National Taco Day is held on 4 October in the United States. Many Americans eat tacos on Taco Tuesday, when restaurants offer special deals. However, the unofficial national holiday deserves a bigger celebration. People go to their favourite Mexican restaurant or host a taco party at home. The Mexican treat is very popular in the country. Americans eat more than four billion a year! According to a survey, 42 per cent of the population eat between four and twelve tacos per month. Consumption increased by 12.8 per cent since the start of the pandemic.
HARD OR SOFT
So how did a Mexican dish become an American favourite? The origins of tacos are not well known. Some anthropologists suggest they were created by indigenous people in Mexico, filled with fish or live insects. In 1520, Hernan Cortez mentioned a meal with tortillas in Coyoacan.
The first reference to the name ‘taco’ was in the 19th century. It may have come from the Spanish word ‘ataco’, derived from ‘atacar’, meaning ‘to stuff’. There is a theory that it relates to the silver mines in Mexico in the 1800s. Miners used small explosives to extract the ore. These were called ‘tacos de minero’, or ‘miner’s tacos’.
Mexican immigrants brought tacos to the United States around the 1880s. They were sold from carts in the southern states — early versions of the taco truck. The fillings were gradually adapted to American tastes. Today, tacos are soft or hard tortillas made of corn or wheat. They are typically filled with meat, onion, cilantro (called coriander in the UK) and lime.
TEXAN STYLE
National Taco Day’s history goes back to the 1960s. Roberto L. Gomez was councillor of San Antonio, Texas. To remind politicians of Mexican voters, he sent a giant tamale to President John F. Kennedy for his birthday “on behalf of citizens of the United States of Latin heritage.” The newspapers loved it. The next year, he sent an enormous praline, then a donkey piñata. By the time he sent President Lyndon B. Johnson a 25kg taco, he’d established the National Taco Council.
The council set out to promote Mexican culture in Texas and declared the week before Cinco de Mayo as National Taco Week. It was expanded to National Taco Month five years later, but it eventually died out. In 2009, Californian fast food chain Del Taco decided that 4 October was “time to celebrate National Taco Day!” and the rest is taco history.
