OUR STORY
SHE INTRODUCED HIM TO HIS FIRST REAL BREAKFAST TACOS
La Tejana was co-founded by Rio Grande Valley native Ana-Maria Jaramillo and DC native Gus May. Jaramillo grew up on both sides of the Texas/Mexico border, having spent the first several years of her life in Monterrey, Mexico before her family settled in McAllen, Texas. She and May met at a wedding of mutual friends in 2017, and she later introduced him to his first ever breakfast tacos from Taco Joint on Riverside Dr in Austin, Texas. Fun fact: Jaramillo had a brief run in with the law for truancy during her high school years due to constantly skipping first period to buy breakfast tacos from El Pato in Mcallen, Texas.
May, who had always been interested in food and worked for a start-up catering company at the time, was blown away by his first breakfast taco experience and at that moment told Jaramillo that if the relationship worked out, they needed to open a breakfast taco shop in DC.
AND HE FELL IN LOVE…WITH BOTH HER AND THE TACOS
YEARS LATER, THEY BROUGHT THE TASTE AND CULTURE OF THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY TO THEIR NEW HOME IN WASHINGTON, DC
Jaramillo, who leads a triple life as a Doctor of Speech Language Pathology and the owner/operator of her own pediatric bilingual clinic, The Voz Institute, also adjuncts as a professor at George Washington University (GWU) in addition to running the taco shop. May serves as the main day-to-day cook & operator of the shop.
IT ALL STARTED ON A STOOP
La Tejana began as a nomadic pop-up business based out of Jaramillo and May’s apartment in DC’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood in late 2019. Their first ever pop-up was from the stoop of their apartment building on Lamont St, where they convinced enough friends and random strangers walking down the street to buy their tacos to eventually reach their goal of selling out of 100 tacos.
NO, REALLY, THEY WERE SERVING TACOS FROM THEIR APARTMENT STOOP
They held several pop-ups in late 2019 and early 2020 before the pandemic hit - after which they transitioned to offering their homemade flour tortillas for delivery. After several months of deliveries, they began popping up in earnest by partnering with bars, restaurants, breweries and all over DC to sell their tacos on weekends.
THEN UPGRADED TO POP-UPS AT LOCAL BARS AND RESTAURANTS
Every Saturday and Sunday, they woke up at 3 am, made as many breakfast tacos as possible from their ghost kitchen, and loaded up their beat up 1998 Chevy S10 with the goal of spreading their breakfast taco gospel to anyone willing to indulge them. They sold out of tacos at almost every single pop-up, rain or shine.
THEY SPREAD THEIR LOVE OF BREAKFAST TACOS FAR AND WIDE
A community of loyal supporters - first-time breakfast taco lovers and well-versed Tex-Pats alike - began forming, and Jaramillo and May realized that Mount Pleasant had both the best vibes and most enthusiastic supporters, and decided that was where they wanted to plant roots. After nearly two years, and a couple hundred pop-ups later, they signed on a brick-and-mortar space in the heart of Mount Pleasant in early 2022 and opened their shop officially in August 2022.
BIG ENOUGH TO NEED to BUILD
A MORE PERMANENT HOME
What started in 2019 as a dream of bringing real deal breakfast tacos to DC has transformed into something far more meaningful than they originally imagined. Since their scrappy nomadic COVID-era pop-ups to a physical brick and mortar restaurant, Jaramillo and May have continued to focus on doing things the same way they always have — keeping their food authentic, accessible, and rooted in community.
Along the way, La Tejana has been recognized with three Michelin Bib Gourmand awards and was named Favorite Fast-Casual Restaurant at the 2025 RAMMY Awards, milestones that reflect the support of a neighborhood that believed in them early on. At its heart, La Tejana remains a place built by real people, for real people — where food serves as a way to connect, gather, and belong.
four years later, the home continues to grow
¡ANYTHING para
LA COMUNIDAD!
Building community has always been at the heart of what we did as a pop-up and strive to continue to do as a brick-and-mortar shop. From the onset, we wanted to build La Tejana organically, and develop a grassroots style of popping up to bring people along for the ride. During the pandemic, pop-ups served as community hubs for many regulars and friends, where our always-outdoor locations served as safe-ish places to gather in the pre-vaccine days (shout out to everyone who ever came through Grand Duchess on late Sunday mornings in 2021 and ended up staying a while). We have also always stayed true to ourselves in the way we interact with the community we are a part of, and despite our dead-serious attitudes about breakfast tacos, do our best to keep everything light-hearted and approachable, both with managing our brand and interacting face-to-face with the community.
Thank you for being here along the ride.
CON MUCHISMO AMOR,
ANA-MARIA Y GUS