Meet and Eat: Digg’s Taco Shop’s Richard Rivera

“Meet and Eat” is an occasional—rare, really—series about adventures and discussions with food writers, chefs, restaurateurs and others orbiting the food world.

The Park Cities/Upper Greenville area has a new breakfast tacos destination: Digg’s Taco Shop. The Hillcrest Avenue restaurant opened across from Southern Methodist University in February 2011. But only recently did the good, comfortable joint that bills itself as influenced by the Austin music and taco scenes begin serving breakfast tacos.

So, why did Digg’s chef Richard Rivera and business partners wait until Sept. 24 to offer breakfast tacos?

I put the question to Rivera, with whom I recently shared tacos at the restaurant. “It was always on the top of our minds, but we wanted to get lunch and dinner dialed in perfectly first,” he explained. “It was only after being opened for a year and a half and after receiving so much community feedback from SMU students, parents, our neighbors and regulars did we feel we were ready.”

One bite of the spicy chorizo or the mild jalapeño sausage with eggs breakfast tacos—brimming with potatoes and pico de gallo—you’ll know the wait was worth it. Each holds up against any of the other locally served breakfasts tacos. My one criticism about the new offerings concerns the flour tortillas. They’re similar to those served nearby and like them, they begin to crack in the center as they cool. There is one solution to this common problem: Eat the breakfast tacos quickly.

Rivera also spoke about the menu and how he came to tacos, a long journey for the half-Cuban and half-Puerto Rican Miami native.

“When I moved to Texas seven years ago, I was first exposed to street tacos while working in restaurant kitchens,” explained Rivera. “I began to develop the taco recipes for Digg’s with CEO/partner Joey Milan, who previous owned a successful taco brand in Houston before selling 10 years ago. We set a very high standard to use only the freshest of ingredients and cooking methods that insure the most flavorful proteins topped with sauces that will ‘wow’ the senses. We knew that there was a lot of taquería competition out there, so we needed to be ‘at another level’ at every point.”

Come November, the breakfast tacos along with the restaurant’s other offerings will be available at Digg’s second location near the University of Texas at Arlington, an area sorely lacking in breakfast taco options. And we all know how important breakfast tacos are to a college education.