Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Rodriguez.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My name is Xose Velasco, I am 29 years old, and I am Co-Chef/owner at Discada. My partner is Chef Anthony Pratto, 29 years old, and Discada is based off of my family recipe that we grew up eating in Houston, TX. We both went to high school together and have been best friends for over 15 years. I was born not far from Mexico City in Texcoco, Mexico. My cooking style and passion were inspired by my father and mother who have taught me many Mexican styles of cooking, and is very much family oriented. This is also how we got into cooking. Preparing food was something personal we learned when cooking with and for my family.
Specifically, Discada was something that was cooked for super special occasions (birthdays, Christmas, weddings), and something that we couldn’t get out of our heads. We became obsessed with perfecting this dish together. We have been talking about opening Discada together for over a decade. The more we invited people to our homes and shared Discada with them, the more we realized how special it was. Our experience in the service industry, helping start a previous food truck, and working in and around food trucks gave us the confidence to get the ball rolling on our own project.
When we finally all decided to take the plunge, we figured Austin would be the best place. I had been living in Houston for quite some time and decided to move here to help us start our dream. The reason we chose Austin is because we love and know Austin very well and Anthony had lived here a long time. People in Austin love good food and appreciate culture. In a city known for tacos, we noticed that Discada was completely absent from the scene. After more research, we found out that Discada is virtually absent in the whole United States. We even got lucky enough to snag the Instagram handle, @discada.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This past year we have implemented an entirely new business model to stay safe and productive during COVID-19. We have adapted to online-ordering and a contactless curbside pickup application that a few of us teammates and friends have developed together specifically based on Discada’s operations. The app is called Curb-to-Car and is something that we have also been perfecting and editing as we go. It is applicable to any food business, and we are currently sharing this with a few other businesses in town for $1.00 per month to help them safely operate and maintain business without breaking the bank. It has proven to be a very successful curbside solution, making for the safest possible/contact free transaction while not interrupting kitchen operations. The way we have stayed inspired has honestly been because of the taco community as a whole on the east-side of Austin banding together. We have helped motivated each other and shared techniques like curbside, and online ordering.
Our community has shown us love by utilizing our new ordering system and pre-ordering our entire stock almost daily. We were recently voted best taco in Austin, and made the front cover of Austin Monthly Magazine March 2020 issue, which was huge because that is the month of SXSW. We were set to be exposed to millions of people coming from all over the world. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, SXSW was cancelled this year for the first time in history. We have also been featured by numerous forms of local press, which also inspires us to keep going. We have so much gratitude for our community. We have a small brotherhood of taco compadres that sell tacos on the east-side as well. We all have become very close friends and spend a lot of personal time together cooking and doing carne asadas in the backyard. We all help and support each other as much as possible. For example – we did a cinco de mayo collaboration with our friends at Nixta Taqueria and Cuantos Tacos, which sold out for pre-orders in one day. The line of cars waiting to pick up our collaboration taco kit was literally stretched for ten blocks and people waited 45mins in line to get their pre-order. That was seriously so flattering and made us realize that even during these times, there are ways to band together and stay afloat. So many people have shown us love, and we try to give back that love as much as we can, by staying open during the difficult times as safely as possible. Not just the service industry, but other industries have patronized us and we have always tried to show love back. We have helped not just other local east-side businesses, we also donate to our local nurses and healthcare workers at Dell Children’s hospital.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We set up shop officially on Feb 26th, 2018. Discada is fairly common in Northern Mexico and is considered “ranchero style cooking”. However, Discada is a lot like paella in the sense that you can put anything in it and it will still be considered discada as long as it’s cooked in the disc with a mixture of meats. Some people call it a “cowboy wok”. This specific recipe is very unique. It’s taking the technique of northern Mexico and introducing the flavors of Mexico City, which is really infusing the best of both worlds. One big difference is that Discada Norteña (discada from the north of Mexico) commonly includes hotdog slices and large sized cuts of meat. Our discada definitely does not contain hotdog slices and we chop our meat into much smaller pieces before we cook to get a better combination in each bite. There is a common rivalry between northern Mexican and interior Mexican cuisine, so it’s rare to find a discada of this style/flavor. This happened because my father is from the northern state of Chihuahua, but spent most of his life in Mexico City.
Sure, we have tweaked a quite a few things from the original recipe, but it is still following the same guidelines. Discada is a very labor intensive process, but makes for an unforgettable finished product. The secret ingredient here is love and technique. Prior to cooking, we hand chop various cuts of beef and pork then marinade them for 24+ hours. After the meat is nice and marinaded, we then cut all the aromatic veggies (onions, bell peppers, Mexican bulbous onions, etc.) fresh to put in the disco de arado. The disco is an authentic tractor plow disc that we modified for the cooking process. It has a slight dip in the center which allows the fat/juices to pool in the middle. We use the fattier meats in the beginning of the cook to get a nice rendered fat content to start the confit. After there is a good amount of fat, we add some of the aromatics to infuse flavor into the confit. The process is done in 8 separate layers, where the layers are slowly cooked in the juices of the previous layer. This allows for a great confit and a super tender/juicy finished product. The whole cooking process takes about 6-hours for one disc. The order in which we do so is just as important as anything else. At the very end, we finally mix everything together and that mixture is our special “Discada”. From start to finish, one disc takes about 32 hours to prepare and finish, and you definitely taste the labor of love in each bite.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Cooking Discada in Austin to me means celebrating my culture, my family, and my friendships. I love that we have introduced this dish to many great chefs in town and have been respected because of it. Through Discada, we have made many new like-minded friends and connections in the food world. Being a part of the taco community on the east-side of Austin is something we are very grateful for. I think that what makes our taco truck unique is the dish itself as well as the story behind the dish. Yes it is based on a very old family.
Contact Info:
- Email: Discadatx@gmail.com
- Website: Discadatx.com
- Instagram: @discada
Image Credits
Lawrence Peart
