GUILDERLAND — Mexican is one of — if not the — most popular cuisines in the United States, with Axios reporting that 99 percent of Americans live near at least one Mexican restaurant, and that tex-mex has overtaken Italian as the most popular food category at major chain restaurants.

But Chef Dominic Giuliano, who opened Tacos Diablo in Guilderland’s Hamilton Square on May 1, is willing to bet that, despite this ubiquity, few Americans have had the real thing. 

“In Mexico, when you go to the more traditional places, not the tourist spots, tacos are usually a soft, corn tortilla, depending on the region,” he told The Enterprise this week. “Some regions serve a flour tortilla … but mostly the flour tortillas will go with fish tacos, or something like that, and corn tortillas will go with more of the meat tacos.” 

When Americans are served a corn tortilla, it’s typically a hard-shell, which is essentially the spaghetti and meatballs of Mexican food — popular for a reason, but not necessarily authentic.

At places like, say, Chipotle, which target a more middle-brow demographic, the food may be of higher quality than Taco Bell, but it’s still decidedly American in aesthetic, with flour soft-shells and dripping wet carnitas, not to mention the option to load up tacos with any number of toppings and additional fillings. The result is a taco that is referred to in Mexico as a “taco gringo,” Giuiliano said.

Meanwhile, the traditional style of carnitas, he explained, “is going to be a little bit more crispy and dry on the outside, filled with tons of flavor, but then moist and juicy on the inside.” And the tacos themselves, which are more delicate in a 4-inch corn tortilla than a 6-inch flour one, typically come with more select toppings — onion, cilantro, a little salsa, he said. 

Giuliano understands authentic Mexican food, having grown up in Southern California, two hours from the Mexican border, which he would cross frequently as a youth, and still visits at least once a year. 

He fell in love with the food and, after studying at the Culinary Institute of America and working in a variety of fine-dining establishments in California and New York City, made it his mission to use his skill to deliver a more authentic version of his favorite cuisine to upstate New York. 

Tacos Diablo began during the COVID-19 pandemic as a ghost kitchen, run out of the Blue Plate in Chatham. 

“It kind of went viral, and just started getting a huge following,” he said, leading he and Dan Grunberg, the owner of Blue Plate, to turn it into a proper establishment in Nassau, followed by a permanently-parked food truck in East Chatham. 

An immediate standout, thanks to Giuliano’s focus on authenticity and crafting a particular ambience, Tacos Diablo attracted customers who would drive from the Guilderland area to Nassau, which is why he felt comfortable making the decision to expand. 

The new location is in what used to be an H&R Block office, requiring a good deal of transformation to make it suitable for a restaurant. 

“We’ve raised the ceiling up to 14 feet, put in a garage door, tore up the floor and polished the concrete and have a beautiful, polished concrete floor,” Giuliano said. “It’s gorgeous — a really beautiful space, and it also mimics a lot of the characteristics of our other location.”

What he’s aiming for is a fully curated experience. For the food, this means no hard-shells, and no ground beef, to the occasional dismay of some customers, Giuliano acknowledged — though added that they tend to be won over in the end.

The employees he hires are passionate, make good eye contact, and speak well. 

“I think that’s one of the main problems that’s lacking in so many businesses is personality,” he said. “We try to put great personalities behind the counter.”

Giuliano said this is especially important since he sees what might otherwise be called waitstaff as “educators,” helping to guide customers through an experience that might not be as familiar as they expect. 

“We offer a completely different product, so we’re educating people as to what is Mexican street food,” he said. 

The music played overhead is a playlist organized around “kind of my high school music, which was all ’80s new-wave,” Giuliano said: The Clash, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, and so on. 

This doesn’t mean that he’s not mindful of people’s expectations; the menu does include quesadillas and the ever-popular bowl, after all. But Giuliano said he’ll always first recommend that people try the chef’s-choice taco, made with carnitas, tomatillo salsa, queso fresco, and pickled onions, with fresh cilantro and onion on top.

“This taco is really important to me,” he said, because it captures an early experience of a trip to Mexico.

“[We were] driving down to party down there, you know, hang out and have fun, but we pulled over on the side of the road and there was this older lady just cooking carnitas on an open fire in a cast-iron pot, tortillas warming on a rock, and she served them with the tomatillo salsa and pickled onions” he said. 

“It was just so memorable, and here I am now, trying to replicate these flavors and memories that I have.”