For the last few weeks, a large blowup of Victor Wembanyama’s head has greeted customers hoping to snag a table at a restaurant less than two miles from Madison Square Garden.

The eatery is firmly in New York Knicks territory, in the center of a city where tens of thousands of people have packed the streets and bars to vehemently root against Wembanyama and the Spurs in the NBA Finals. But at Yellow Rose, a Tex-Mex spot in Manhattan’s happening East Village, bean and cheese tacos are on the menu, bottles of Lone Star are in the fridge and the Spurs are the good guys.

It’s the “unofficial San Antonio headquarters of New York City,” said Dave Rizo, who started the restaurant with his wife, Krystiana.

The couple grew up in San Antonio – Krystiana on the North Side and Dave on the West Side – and worked in restaurants across the city before moving to New York 10 years ago.

The Spurs started their playoff run when the couple was in Texas planning the opening of a second Yellow Rose location in Brooklyn. While in San Antonio, they got “pretty revved up” about the Spurs.

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“We got to see the honking. We got to hear the honking,” said Dave Rizo, 38. “We got to celebrate these wins with our families kind of like how we did when we were kids.”

They also “did what any San Antonian should do” – they “bought some bootleg merch,” he said.

They lugged it all back to New York. At the restaurant, the couple put the giant blowup of Wembanyama’s head on the host stand, hung a Spurs flag behind it and installed a projector so fans could watch the games. New Yorkers have been mostly nice about the decor, they said, aside from a few comments on social media. But they decided against hanging a Spurs flag outside the restaurant, worried someone would steal it.

“We obviously want the Spurs to win because that’s our hometown team,” said Krystiana Rizo, 37. “We’re also the only specifically San Antonio, Texas, restaurant in the city. So we have to rep the Spurs, of course. Obviously. It’s all in good fun.”

In high school, Dave Rizo worked at a Whataburger and Karam’s, a Mexican restaurant on the West Side. And he later worked as a chef at an array of San Antonio restaurants, including Bakery Lorraine, Kimura and The Cove.

Krystiana Rizo worked at Liberty Bar and bartended at Lowcountry.

When the couple moved to New York, they were surprised they couldn’t find Tex-Mex as good as they enjoyed back home, not even close.

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So they opened Yellow Rose in 2020, first as a pop-up and eventually as a brick-and-mortar restaurant. The menu features San Antonio classics like carne guisada and cheese enchiladas, along with spins on local favorites, including queso made with Shiner beer and tofu picadillo tacos. They’re served with a choice of salsas – with the New York City feature of costing a dollar each.

“There are so many people from Texas that live here,” Krystiana Rizo said. “So once we opened up, all of the Texans came running.”

The restaurant even sells T-Shirts featuring the Spurs Coyote.

The Spurs’ Finals run has been a long time coming for the Rizos. They were kids when the Spurs won the first their first championship 1999, and the rings kept coming through their teenage years.

“It’s really hard to watch sports sometimes because being a teenager or a little kid and watching the rise of the Spurs and watching the dynasty unfold, and then growing up being in your 20s and still watching them win, I feel like my generation was really spoiled in terms of watching the Spurs not only win but flourish,” Dave Rizo said.

The last time the Spurs were in the playoffs, Yellow Rose did not exist yet. They’ve been waiting for the chance to represent.

“We haven’t ever had that opportunity to do it, you know, because they kind of sucked for a second,” Dave Rizo said. “And now they’re good.”

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This article originally published at San Antonio couple turns their NYC restaurant into Spurs headquarters.