For a lot of North Texans, the Mambo Taxi is more than just a drink. It\u2019s part of the local culture. The man behind it, Michael \u201cMico\u201d Rodriguez, has died at 68.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez got his start as a kid, working alongside his mother at Mia\u2019s Tex-Mex on Lemmon Avenue.<\/p>\n
He eventually launched Mi Cocina with $82,500 from customers who believed in him.<\/p>\n
Then came a big break. Loyal customer Juanita Miller encouraged him to expand to Highland Park Village.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez said that move took Mi Cocina \u201cinto another plane of existence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restaurant grew into a North Texas powerhouse.<\/p>\n
But Rodriguez\u2019s life wasn\u2019t without struggles. He battled alcohol, his marriage fell apart, and he eventually sold his stake in Mi Cocina.<\/p>\n
After several trips to rehab, Rodriguez said those programs helped save his life.<\/p>\n
Today, his legacy lives on in Mi Cocina, the Mambo Taxi and the North Texas community he helped shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a lot of North Texans, the Mambo Taxi is more than just a drink. It\u2019s part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[910,102,104,103,60493,27],"class_list":["post-457057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-business","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-mi-cocina","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}