Las Flores rises from the ashes

Jazmin Flores was born of taco royalty, but the king didn’t always make it easy.

“My dad would have us clean tables,” she says. “We gave out food, washed dishes. He would have us remove the stems from the jalapeños. He’d be like, ‘Be careful. Don’t touch your face. Wash your hands.’ Now, when I see the employees do it, they have gloves. I’m like, man, I remember doing that with my little bare hands.”

But the cause was noble. Flores and her siblings grew up in North Center’s Taqueria el Asadero, which their father Efrain opened in 1993 across from Welles Park.

Over decades, word of mouth about his commitment to seared- and chopped-to-order skirt steak tacos and burritos distinguished him as the veritable carne asada king of Chicago. A perennial on best-of lists, Taqueria el Asadero peaked in renown after a visit from Anthony Bourdain for an episode of The Layover, featuring a brief clip of a tatted-up adult Jazmin at the register.

She told me the jalapeño story at one of the restaurant’s red Formica tables, with a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking between us. She’d borrowed it from nearby Sulzer Library, where she actually spent most of her time as a kid. “My dad gave me two choices—either I worked or I would go to the library, read a book, and report back to him what I read.” 

Flores loved growing up in the restaurant, which housed a Terminator pinball machine and a Deer Hunter video game. The siblings bonded with the kids from the Thai spot next door. “I got to play and work,” she says. “I got to grow here. I got to know people, and they got to know me.” 

Neither she nor her parents expected her to pursue a restaurant career. After studying mortuary science, she spent a few years as an apprentice funeral director and embalmer before returning to the family business and then opening her own spot, Taqueria las Flores, in Albany Park in 2018. It was both a return to what she knew and an assertion of independence.

“Growing up in Taqueria el Asadero was awesome but difficult at the same time,” she says. “When you’re raised by immigrants, there’s a complicated navigation in finding your identity. I wanted something different. I wanted to be out of my dad’s shadow. I told him, ‘I want to get to the point where people stop asking me about you and ask about me.’” 

She got there with a menu rooted in Taqueria 101, but with frequent specials that nodded toward prevailing trends or holidays, like kimchi–carne asada tacos, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos quesadillas, or matcha-spiked green horchata for Saint Patrick’s Day.

She also hosted Spanish-language story times for toddlers, held fundraisers for the neighboring elementary school, and wrote a weekly newsletter for a network of neighborhood regulars that helped her weather robberies, COVID, staff shortages, and inflation.

“It was mine,” she says. “It was me.”

Then, in August 2023, she answered an early morning call from her opening cook, who said the dining room was filling with smoke. She rushed to the restaurant where an electrical fire had sparked in a storage room. By the time the fire department arrived, it was all over.  

“I got so depressed, so depressed. But I’ve been told that I haven’t stopped after the fire. I was trying to find ways to keep my brand. I’ve just been a motor, like the little Energizer Bunny.”

Ten days after the fire, on her birthday, she held her first pop-up, a fundraiser at Honey Butter Fried Chicken, whose chef, Josh Kulp, was an Asadero regular and family friend.

She served fried chicken tacos made with the restaurant’s tenders, a collaborative special she once ran at the taqueria, with rice, jicama slaw, pico de gallo, and a creamy jalapeño cream sauce.

Other chefs stepped up to help, too. She popped up a month later at Taqueria Chingón with a hibiscus flower quesadilla with pomegranate, pea shoots, Oaxaca and cotija cheeses, and salsa macha on the restaurant’s blue corn tortillas. 

The pop-up community, in particular, turned out to support her. She became a prolific collaborator with Juan Meza of Johnny’s Table and other chefs with established roaming concepts, such as Birria Ta-Ta-Tacos! and Smash Jibarito.

“I didn’t know anybody from the pop-up community,” she says. “It wasn’t until I lost a restaurant and I sought help that I became friends with a lot of them. It opened the door for me to meet new people and new opportunities. There were times where I had my own pop-ups, and I had Juan or the rest of the guys to help me. And then I would help them.” 

She also started helping her dad again, which brought her back into the orbit of the library. She’s been experimenting with French, Chinese, and Thai cooking at home but still isn’t sure she wants Taqueria las Flores to come back as a brick-and-mortar.

“I don’t know, I’m kind of traumatized,” she says. “I feel that I should be over this, but my therapist is like, ‘Bro, this was a huge thing. Take your time.’ So we’ll see about the future.”

In the short term, las Flores is popping up at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern. Juan Meza will be in the house helping out, and Flores is offering a reprise of her Honey Butter Fried Chicken collaborative taco, along with carne asada or al pastor options. She’s also making a veg-friendly walking taco: shredded cabbage, carrot, and jicama, with cucumber, Japanese peanuts, chamoy, and lime in a bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. 

It starts at 5 PM on Monday, April 21, at 2905 N. Elston in Avondale—and check out the rest of the spring Foodball lineup below.