How this man is bringing the flavors of festive Mexican markets to a restaurant near you

Sixteen years after he began selling tacos out of a van in Mexico, Dario Wolos is expanding his Tacombi restaurants to 75 locations across America.

Last fall, shoppers at Whole Foods may have noticed a vibrant new line of hand-rolled frozen burritos that featured genuine Mexican flavors, including fire-roasted chicken, Oaxaca cheese, and cactus, all marketed under the Vista Hermosa brand. The road to those freezer shelves began 16 years earlier when Dario Wolos, who was raised in Mexico, began selling tacos out of a sawed-off VW van in the Yucatán Peninsula beach town of Playa del Carmen, calling the makeshift eatery Tacombi (combi is Spanish for “minibus”). Four years later, he opened a Tacombi restaurant in New York City that evoked the van’s casual open-air vibe and served the same style of handmade tortillas and thick, salty totopos—both made the traditional way, from corn nixtamalized in slaked lime before being ground on volcanic stone.

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