A San Fernando Valley Taco Empire Expands

NORTHRIDGE-CHATSWORTH, CA — Daniel Vazquez will follow in his father's footsteps by carrying on a 35-year family taco legacy in the San Fernando Valley, along with his wife, Jennifer Vazquez, and longtime business partner, Anton Carreon.

Daniel Vazquez owns a food truck in Van Nuys and a taco restaurant that just opened in Northridge. But that's just the tip of the iceberg for his Valley taco journey.

Daniel Vazquez's father, Vicente Vazquez, ran restaurants in the Valley for 35 years. He currently owns eight restaurants, which have been run for about 15 years by Daniel Vazquez; his sister, Nancy Martinez; and Jennifer Vazquez.

Recently Daniel Vazquez stepped out on his own. He currently operates a food truck called Tacos El Tijuanazo and opened a new taco restaurant, Tacos El Tijuanense, in Northridge in early October. The restaurant is the culmination of his work with his father, he said.

"I grew up in this. ... This is like second nature," Daniel Vazquez said. He added: "It's the culmination of things, of the experience of the 14-16 years that I've been actually working in my dad's restaurants. [I was] growing along the way and learning new things — I started from washing dishes to working the register to actually learning how to cook the food."

In 2019, Daniel Vazquez opened the Tacos El Tijuanazo food truck in Van Nuys, bringing with him many people who had worked at his father's restaurants before. The success of the food truck drove the opening of his Northridge eatery this month.

He runs both the food truck and Northridge restaurant with his partner, Carreon, whom he's known since he was 10 years old. Carreon, whom Vazquez calls the "muscles" of the operation for his experience in the kitchen, is from the same area in Mexico as the Vazquez family and worked with Daniel Vazquez's father for years.

As his mother did, Daniel Vazquez's wife recently quit her job to join the Northridge team full time, making the Tacos El Tijuanense location another all-hands family undertaking.

The first couple of weeks in the Northridge location went better than Daniel Vazquez could have imagined, he said.

"In my dad’s experience, he’s opened several restaurants himself, and a couple of them closed down. He never got up and running this fast. It helps that we have a social media page because we have that exposure," Daniel Vazquez said. "We’re basically up and running like the food truck — it took us two years to get to that point. For us, me and my father, it’s kind of unheard of … that we’re up and running this much and so fast."

Social Media

Daniel Vazquez tried to step out on his own five years ago but had to close the restaurant. This time around, he thinks the key difference is social media and birria tacos. Enter Teddy Vazquez, Daniel's cousin.

Birria tacos, which are Tijuana-style tacos served with a rich broth, took over social media last year thanks to Teddy Vazquez and friends and brothers Omar and Oscar Gonzalez. The three men changed "the course of Mexican street food in America," Eater reported, by bringing birria to Los Angeles and, more important, to Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.

Following his cousin's lead, Daniel Vazquez hired a well-known social media manager in the area and hopped on the birria trend.

Today, Tacos El Tijuanense has 144,000 followers on Instagram, and videos of Daniel Vazquez's tacos have received tons of likes. He attributed much of his new location's success to social media.

One of the best parts of opening up the Northridge location was running into old friends, he said.

"Being in here day in and day out, I'm seeing friends that I haven't seen in years," Daniel Vazquez said.