too far off.” He would get feedback on the flavor from his mother later, he told us. The dish would be passed down to his daughter, an animating life force for Robledo. Because his mother suffers from stage five Parkinson’s Disease, the recipe is part of a handful he’d been urgently recreating. He used every scent and flavor in his memory. The same process goes for recreating tacos he tries in Mexico City.

During a pivotal first visit to Mexico City in 2018, Robledo made note of the smell and taste of his favorite tacos, from the first bite to the final burp. It was the year he tried types of tacos he had never had before. Inspired by places like Tacos El Charly, El Vilsito and Los Cocuyos, he opened Cuantos Tacos in Austin in 2019.

Two years later, he hit a speedbump.

Robledo prepared fresh flour tortillas in his kitchen, kneading dough with long fingers, and we asked about the open-heart surgery he referenced in an Instagram post. On his second trip to Mexico City in 2020, heavy eating and lack of rest triggered Pancreatitis. Despite his inherited genetic disorder called Marfans Syndrome, Robledo was uninsured and skipped his check-ups with a doctor. Upon a 2020 hospitalization for Pancreatitis, he learned that his heart was near rupture, and he underwent open heart surgery early the following year.

Robledo showed us the foot-long, slick pink scar over his sternum where he said his chest was cracked open during the operation. His kidneys failed, he told us. He had to learn to walk again. He was unable to speak for weeks. Everything tasted like iron, he says, and he lost 100 pounds in two months. “It felt like I was watching the poltergeist TV screen where everything was going in and out. Everything looked digitized.”

The Cuantos Tacos crew kept the truck running smoothly while Robledo recovered and his friends at Nixta, Discada, Suerte and Comedor all checked in on him. Ultimately, his five-year-old daughter gave him the motivation to heal. Her smiling photo is the only one in his living room when we visit him.

Robledo still heads to Mexico City to gather inspiration from “the mecca for street tacos.” Food trends stay on his radar this way — like tortas improbably loaded with tacos inside. And far from resigned or defeated by health woes, he tells us how he wants to open a Cuantos Tacos in New York City. Preferably, he says, it will be a hole in the wall like his favorite Mexico City taco joint, Los Cocuyos, near the Plaza Zocalo. He’s also just added breakfast tacos to the menu at Cuantos. Robledo’s heart beats strong with ideas for the future of food, lucky for us.

Beto's Flour Tortillas

3 c. flour

2 t. salt kosher or table)

2 t. baking powder

1 stick of butter

PREPARATION

Mix the dry ingredients in medium bowl and set aside. Bring water to boil and turn heat off as soon as the water boils, then add the butter. Melt the butter in the water, then mix into the flour while the butter is still warm. Form the dough into a smooth ball, cover, and let dough rest for ten minutes.

Dust a countertop with a bit of flour and then dust the ball of dough. Using the counter as your new workspace, fold the dough in on itself and then flatten, repeating the process several times. Divide the dough ball into roughly eight balls of equal size. Roll each ball out with a rolling pin until it is flat and thin, about eight inches in diameter. Cook each tortilla on a hot comal, about two minutes and then turn OR turn when it begins to bubble, heating until the tortilla is cooked through and a nice golden color.