Damn Good Tacos

0:00Hey everybody, happy Friday, I'm Walt Cameron. And I'm Stephanie Cameron. And we're the publishers of Addabled New Mexico magazine. And welcome to five minute Fridays. Five minute Fridays is a podcast that highlights the winners of Addabled New Mexico's local hero awards. The people making contributions in the realm of good food work in New Mexico and contributing to a more robust local food system in our state. We made it to week two of season five. We two season five. Yay. So what's going on in our world right now? Well, in a couple of days, or yeah, we have our green chili cheeseburger smack down. That's coming up on Sunday, September 13th. So it is what September 13th? 10th right now. It's 2026. Case you listen to this next year. Yeah. In case you're listening to us five years from now,

1:00where it's 2026, September 10th, 2026, as we're making this recording. OK. Probably too much information. Too much information. Anyways, we got this fabulous event coming up. Yeah. I keep trying to, it's hard to keep the numbers straight, but I'm pretty sure this is the 13th year. We're producing it, 15 year old event. Yep. City of Santa Fe started it in 2013, and then we took it over in 2015. We took one break for COVID. Well, if we took it over in 2015, that would mean no. They started it in, they had to have started in 2011. Because 2015 would mean we're only on year 11. It's 2026. Right. So the event is in its 13th year.

2:00This is the 11th year we have run it. Yes. I think that's right. I'll have to scratch it on paper. Maybe I'll update you later. Anyway, guys are like, what? What's going on here? So smack down many years under the belt happening this Sunday. We got seven finalists coming in hot. Yeah. I don't know if we want to make any predictions on who we think's going to win, probably not a good idea. Not a good idea. You know, it's all about execution on site. And all these folks are great restaurants, food trucks. But when you show up on site and you got to cook for 800 people, that's a different story. It's a different story. But it's what makes it so fun. I mean, this is not just one of my favorite events of the year, or my favorite event, my favorite event. But a lot of people come up to me while I'm up on stage and say, oh, my God, this is my favorite event.

3:01I never miss it. And so it's pretty. We have people coming in from all over the country, too, which is really cool. Including the executive chef of the Denver Broncos. This is going to be a judge this year, which is pretty cool. He asked us, too. He said, can I be a judge? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, so very cool. So we'll let you next week, you get to find out who the winners are. Who the winners of the 2026 Green Chillie Cheeseburger Smackdown. No. Yay. All right. So let's get into this week's episode. We're going to be talking to Nathan Mays over at Mignonnetau. Mignonnetauco. So maybe we should just do you want to do that Mignonnet? And then we'll just let everybody just listen to this part. Yeah, so pause and then come back Mignonnet. You can listen to the rest.

4:02But first, before we do that, a word from our fabulous sponsor, Kivera Coalition. Kivera Coalition, that's so cool. We have sponsors. We're cool. Kivera Coalition is excited to highlight the stories of New Mexicans as part of our Pathways to Resilience program, where we connect farmers and ranchers to federal funding. Let's take a look at the Environmental Quality Incentives program, or Equip. It's administered by the NRCS, an agency that helps farmers and ranchers integrate conservation practices into working lands. On least, range lands in Northeastern New Mexico, Rancher Aria Greenwood is driving us out to a pasture, where a new, high-tensile hot fence has just been installed. And the high-dutiful fence achieves a couple of things. One, it subdivides the pasture a little bit, and it also protects a lot of that perennial stream, so we can have cattle in the upland part of the pasture without them all ending up in the creek. The new fence was funded by Equip, and it was built to wildlife-friendly specifications.

5:06The antelope typically go underneath fences, and then the elk can just jump over without much trouble, and their babies can go underneath. The result? A little less wear and tear on those fences over time. Are you interested in learning about opportunities to strengthen your operation, pursue new conservation practices, and what funding is available for those things? Join us at the Regenerate Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from October 28th to October 30th, 2026. At Regenerate, you'll connect with a community of farmers, ranchers, and land stewards at our services fair. Learn about resources available in your region, build relationships, and kickstart your next project. Learn more about attending Regenerate 2026, scholarships, and discounted rates by visiting us at RegenerateConference.com. This message is brought to you by Pathways to Resilience, a production of Kiewehrical Coalition with Funding provided by the USDA.

6:17Just so everyone knows, we are in a kitchen, we are in on location, and all that banging you here is a kitchen. Okay. Today, we are visiting with our local hero for Foodtruck, Mnjana Taco, based in Nauville at Little Bear Coffee. Nathan Mays is the owner and chef, and with a commitment to quality, he crafts hand-made flour tortillas filled with local eggs, responsibly sourced meats, and fresh vegetables to make a damn good breakfast taco. And he has just recently opened a brick and mortar location. But don't worry, the food truck isn't going anywhere. That's right. Welcome to Five Minute Fridays. Welcome to Five Minute Fridays. Hey guys. Hey, where's that brick and mortar location stuff? It is on Mountain at, is it 14th Street? It's 15th Mountain. 15th Mountain. Okay. 15th Mountain. Cool. So before we jump in to talking about the food and the tacos, let's get your backstory

7:18and where you come from. Okay. Well, I'm originally from Austin, Texas. I've been in New Mexico now for about 12 years. My mom moved out to Santa Fe when I was a teenager, so I kind of went back and forth kind of through my high school. I always stayed in Austin, but it would come out for the summers and for family breaks, or holiday breaks and stuff like that. At the Culinary Institute of America in New York, I got to do a, they sent you on an externship after your first year, and I did mine at Coyote Cafe. Back in 2009 where Eric De Stefano. So that was kind of my first cooking start in New Mexico. I ended up moving back to Austin and worked for a few years with a restaurant group before I decided to move to New York and kind of wanted to get my butt kicked again in the kitchen and delivered on it. You know, New York really kind of chewed me up and spit me out. I learned a lot and I really short amount of time.

8:18Instead of going back to Austin, I came out to Santa Fe. I really liked kind of a nature aspect of it that I was missing, just like a smaller city that I really liked. And I just felt like there was an opportunity to cook good food. You know, the summer's market in Santa Fe was like really, is really great. So that was kind of my inspiration that kind of pulled me back. And I ended up, yeah, starting working in Santa Fe. So I did a couple odd jobs. I helped open a hotel restaurant in downtown when they opened up the Durey Plaza Hotel. Yeah. I was part of that restaurant opening. And then I went over to a better day coffee, worked with Tom and developed kind of the Burrito program over there that they're still selling. And just by chance I ended up working with Marja back when she had Marja's custom catering. We didn't event together out of that kitchen. I was just extra hands. And then that relationship just kind of turned into poloma, where I spent a better part

9:19of a decade, seven, eight years kind of opening and running the kitchen at poloma restaurant, which was an awesome experience. And then I met my wife who lives in Albuquerque. She works at Sandeal Labs. And I ended up doing the commute for a few years, but eventually, you know, the family pulled me closer. You know, I'd always go back to Austin and really enjoy eating. The food truck scene is really fun there. There's a lot of coffee shops or bars and food trucks and food trucks, parks. I think the weather allows it, the population allows it. So I just kind of got inspiration from that and just wanted to do something really casual. So that's where Mannyana came from. I met Jacob and Isaac who run Little Bear Coffee back during the pandemic. Everyone was like looking for anything to do at that time. So I reached out to those guys because I was in Albuquerque. And we just got to talk in and, you know, they were interested in having a food program

10:21there. So that's just kind of how Mannyana came to be. Awesome. And what year was that that you opened to Mannyana? We opened in 2024 of January. So we spent all of 2023 doing pop-up. So we constructed kind of like a mobile kitchen. I would run a U-Haul on Sundays. We would load it up and we would go to coffee shops around town. We did not pill a lot. We also went to a lot of lose. We also did a couple other locations that I can't think of right now. But yeah, we just popped up every Sunday on my days off. My wife helped me a lot and we just kind of started building Mannyana. Awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. And so now the move to brick and mortar. And I'm excited that you're going to keep the food truck open at Little Bear. Because a lot of the food trucks just close the food truck and they go to brick and mortar. So talk about the space and what's happening here.

11:22So as the food truck has like slowly gotten busier and busier over the past couple years, we've been able to retain a really good staff there that's able to run it. For the most part without me, which is really great. I was working with them hands on for a couple of years side by side in a tiny little space. So I'm lucky to have the people that I have that are able to kind of continue that for the time being. And we were kind of outgrowing the space. We were doing everything in the trailer. We were doing a little bit of stuff in the back room of Little Bear with storage and kind of minor prep and warewashing and stuff like that. So we were running out of space and you know, it's a lot of overhead to rent a commissary kitchen and then the back and forth and stuff like that. So we just kind of kept our eyes peeled for a restaurant space. And so when this space, when they approached me about this space, I figured it would kill two birds with one stone. We'd be able to expand as well as these other commissary space. So that's what we're doing here in this hall. That's great. That's really great.

12:22So talk about your approach to sourcing because I know you're pretty committed to local. Right. I mean, so going back to why I originally started working in New Mexico, which is because like the unique produce, the agricultural community that's here in New Mexico and the greater area, it's really hands on with a lot of the people. So at Paloma, it was really great because I was right next to the farmer's market. It was really easy to kind of pull stuff over. It's been a little more challenging here. When I opened up Mignana trailer, I anticipated having all this space to be able to bring in all of this local product. But I soon found it like I was really limited with what I could store, what I could sell with our customer base on just like on a daily base to move through. So it became a lot more challenging at the trailer. I was still able to find some people. The big part of it was eggs. And the other part of it was mushrooms. There's a, we use full circle mushrooms out of lost cruises.

13:23Yeah. They come up once a week and so we were able to get that in and then just starting to look at Le Mansonita co-op was able to help us with a lot of locally or locally or and or ethically sourced proteins that we were able to bring in. So the trailer was kind of operating on like a limited footprint of what we were able to get. I worked with a lawn. It's overleaved to get peaches to get spinach. But I don't, I didn't have the space at the trailer to do a lot of the, I guess more creative stuff that could utilize some of those like micro crop ingredients that are so cool around here, whether it's a different kind of pepper or a different kind of squash that you can only get for like maybe a month or two at a time here. Right. Yeah. So that's what I'm really excited about this restaurant for is we have the space to be able to kind of like dive in a little bit deeper. You know, we're really close to the market here on Saturdays. So that's going to be the new routine is kind of going in on Saturdays, you know, working with the farmers set that Vita Verde, a lot on it's overleaf.

14:24And then some of the smaller farms to be able to get stuff that we could run for even a nightly special if we need to here. Yeah, that's awesome. That's really cool. So just a backtrack a little bit to the food truck. Why breakfast tacos? So I know New Mexico is a land of like breakfast burritos. Like coming from Texas myself, like the thing I like about tacos is just the opportunity to have more than one type at a time. You know, I love burritos. I eat them at my house all the time. We go out to eat for burritos all the time. But the tacos, I felt like I gave us a unique identity and an opportunity for people to try like a few different things at a time rather than one large thing. So I think just like being able to have a little bit of diversity in the breakfast was kind of our approach to it. Yeah, for sure. I don't know anybody else doing breakfast tacos. Like not on a regular basis anyway. Well, and it's awesome to be able to do different types of tacos. Like you're right, the burrito, it's just big, long-cut.

15:28Right, and it serves as purpose for you. But yeah, you only have whatever's in the burritos, what you get. And you're not going to buy five different types of burritos. Right. You know, a little bit of little bit of lens itself to being able to eat like that. You know, they have people go to that coffee shop and has a really nice patio. People hang out there for, there's people who hang out there all day. There's people who come for us for breakfast and then stay there working on the computers and come back for lunch. So I don't know, I thought the space just kind of like worked really well for the concept that we're going with. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And so how's the restaurant different? So the restaurant's different because we have more than just tacos. Right now we're starting with a really limited menu. We've been open for three weeks. And so at first I wanted to do just kind of an extension of the trailer. I wanted people who were familiar with the trailer to come here, be able to get a lot of the same things and not feel like a completely new identity. I didn't want to open a completely different restaurant.

16:29That being said, now that we've been open for three weeks and we have the menu set the way we do, we're going to start kind of adding to it, tweaking, differentiating, and being a little bit. The difference with the restaurant is we have an alcohol program right now. We have just beer and wine, but we are in the works of getting an agave program going. So we're going to be having margaritas specifically fresh juiced margaritas as well as we have a frozen margarita machine here that we're going to be utilizing. So again, we just kind of want to keep that like really casual vibe, really fun vibe. But again, just like focusing on using fresh ingredients and just kind of elevating, elevating just like a real casual experience. Yeah. Yeah. And the space is really, I mean, this is really, you've done an amazing job with this space. It's awesome. So I got to give credit to the property owners who approached me about this. For everyone who knows the space, it used to be a little hamburger spot for a really

17:30long time. Right. It took almost a year and a half of renovation for this place. And when they approached me about it, I looked at it and it was a little funky. I'd come from a kind of funky old building in Santa Fe and know all the problems that come with old buildings. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought I would just keep it really simple and just do another food trailer in this space. Essentially the same menu in just like a little bit bigger space where people could sit and eat, but as it became renovated, as I realized they were actually making it a lot nicer than I had anticipated, you know, it's just open the door to kind of almost anything. And that's honestly been kind of a challenging part. It's like the space is so nice. I had second guesses of like, should we do mignon in here? Should we do something else? Yeah. Yeah. It really is a pretty space. It's got really nice bones. They kept the floors. They kept the ceilings. They just repaved the walls and painted it really nicely. We built a bar and a order counter. And we opened up the kitchen so you can see kind of some of the stuff going on while we're

18:34open. Cool. Yeah. I mean, it's really, really nice. Yeah. And it's all, it does feel a little more like fine dining in here. Right. Rather than, you know, tacos. Exactly. Tacos can be fine dining. Yeah. You know, I'm like, I'm like, we're now from Paloma. Yeah. It's been like seven years putting, putting tacos on kind of like hard, heavy china. And that's just something I, but it's firm that I didn't want to do here. I didn't want to go that route. So as we're in the space, as we're getting going, you know, we're figuring out ways to kind of like keep our casual identity, but kind of marrying it with the space. And I think over the next few months, a couple years, it's really going to kind of come into its own. Yeah. For sure. So is it counter service or do you have weight stuff? It is counter service. So you order at the counter and then you take a number and then we bring you your food. Okay. Cool. And the same thing with alcohol. You can order drinks at the counter when you place your food order or you can walk up to the bar as well during service.

19:34Cool. What is the secret to a great tortilla? So I spent a long time cooking corn tortillas from scratch next to my 100% heirloom corn, but that was a long time ago. And now I made the choice to switch to flower tortillas here at the space. So that's what I'm going to explain for this segment. I feel that a good flower tortilla should be moist, pliable, fluffy and strong enough to hold everything together. I think specifically with breakfast tacos, flower tortillas are the way to go. That's kind of where I grew up in Austin. And I think most south of Austin, all the way to Mexico in general, it's for the most part, flower tortillas are for breakfast tacos and people die on that hill. For our corn tortillas, we do buy fresh next to malt tortillas from La Mexicana, which is down the street.

20:35They've been in business for I think almost 90 years. And so they offer a really good next to malt product. So we utilize that for our corn tortillas and our chips and stuff like that. Cool. But what it was the secret to a really good flower tortilla. I think when you're making the flower tortilla, the secret is you have to have lots of fat. We use butter. We use European style butter here instead of large. So it's vegetarian friendly. European style butter has a higher fat content than standard butter. Yeah. So you get more fat unless milk waste. And then the temperature of the water, I would say. You want to use hot water when you're making your flower tortillas because it kind of helps shorten the gluten when you're working it similar to like with Asian food, when you're making dumpling dough and stuff like that, you had really hot water in it. It keeps the dough kind of chewy, but it doesn't let it stretch super far. So we've worked on kind of hitting the temperature with our water for our tortilla dough that

21:38allows it to stretch, but not too much. And it should give it a nice chew. Cool. We got to try that. Yeah. I know too. I mean, the flower goes a long way. We use blooberd flower, which is out of Cortez, Colorado. A lot of people in the native communities use it for fry bread, as well as restaurants use it a lot for sopa pies. It's ground really, really fine. So it creates a really soft, really soft tortilla. Cool. Nice. What is your favorite dish on the menu? I'm being a James's day today. People right now. Yeah, people come to the truck and ask me all the time because they don't want to choose. What should I get? Yeah, what's your favorite thing? And honestly, what I eat more than anything else is just being a cheese taco. Yeah. You know, it's the most classic. We buy our beans from a farm out in Bosque farms. So it's a local product. We just cook them low and slow. We don't add any animal product to it.

22:39Just kind of a blend of spices. We finish them off with some chopped green chili. That just kind of gets cooked into it. And so a flower tortilla with the beans. We use monorage-ack cheese. And we wrap all of our breakfast tacos at the trailer, but also at the restaurant. Because I feel like the taco actually gets better once it kind of just like steams out and it's foil a little bit. Yeah, that's true. Everything just gets a little more homogenized. Right. And then cheese taco with a fresh salsa. I go back and forth between the salsa roja and the habanero here. I think for the bean and cheese, the salsa roja is my favorite. That's my favorite taco. I probably eat five, six a day. That's good that you can eat the food you make. And you're going to live longer. Because apparently that's the secret to living long is beans. That's what they say. Yeah. I'm hoping it cancels out all the other foods. So talk about just a couple of the things that you can find here at the restaurant and

23:45not at the food truck. So the food truck is primarily breakfast tacos. And we do have a limited lunch taco version. We have our chips and dips at the restaurant, which is our salsa, our guacamole that we make fresh, and our queso. Here, we have an extension of that. So we have a nachos that uses the same ingredients that we sell. It's very shareable. We have a meagust taco here, which we don't have at the trailer, which if you've ever been to Texas, it's a very classic taco. It's crushed corn chips, tomato, onion, jalapeno, and scrambled eggs. Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of like a chilicolise, but it's going to say it sounds like a chilicolise. But it doesn't have, it's not just in salsa instead. It's kind of just chopped up with the pico de gallo elements and eggs. So we have one of those here. And then we have a steak taco here, which we've tried to do at the trailer, and we run it as specials at the trailer. We just don't have enough storage space and prep space for it. So here we have a steak taco, which I think is our top seller right now.

24:48Moving forward with this restaurant, we're going to be adding some things to the menu. A burger. I know you guys do the green chili smack down. We didn't make it in time this year. Next year, we're going to be hitting you up. Hopefully. In the next week or two, we'll be adding green chili burger to the menu. Awesome. Yeah, we're buying our beef from native beef. So it's a regional product. Same with our steak. It's native beef as well. So it's cool to be able to pull more stuff in from the local guys and be able to sell it. Yeah, it's awesome. Love it. You have a pretty new addition to your family. Yeah. So I'm guessing on your days off, if you get days off, you're spending it with them. 100%. So my stepdaughter starts middle school this week. And we had a baby boy at the very end of last year on the 21st of December. So it's kind of funny how things worked out. My wife and I were both trying to have a child for a long time. And we were also looking for a restaurant space for a long time.

25:49And they both just kind of happened at exactly the same time. So yes, no sleep at all now. Like zero sleep. No, and we're both, we're each other's support for it. And we talk daily. We check in daily about where we are and how it was a lot of anticipation leading up to the restaurant on the baby. And now that we're in it, we just have to remind ourselves, okay, so now we're in it. And this is it. And now we're doing it. And we'll work to settle things out as he gets a little bit older. And the restaurant gets a little bit more able to run by itself. And we'll see each other again at some point. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I know a lot of restaurant tours where it seemed like when the restaurant came to be, so did the baby. Yeah. You're not the only one. It's just kind of the way it works. Yeah, exactly. And you know what? At least it's like both at the same time. So we're just taking it as we go, you know?

26:50Yeah. For sure. You'll build a routine and it'll be great. Right. So is there anything else you want to share with our edibles listeners that we haven't talked about? No, not necessarily other than just like we're real thankful for the albacarkey community. It's just kind of coming on day one and supported us. You know, we've already changed the menu here like twice trying to figure out what makes sense and we're going to continue to adapt and change. And so yeah, just gratitude towards everyone who supported us. You know, it feels really cool to be able to do what I want to do and have customers come in and enjoy it and give their feedback and just participate in this with us. Yeah. For sure. Awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us today. Yeah. Anytime, guys, thanks. This has been awesome. So remember, it's on 15th and mountain over here in Albacarkey. Yeah. What are the days you're open? Yeah.

27:50So right now, Wednesday through Saturday, we're going to be adding Sunday here soon. We're open from 11 to 8. So breakfast tacos are going to be available through lunch and we'll be opening a little bit earlier on Saturdays and Sundays for kind of a breakfast taco only just overflow from the trailer. Yeah. Nice. And what are the trailer hours? Trailer is open Wednesday through Sunday, 8 to 2. That shouldn't change any time soon. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Yay, breakfast tacos. Yay. Yay. Yay. I think I'm going to have one, Maniana. Hi, here's a bunny. That joke will not go away. It will not go away as long as Walt has in his hands. Well, Nathan was great. Yes. I love the secret behind his fabulous tortillas. Butter not lard. Butter not lard. So if you have not major way to Maniana taco, either the food truck, which is at Little

28:52Bear, kind of in the Nob Hill area, or to his brand new brick and mortar spot on mountain in 15th, you better get over there. Yeah. I mean, he's an amazing chef. I mean, and he makes great food. So definitely get over there. He really does. And if you know him from his Paloma days, he's stationed in Albuquerque now. So Santa fans get down here and visit him. And if you're in Albuquerque and you haven't tried, get over there. Get on over there. So what are we got coming up now? So next week, we will be talking to Vara. Vara. Who actually won local hero for spirits. Best spirits, not wine, but spirits this time. And we'll chat with them and find out why. Find out. Until then. See you here, you listen to ya. Bye.