Tacos Mexico Partners With Jeffree Star For New Menu Items Featuring Yak Meat
Ever since Jeffree Star first moved to just outside of Casper, he's tried to impact the city in positive ways. And he's been doing it with...yaks.
Star has a yak farm (incidentally called Star Yak Ranch) where he raises yaks for the purposes of consumption (though he does have a few that he keeps around as pets, as well...because who wouldn't want a pet yak?). He has sold his yak meat to various businesses in town, including Grant Street Grocery, and Star is partnering with one of Casper's favorite Mexican restaurants, Tacos Mexicos, as well.
Read More: Star Yak Ranch Sets the Record Straight on 'Pets vs Meat' Herd
A photo of Star and Tacos Mexico's owner Alex Rosales was posted to social media and it immediately went viral.
"Jeffree has been a really big supporter of Tacos Mexico," owner Alex Rosales told K2 Radio News. "Apparently, before he moved here, he went around and kinda stopped by different places and tried different restaurants. And, you know, like everyone else, everyone has their favorites. And he just so happened to like what we do."
Rosales stated that Star came into the restaurant one day with his usual posse, and that's when the two actually met.
"I wanted to make sure he was happy, so I went out and introduced myself," he said. "My staff always goes out of their way to make sure he's happy, just like with all of our customers. So I knew him as a customer and he's been really good to us that way."
Rosales said that Lindsey Grant (of Grant Street Grocery) told him that Star was looking for local businesses to partner with to sell and utilize his yak meat.
"Initially, to be honest with you, I didn't even know what kind of animal that was," Rosales laughed. "All I knew was that it was something he was trying to do, so I looked him up, and it seemed interesting. Initially, I thought it was just going to be one of his side businesses that he was going to do. I didn't know he was going to be offering the actual yak products, like meat, jerky, different cuts, things like that."
Grant brought him a sample piece of yak meat and it was really good, so the two began speaking about working with each other.
"I was able to make a pretty easy decision," Rosales said. "I've tried a couple different recipes already but I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to go with it. So I sat down with them and talked to them a little bit about it and decided to go ahead and give it a shot because it's a really good product. I like how it's a little bit leaner, and it's just a matter of learning how to work with the product. I wanted to familiarize myself with the yak meet before I made a commitment because I wanted to do the product justice."
If the recipes involving yak meat are anything like the rest of Tacos Mexico's dishes, that shouldn't be hard to do. There's a reason that Star specifically chose Tacos Mexico as the restaurant that he wanted to partner with. And that reason is the quality of food that the restaurant puts out.
Rosales said the first way he's going to introduce yak into his menu is with a roast.
"We're doing some roast for shredded beef," he said. "I played with quite a few different recipes in quite a few different ways, but I was very happy with how it turned out with the shredded beef. We're doing the shredded beef in a completely different style. Because you can have shredded beef anywhere in the world, but the way we make it - you can only get that at Tacos Mexico. And now, you can only get that product at Tacos Mexico, cooked that specific way, so it's like a special thing for our customers."
Rosales said the restaurant will begin serving Star's meat on Friday, and for the time being it will only be a Friday special, due to supply and demand.
"We want to make sure that we have enough product and that he can supply the demand of yak meat, because it's a really good product," Rosales said.
When Rosales posted the photo to Casper Classifieds, he had no idea it would receive the amount of attention that it did. Part of it can certainly be due to the star power (no pun intended) of Jeffree Star, but it's also due to how much Casperites enjoy Tacos Mexico and the food that they serve up.
"It blows me away," Rosales said. "I guess he handpicks people that he thinks could help him in any way. So for him to pick us out of the crowd, it's quite an honor you know? He told me that he's been all over the world and that he knows when he tastes a good product. So that's kind of flattering. It's really cool that somebody like him...I mean, here we are in little Casper, Wyoming and for somebody famous like that to like what we do; that's a huge honor for us."