Ray Garcia Is Officially Back in the Taco Business With a Splashy New Food Truck

After a yearslong hiatus, fans of Ray Garcia will get the chance starting today to try some of the Mexican American chef’s famed tacos, served out of a faux food truck at the Brown Sheep, located just outside of Sinners y Santos club at the Houston Brothers’s massive Level 8 project. Garcia last served tacos at B.S. Taqueria and Broken Spanish, his celebrated Downtown restaurants which closed in April 2019 and August 2020, respectively. Already Level 8 has opened Garcia’s full restaurant Qué Bárbaro, which grills meats and more South American style in a lush dining room.

Brown Sheep is a smaller eatery meant to serve club-goers before and after their revelry, presenting a cuisine-agnostic approach to tacos. Think hot chicken tacos with habanero comeback sauce, lengua cheesteak with rajas, provolone, and chile morita, or jerk quesadilla with gruyere, ancho chile, and pineapple. A mushroom chicharron comes with fried and braised mushrooms, salsa macha, and hibiscus onion while a hardshell taco comes with wagyu beef picadillo, lettuce, cheddar, and tomato. A fun appetizer could be panilocos, pani puri with pickled woodear mushrooms, peanut, cucumber, and tamarind chutney. And there are two “basic taco” options of chicken with salsa verde or flank steak, if the aforementioned stuff sounds too inventive.

While it isn’t quite the operation that B.S. Taqueria was, with its LA-oriented taco menu, Brown Sheep should provide a nice setting for Garcia to play around with the format again, albeit placed up on the eighth floor as part of a multi-faceted restaurant/nightlife establishment versus on the street level.

Outside the vintage-inspired faux food truck, a small, colorful outdoor seating area allows for a relaxed eating experience, though families will have to come in between opening at 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. as it becomes a 21-and-over establishment afterward. To cater to Sinners y Santos, the forthcoming Houston Brothers club, the Brown Sheep serves until 3 a.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Closed Monday and Tuesday, and open from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Wednesday and Sunday.

Andrea D’Agosto

Andrea D’Agosto