Ana-Maria Jaramillo is many things, but when she steps through the doors of La Tejana, she is the “vibe queen.”
With Bad Bunny humming on the speakers, the self-proclaimed creative director of La Tejana has arrived. Up first, making sure the coffee is strong enough.
Back in the kitchen, a frijolito taco is waiting on the counter. Rosa, the lead cook, uses bacon grease to re-fry the beans and season the mixture with jalapeño, cumin, salt and cheese — a perfect bean-to-cheese ratio.
Jaramillo and Gus May are the owners of D.C.’s first breakfast taco shop, La Tejana. Racking in over $1 million in revenue after their first year open in their upgraded space in 2022, the married couple has managed to create an award-winning product while remaining human in their pursuit.
That pursuit started long before La Tejana, back on the Texas-Mexico border where Jaramillo spent the first few years of her life. The majority of her childhood was spent in McAllen, Texas, where she developed a true passion for breakfast tacos, even going so far as skipping high school first-period, and risking truancy, to get tacos from El Pato’s.
Somewhere in all the noise and clamor of pursuing higher education, she found love. At a mutual friend’s wedding in Austin, Texas, Ana-Maria Jaramillo met her now-husband. Falling in love as they spent more time together, Gus May got to learn his future wife’s obsession: breakfast tacos.
However, in the blink of an eye, the relationship ended.
“I dumped him because he had no path and no vision,” Jaramillo said in an interview with The Eagle. “And I was like, well, I got a clinic. I’m getting my doctorate, what are you doing? And I broke up with him. And he was like, ‘I have this breakfast taco idea I want to do.’ And he launched it.”
The couple reunited and were married shortly after, leading to the birth of La Tejana.
Before La Tejana could become a Bib Gourmand Michelin-status restaurant in 2023, Jaramillo and her husband were hustling out of ghost kitchens, rentable kitchen spaces, to create pop-up food stands on the stoops of Mount Pleasant. According to Jaramillo, their tacos sold out within three hours each Saturday.
“It was crazy. The grind was crazy, and I was getting my doctorate at that time, so I was like, ‘What am I doing?” Jaramillo said. “We went on vacation once, and people were like, ‘Where are you? We can’t live without you.’”
With $180,000 raised from friends and family, the couple transformed what had been a Laotian restaurant, called Sabydee, to the warm hub of La Tejana in 2019. They remain 100 percent owners of the Mount Pleasant based restaurant to this day.
“Some people gave more than others. For example, my parents and Gus’s parents gave more than $10K because they could and they believed in us,” Jaramillo said. “And they’ve all gotten their investment back.”
After graduating with her doctorate in May 2022, Jaramillo found herself in a debt of energy.
“I just collapsed,” she admitted. “I started to have some health stuff come up … I’m not superhuman.”
As she balances her speech therapy clinic, marriage and the unprecedented growing success of La Tejana, Jamarillo learns how to recognize being spread too thin.
A self-proclaimed “visionary dreamer,” Jamarillo has learned to let her husband “micromanage the tortillas” while she cues the music, quality-checks the food and nurtures staff like family.
“I’m just a girl with dreams. And, I told Gus, ‘I need you to take care of me now,’” Jamarillo said.
What started as a cry for help turned into a loving partnership built on leadership.
Currently, Jaramillo serves under-resourced immigrant children as a bilingual pediatric speech-language pathologist at her clinic, The Voz Institute. May manages the kitchen at La Tejana and oversees finances while managing their social media alongside his wife.
The couple lives just a block from their restaurant in Mount Pleasant, where they make a conscious effort to have intentional interactions with staff and customers.
“We respect them. They know we have their back. And that translates into the food that they make,” Jaramillo said.
Plants line the windowsills of this cozy taco shop, soaking in the last few rays of sunshine on a long day. A sign hanging by the register assures customers that La Tejana’s tortillas are “hecho by hand” — handmade.
As Jaramillo often reminds herself: “No matter what, tomorrow you get to start fresh.”
This article was edited by Maria Tedesco, Marina Zaczkiewicz and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Olivia Citarella, Emma Brown and Ella Rousseau.
