Roseville Taqueria Nixtaco Gains National Attention
ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — A Roseville taqueria is getting national recognition.
But if you ask owner Patricio Wise, there's nothing gourmet about how Nixtaco makes their famed tacos.
"It's just properly made with good ingredients and a lot of care," Wise said.
The latest accolade has come from SFGate.com, who earlier this week highlighted Nixtaco with the bold headline that "Northern California's best tacos aren't in the Bay Area."
Again, Nixtaco's blue corn tortillas stole the show.
"It was nothing like the corn tortillas I've had stateside, leaving a lingering impression on me, even weeks after my visit," wrote SFGate.com's Dianne de Guzman.
Opened in 2015, the Nuevo Leon-native Wise says he wanted to replicate the kind of tortillas usually only found in Mexico.
"As you go to the markets there, you see the ladies grinding the corn by hand," Wise said.
Nestled in a nondescript Roseville strip mall along Cirby Way, on the opposite side of Interstate 80 from both downtown and the Galleria, Wise says everyone told him that his restaurant was going to fail.
"We built this with the intention of making it more like a neighborhood place - and you can tell, we're in the middle of nowhere," Wise said.
But, in 2019, the little neighborhood joint got a glowing write-up in Food & Wine - who declared that Nixtaco has put Roseville on "the taco map."
Nixtaco now goes through a pallet of corn a month. They cook and grind it in-house.
"Everything that comes in is fresh, so we need to process it really quickly. And, thankfully, we have that turnaround to actually make it happen," Wise said.
Even in the middle of the workweek, Nixtaco was full of eager patrons.
"The first time I took a bite of one of the tacos, I was like, my God … I can't remember eating a taco like that in the United States," said one eater.
Nixtaco is open Tuesdays through Sundays. Its hours being 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and Sundays 11 a.m.-3 p.m.