How birria took over restaurant menus across the country

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Birria, which was once known as a regional Mexican food, has taken on a life of its own in the U.S., becoming a social media star and fast-food darling.

Traditionally, birria is a beef or goat stew, slow cooked with spices and chiles to give the meat lots of flavor. Birria tacos use the slow-cooked meat as a filling and usually include a consommé on the side to dip the taco.

Over the past four years, birria has seen its presence on restaurant menus grow 412%, largely thanks to midscale and casual-dining chains, according to market research firm Datassential. It has made the jump from Mexican-focused restaurants to eateries with broader menus, such as Sugar Factory’s American dining spots and Bowlero’s bowling alleys.

Mexican-inspired fast-food brands such as Qdoba, El Pollo Loco, Del Taco and even Taco Bell have released their own versions of birria, turning it into a new menu staple. And the dish is still growing. Datassential predicts that birria’s menu penetration will more than double over the next four years.

The hype for birria is relentless. On Instagram, there’s a collective fetishization of cheese pulls in extreme close-ups, and images of tacos half-dipped in Styrofoam cups of meaty broth. The parade of magnificent, bonkers mash-ups is endless — birria waffles, birria pizza, birria fries, birria pho, birria tortellini.

Birria cooking videos work more like pieces of choreography on TikTok, changing slightly each time a new person performs them. This means that, yes, somewhere, a white woman is sharing her “authentic birria” recipe made with boneless beef, packaged bone broth, a few shakes of smoked pimentón and some puréed carrots — the dark side of internet fame, for any dish.

22% of Mexican restaurants in the US are in California