What's Eric Eating Episodes 378 and 379

Tacodeli owners dish on new Galleria-area location, reveal Memorial plans

Tacodeli has opened its new location near the Galleria.

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelley

One of Austin’s most popular taco restaurants has opened its second Houston location. Tacodeli is now open in Post Oak Plaza (1715 Post Oak Blvd.), but Houston will soon see a third location — and more after that.

Founder Roberto Espinoza and co-owner Eric Wilkerson brought Tacodeli to Houston back in 2017. It quickly earned a following for its tacos that are rooted in Espinoza’s hometown of Mexico City but blended with touches from his time in America. It’s a winning combination that’s allowed the company to grow steadily for 25 years.

“I always want to have some sort of representation of what some traditional dishes are from Mexico, but with an ability to interpret that in a way that feels good to us,” Espinoza says on this week’s episode of CultureMap’s “What’s Eric Eating” podcast. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we’ll give it our own little touch.”

Perhaps the biggest change the company has made since arriving in Houston are the additions of dinner service and cocktails. The Post Oak location is just the second Tacodeli to open since they made the change to all-day service. It’s reflected in certain aspects of the new restaurant’s design.

Tacodeli Post Oak interior Tacodeli has upgraded the interior of its new location.Photo by Michael Forbes

“Historically, we would build them for speed. It was the office lunch crowd. We needed to get people in-and-out quickly,” Wilkerson explains. “As we thought about dinner, we needed to make it a little more comfortable … encourage people to hang around, have another margarita, have some fun. So we tried to be a little more thoughtful about the interior finish-out.”

In fact, the company is feeling so bullish on Houston that it’s already planning a third location that will open either later this year or early 2025 in the Hedwig Village Shopping Center (9406 Gaylord Dr.). That won’t be the last.

“We are continuing to look very hard in the inner loop and also in the some of the suburban areas,” Wilkerson says. “Seven or eight restaurants is a very realistic goal … We have some trade areas identified that we feel confident about. It’s just can we find a space that’s the right size and has the attributes we’re looking for.”

Listen to the full episode to hear Espinoza and Wilkerson tell the story of how they started working together. They also share a few of their favorite menu items.

In this week’s other episode, Sandler and co-host Chelsea Thomas, staff writer for The Infatuation Houston, discuss the news of the week. Their topics include: Love Buzz Pizza Pub suddenly closing in Montrose; Pitch 25’s plans to open in Katy; and The Taco Stand opening in Webster.

In the restaurants of the week segment, the two writers discuss their meals at two new restaurants. First, they find a lot to like about Dipping Tiger, the new pho restaurant from Tiger Den chef-owner Mike Tran. Second, they have a more mixed experience at Tsujita Artisan Noodle, the Los Angeles-based concept that opened in March at the West on West shopping center.

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Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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