This outdoor Mexican restaurant in Miami just won a national TV contest for best taco

Like many new restaurants in Miami that opened in 2020, Uptown 66 started life as a pop-up spot. And like many entrepreneurs, owner and chef Nuno Grullon wasn’t sure the restaurant could succeed in the face of government shutdowns and COVID 19.

Now, three years later, the small but popular outdoor Mexican cantina has a loyal following — and was just crowned taco champion by “Good Morning America.”

Last week, the show hosted a weeklong “United States of Tacos” competition to discover the best tacos in the country, with first-round competitions in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami. After reaching out to Grullon to participate, a panel of judges voted Uptown 66’s birria taco as the best of the bunch (guest judges included former Major League Baseball player and Hall of Famer CC Sabathia; actor Alex Moffat; fitness instructor and makeup artist Tunde Oyeneyin; actor and singer-songwriter Christian Chávez of RBD; and chef Chris Valdes).

Grullon, who took home a grand prize of $20,000 courtesy of Taco Bell, beat out Caja Caliente chef and owner Mika Leon, who made her famous Cuban-style lechon taco for the Miami round of the competition.

“It was nerve racking,” Grullon admits. “I didn’t expect to be so nervous! But it was fun. Everyone was super nice and attentive, and the other competitors were great. We had a great time behind the scenes.”

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Grullon, who moved from the Bronx to Miami in the late 1990s, didn’t begin his career as an expert in Mexican cuisine. After starting his working life as a dishwasher in New York, he worked his way up to line cook and gradually made his way to higher-end restaurants serving Mediterranean, French and Italian fare. When he opened Uptown 66, he learned the best ingredients for Mexican dishes, which chiles worked for which dishes and what flavors needed to come forward.

“I need to understand the culture behind the food,” he says. “Where does it originate? How did they prepare it?”

Grullon’s award-winning birria taco — made with three different cuts of braised beef, queso mixto and consommé — wasn’t even on Uptown 66’s original menu. Grullon started with four tacos when his restaurant first opened: barbacoa, carnitas, chicken and wild mushroom. But customers, inspired by viral recipes that flooded TikTok, had other ideas.

“People kept coming up and asking for birria tacos,” Grullon says now. “They were all over social media. I said, ‘I’m going to have to make one of those.’ ”

Traditionally, Grullon says, birria tacos are made from goat meat. But he said his experience working in Miami’s restaurant world steered him toward the less exotic beef.

He’s drawn to the difficulty of creating great Mexican dishes, he says (cooking birria, for example, takes 20 hours, the meat smoldering at a low temperature).

“The cuisine is very complex,” he says. “It’s not as easy as putting a burger together. Nothing against a burger — I love a great burger! But it’s easy. Get top quality beef, put it on the grill, put lettuce, onion and cheese on it, and boom! With birria, you have to make a marinade. It takes two hours. You have to make sure to get the seeds out of the chiles. It’s very labor intensive. That’s what I love about it. It reminds me of French cuisine in that way.”

Grullon is considering Uptown 66’s future, pondering franchises or openings in other cities. He’s planning to open a full-service American concept soon near 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard. But for now, he’s taking time to appreciate the “Good Morning America” honor.

“It was a big win for us,” he says. “The brand means a lot to our die-hard customers. They’re very loyal, and they want to see us succeed.”

Uptown 66

Where: 6600 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

Hours: Noon-2 a.m. Sunday-Thursday; noon-4 a.m. Friday-Saturday

Information: uptown66.miami or 305-960-7117

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