Taco María closing this Saturday to find new home

One of three Orange County restaurants to win Michelin stars this year, Taco María, the beloved brainchild of chef-owner Carlos Salgado, will close this Saturday, July 29, while it seeks a new location.

“We couldn’t be prouder of the work we’ve accomplished and the place our restaurant has come to occupy in the broader community of modern Mexican-American restaurants,” Salgado said in a press release. “Still we’ve known for a few years that Taco Maria has outgrown this space, and it’s become evident that now — at our ten-year mark and the end of our current lease — is the right time to find a new home for our work.”

Salgado cites a desire for more space (the current space seats only 28 guests) and a more fitting vibe as reasons to close the current iteration of his lauded Alta California eatery of Mexican and American cultures.

Taco María, nestled inside the OC Mix at SoCo Collection, a luxury mall butting up against the 405, is one of three one-star Michelin winners in Orange County (the other being Knife Pleat and Hana re, also located in Costa Mesa). Opening in 2013 as a brick-and-mortar after starting life as a food truck, Salgado’s restaurant won immediate acclaim from critics and diners alike. The Register’s former food critic Brad Johnson and the late Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold awarded Taco María restaurant of the year in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

“Chef Carlos Salgado’s painstakingly authentic reinvention of Mexican cuisine is one of the most important things to happen to the California food scene,” Johnson beamed in 2017. “No one else is doing what Salgado does with tortillas and beans, or for that matter with wood-fired arrachera or tongue-searing scallop aguachile.” While Gold noted in 2018, “By regarding tortillas with a seriousness familiar to any fanatical French baker, by using perfect seasonal produce and by treating regional Mexican dishes with both imagination and respect, Salgado has propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine.”

Carlos, an Orange County native, grew up at his family’s flagship La Siesta restaurant in Orange. After culinary school, he spent time as pastry chef at several lauded Bay Area kitchens, including Coi and Commis, where he not only honed his craft but met his work-and-life partner, Emilie Coulson-Salgado. The two, who met in San Francisco, landed in Orange County where they opened Taco María in 2013.

Over the next decade, Taco Maria received worshipful reviews from food scribes and packed tables from diners eager to sample Salgado’s prowess with corn. “Recognizing the importance of corn to reinterpreting or evoking Mexican cuisine, Salgado nixtamalizes and processes all of Taco María’s masa products in house from heirloom varieties of corn grown by small family farms in Mexico,” Taco Maria’s website details.

Alas, reservations are booked solid at Taco María’s current location. Diners will have to wait until Salgado finds his new space. Exactly where Taco Maria will land next remains up in the air; however, the chef says he wants to stay in Orange County.

“We are immensely grateful to our loyal guests and our community for these first ten years of memorable meals, milestones, celebrations and conversations sobre mesa,” Salgado goes on to say. “This is not goodbye, but instead a pause, and a moment of gratitude.”

Source: Orange County Register