Lately, the hidden restaurant pop-up, Rincón del Taco, tucked away in the shade of a tin-roofed pavilion in Davie, hasn’t felt so hidden.
Nestor Hernandez says he can barely keep up with all the customers swarming his family’s taco stand, even with a small army of relatives on the job — his sister forming the tortillas, a cousin dicing onions, and his parents sizzling meats on the plancha behind him.
“We just blew up,” says Hernandez, handing a pozol de cacao drink and four tacos on a paper plate to a customer at the register. “People keep posting videos, so the hype never goes away.”
It wasn’t always this way. Hernandez says his parents, Lizet and Isel, started their taqueria in 2021, bouncing around between the parking lot at Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines and Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. But in February, they moved to a vendor spot near the back of the 30-acre Family Farms — and that’s when random influencers started showing up.
Their buzzword-y videos about an “authentic Mexican experience” garnered hundreds of thousands of views and helped turn Rincón del Taco into a local sensation, hailed for serving “the best tacos on a farm in Davie.” Its Instagram following exploded from 500 to 6,500 in a matter of weeks.
“Maybe people just like waiting in lines?” Hernandez jokes when asked why the taqueria went viral.
But then he gets serious: “With farms, people can come pick fruits, they pet animals, and everyone gets a whole experience.”
Now, lunchtime crowds on Saturdays and Sundays queue up in front of the pavilion to try Rincón del Taco’s four fillings — chicken, grilled mushroom, al pastor and carne asada — on ground corn masa tortillas, quesadillas and huaraches. The deluge initially made Hernandez as nervous as the farm animals, so he hired five more workers, for a total of 11.
Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel
The team at Rincón Del Taco in Davie is busy preparing their menu items, which include four fillings on ground corn masa tortillas, quesadillas and huaraches. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The pop-up can also be found on Thursdays at Pembroke Lakes Mall and Fridays back at Family Farms, but “we get zero traffic” there, he says. “Because of [the] videos, people only think we’re open Saturday and Sunday.”
“We never paid for any advertising,” adds Hernandez, who’s admittedly not social media-savvy. “Clients say they see me on Insta. I see one video that’s blowing up with like 6,000 likes in four hours and I’m like, ‘Dang.’ Must be some algorithm thing.”
On a recent Saturday, visitors swelter under the sun in a long line stretching into the dirt parking lot and swap rumors as passing chickens cluck at their ankles.
“I heard it’s an hour wait,” Lourdes Pion tells her friend, Zaida Jones, as she wipes her brow.
Jones checks the time on her smartphone — 12:47 p.m. — then searches for nearby taquerias on Google, weighing options: “Do we seriously wait an hour for the best tacos in Broward?”
“This couple ahead of me said ‘two hours’ and just bounced,” Pion’s fiancee, Kenny Lopez, offers helpfully. Pion just stares at him, sun-fatigued.
Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel
Crowds gather for tacos, quesadillas and huaraches at Rincón del Taco at Family Farms in Davie. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The trio, who traveled here from Pembroke Pines, say they also discovered Rincón del Taco through TikTok reels that featured fast edits of rustic signs, “hidden gem” text overlays, close-ups of bewildered baby goats and blooming sunflowers in strawberry fields.
“[Lourdes] sent me the reels and said, ‘I want to go here.’ And for me, that’s a sign you listen,” Lopez says. “Plus, we can pick strawberries after.”
By 1:30 p.m., the Family Farms parking lot bursts with people on a taco pilgrimage. Under the breezy pavilion, it’s assembly-line poetry: Hernandez’s mother turns hunks of al pastor meat on the propane grill, which crackles and chars against her tongs. She spritzes water on it to release a fragrant wisp of white smoke. At folding tables covered in colorful serapes, crockpots bubble with carne asada, as Hernandez’s brother, sister and other workers prep chile de arbol and dice onions for guacamole. His father pours ice into 5-gallon jugs of passionfruit and horchata de coco juice.
Standing in his Mexico national team soccer jersey, Hernandez, 21, sips water between customers. He says he’s grateful, even if he’d rather be studying for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice than lording over a cash register. He was trying to enroll at Broward College to “become a lawyer or a detective” when the taqueria blew up, but now he’s torn.
Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel
Menu signs are mounted at the Rincón Del Taco pavilion in Davie. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
“Considering how busy I am, I guess I can do classes at night,” he says. “My parents say they’ll give me the time, but the family business is important to them.”
Lizet Hernandez was a street taco vendor in Puebla, Mexico, where her brothers and sisters owned restaurants. Her husband, Isel, a cook originally from Chiapas, experimented with salsas and juices, working in restaurants throughout the country, she says through a translator.
After emigrating to South Florida, a friend set up their Rincón del Taco as a vendor in Wynwood until 2023, when they moved to Pembroke Pines. Their taco corner is a continuation of how they made ends meet in Mexico, Lizet Hernandez says: Making street tacos, sauces and juices from scratch wherever they can.
“Most taquerias here don’t do homemade, but homemade is how it works in Mexico,” she says.
Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Rincón Del Taco is one of several food vendors on the Family Farms property in Davie, which also offers tractor rides, a strawberry farm and an evening bonfire as part of the experience. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Mauricio Garzon is usually loathe to believe what influencers hype on social media, and almost stepped out of line — twice — to check out other food vendors at Family Farms. On this Saturday, none had lines — just Rincón del Taco.
Garzon, along with his wife and daughter, stuck with it and feasted.
“There’s taco shops everywhere,” he said, biting into an al pastor quesadilla. “But here? It’s delicious. And we’re surrounded by animals and crops and nature. You can’t beat that.”
By 8 p.m., the last taco plate went out as a bonfire roared to life on the farm. Diners sat at picnic tables, licking salsa off their fingers. Others covered tacos with napkins and trekked back to their car, dodging chickens along the way.
Rincón del Taco, a taqueria pop-up, is open from 4 to 9 p.m. Thursdays as part of The Night Market at Pembroke Lakes Mall, 11401 Pines Blvd., Pembroke Pines, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays through Sundays at Family Farms, 14950 SW 14th St., Davie. Go to Instagram.com/Rincon.del_taco.
Staff writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com or Twitter/X @philvalys.