New Mexico restaurant names tacos and burritos after Trump-popularized terms 'Lock Her Up,' 'The Wall' and 'Fake News'
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO: A restaurant in Albuquerque is making headlines for having a range of tacos and burritos named after phrases that have been popularized by President Donald Trump - "the immigrant," "the wall," and "lock her up" among others.
The recently opened Urban Taqueria restaurant has already gotten some of their customers upset by their less-than-common menu item names.
For example, one of their Taco variants is called "Executive privilege" which basically invites people to select three tacos, with choice of Mexican or cilantro-lime rice, pinto or black beans. Another item on the list is called "Fake News" in which the primary ingredient is Chipotle chicken.
Burritos, on the other hand, includes items like "No Collusion" and "The Stormy" which are described as having "carne asada, cilantro-lime rice, black beans" and "carne adovada, mexican rice, pinto beans" respectively.
One customer, Juan Hernandez, told KOAT that the menu was offensive to certain communities. "The way things are right now. It's not good," he said. "We need to have respect for others and have limits."
A University of New Mexico professor, Patricia Perea, warned about the dangers of normalizing phrases that have been said in the context of hate speech.
"It seems fun, it seems like you can make fun of this and maybe make it lighthearted, but you really can't, you're offending a whole community," Perea said. "It's normalizing the terms and potentially turning them into funny or humorous terms, and the more that you do that, the more likely people are to repeat them and perhaps forget the contexts in which they were said."
However, some people in the town did not seem to mind the edginess of the menu.
"To me it's not offensive," said Christy Garcia. "I just think it's interesting that they decided to be so bold with the names."
Hanif Mohamed, the owner of the restaurant who has hired a number of immigrants as workers, said that the intention of the menu was not to offend anyone but to spark conversation in the politically charged atmosphere of the nation today.
"Ninety-nine percent of the people who walk in, more than 99 percent, don't seem to have an issue with it," Mohamed said. "The menu's not designed to insult people or hurt people, but it's just meant to keep the conversation going as to what's happening around us."
The restaurant opened six weeks ago and has already become the talk of the town.
The website boasts: "At Urban Taqueria, our tortillas, corn and flour are made in house daily, we use local ingredients, wherever we can. Our flour is unbleached and organic, pinto beans from Estancia, NM, black beans and green chili are organic. We use a local south valley farmer for our pork. We use cage-free chicken and eggs. Our canola oil contains no GMO."