Lebanese-Mexican Situ Tacos lands at Seattle's Tractor Tavern

Lupe Flores’s Situ Tacos take their name from the Arabic word for grandmother, which she and her cousins use to describe any food their family’s Lebanese and Mexican matriarch taught them. “Situ tacos, Situ rice, Situ salad,” Flores says. Her Situ began teaching her to cook from the age of three and she grew up sitting at the table listening to the older woman gossip with her friends in Arabic, Spanish, and English while they all picked cilantro.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Flores took the energy she used to spend tending bar at Hattie’s Hat and playing the drums as a touring musician and funneled it into feeding people her Situ tacos. What started as an idea to deliver her Lebanese-flavored crunchy-fried tacos to friends, became a runaway hit pop-up and, as of last weekend, has a permanent home at Ballard’s Tractor Tavern.

Laid off and grounded from touring by the pandemic last March, Flores figured she would ask a few friends if they wanted her to drop off tacos – she wasn’t doing anything and needed a way to stay busy and connect to her community. Within hours, she had orders for more than 500 tacos and had to stop taking orders and start cooking. Each time she posted she was making them again, the orders poured in. When the delivery got to be too much, she began operating as a pop-up at local breweries and word of her unique style of tacos spread quickly.

“From a young age, I was taught never to forget who I am and where I am from,” says Flores, and for her, that centered on food. Situ’s tacos represent Flores’s heritage on the plate, with a filling of Lebanese-style brown butter beef called hushwe in a tortilla. But it also pays homage to her family and the style of tacos they made.

“Anyone who bought crunchy taco shells was a cheater,” Flores’s grandmother told her. Instead, she fries the tortilla until soft, before stuffing it with hushwe, creamy garlic potatoes or spicy cauliflower. She secures it with toothpicks before frying again until it crisps up. Then the toothpicks come out and any sauces and garnishes can go in.

Cooking these tacos from the storied live music venue on Ballard Avenue weaves Flores’s personal background with her current community. For eight years, she tended bar at another old Ballard institution, Hattie’s Hat, and as a musician in three bands, she’s played the venue multiple times. When Tractor owner Dan Cowan heard about Flores’s venture, he saw an opportunity that could help both of them: at the time, pandemic restrictions only allowed music venues to open if they served food.

Cowen and his team converted a set up from a forgotten attempt to serve barbecue into a kitchen for Situ. “The entire staff at Tractor was hyped,” Flores says. “They built the whole thing – the sound guy, the manager, everyone’s swinging a hammer.” By the time they were all ready to open, the restriction had been lifted and Flores thought Situ might be over before it found its feet.

But Cowan remained enthusiastic, and Flores opened to clamoring crowds, selling out the 600 portions she had prepped for the weekend in the first night – and then doing it again two more times. “It’s great to be back on that block,” she says. “All the people who used to get drinks from me, now they get tacos.”

Even though she just opened, Flores is already planning for the future of her business, training employees to run Situ when she can tour with her bands again. For now, two of her bands have albums coming out soon: Wild Powwers plans to play a release show at the Tractor Tavern in two weeks – with tacos, of course – while another is actually named Tacos!, with an exclamation point for the importance. “If you call your band Tacos!” Flores explains, people have to love them. “Because everyone loves Tacos!”