It started, as these things often do, with me seeing something online that I immediately wanted to eat.
This time, it was birria tacos: crispy corn tortillas filled with slow-cooked beef and cheese. They were messy, dark red and looked completely ridiculous in the best possible way.
The problem was that I couldn’t find them in Ericeira. I couldn’t really find the version I was looking for in Lisbon either.
I eventually tried birria tacos at Coyo Taco, but they weren’t what I had expected. They looked very different from the ones that had created the craving in the first place.
So I decided to try making them at home.
Starting With the Beef
For the first attempt, I cooked the beef for hours in an old cast-iron pan with dried chillies and spices.
I had never eaten the birria tacos I was trying to recreate, so I didn’t know exactly how they were supposed to taste. But I knew that almost anything coming out of a pot after several hours of slow-cooking beef would make me happy.
The meat became tender, and the whole thing started moving in the right direction.
But good beef alone doesn’t make a good taco.
Finding the Right Tortilla
The biggest challenge was finding the right corn tortillas.
I tried several different ones. Some were too thin and couldn’t hold the meat properly. Others were too thick and took over the entire taco.
Then I tried making corn tortillas myself.
That was much more complicated than I expected. Getting the dough, thickness and texture right—and then producing them consistently—was a completely different skill of its own.
Eventually, I found a small Mexican tortilla producer here in Portugal making fresh corn tortillas. They had the structure and flavour I had been looking for. They could absorb some of the birria fat, crisp up on the grill and still hold everything together.
The taco finally had the right foundation.
The Salsa Needed Acid
The next step was finding the right salsa.
Birria tacos are rich. You have slow-cooked beef, melted cheese, the fat from the meat and a crispy tortilla. Without something fresh and acidic, every bite quickly becomes too heavy.
For me, the salsa needed plenty of acidity to cut through all of that.
That was the beginning of the salsa verde we now make from scratch at Cheat Day. It brings freshness, heat and acidity to the taco without covering the flavour of the beef.
With the tortilla, meat, cheese and salsa verde finally working together, we started giving the tacos to friends.
The feedback was overwhelming.
So we made them again. Then we made them another time. Each round became a little more serious, and more people started asking when they could get them again.
Eventually, the birria taco became more than something I had wanted to recreate after seeing it online.
It became the first real Cheat Day item—and one of the reasons we decided to open a restaurant in Ericeira.
Today, we serve our birria tacos in crispy corn tortillas with slow-cooked beef, melted cheese and our homemade salsa verde.
They started with a craving for something I couldn’t find here.
Now you can find them at Cheat Day.