By Leila Molitor.
The birria taco was never supposed to be a "drop." For generations, it was a patient, slow-simmered labor of love from Jalisco, traditionally made with goat and served as a soulful restorative. In its migration to Tijuana and later Los Angeles, the goat was swapped for beef, the cheese was added, and the "quesabirria" was born. In New York, for a long time, it remained a localized treasure. You had to know which truck in Jackson Heights or which corner in Bushwick was doing it right. Where the consomé was a deep, complex mahogany and the tortillas were stained crimson from the fat of the stew, not just dyed for the camera.
The shift into the cultural exhaust pipe began in 2019 when Birria-Landia parked its first truck in Queens. Brothers José and Jesús Moreno, veterans of Manhattan’s fine-dining gauntlet, brought a chef’s precision to the street staple. They unintentionally created a monster. When The New York Times put a food truck on its "Top 100" list and Eater started tracking the lines, the secret was out. Suddenly, the ritual of standing on a cold Roosevelt Avenue sidewalk became a badge of "authentic" New York residency. But as the lines grew, so did the internet’s insatiable need to turn a humble meal into a visual stunt.
The acceleration happened when the "cheese pull" became the only metric for quality. By 2021, TikTok had flattened birria into a caricature. If you weren’t filming a soggy tortilla being submerged into a cup of broth in slow motion, did you even eat? Media outlets detonated the trend by treating every new opening like a secondary coming of Christ, while the influencer complex realized that "dipping" was the ultimate engagement bait. This was the moment the trend detached from the flavor of the adobo and attached itself to the "aesthetic" of the grease bomb.
The NYC “ugh” reaction peaked when birria began appearing in places it had no business being. We reached terminal velocity when "Birria Ramen," "Birria Pizza," and even "Birria Dumplings" started cluttering menus from the Lower East Side to Williamsburg. It became the culinary equivalent of a loud guest who won't leave the party. Every mediocre bar with a flat-top grill started serving a "Birria Special" that tasted less like slow-cooked tradition and more like salty roast beef submerged in lukewarm dishwater. The "authentic" grit was replaced by a polished, minimalist storefront aesthetic designed specifically to look good in a reel.
The cultural fallout is a city full of people who think birria is a "snack" category rather than a regional heritage. We’ve traded the soul of the stew for the convenience of the "viral flavor." Now, even Taco Bell has a "dipping taco," signaling that the trend has been fully processed, packaged, and stripped of its dignity.
So who ruined it? The Moreno brothers made it. The New York Times detonated it. TikTok worshipped it. And the rest of us? We were just trying to get to work without stepping over people photographing a cup of consomé on a trash can in the middle of Jackson Heights.
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