After several hours in the Texas sun and a narrow escape from a desert dust storm, the craving hit like no other. I was headed from Balmorhea to Marfa, and was in desperate need of a taco. This wasn’t my first foray into West Texas, and I knew from past experience that dining options were limited. I pulled up Google Maps and prepared to swallow my disappointment when I saw it: La Muerta Taqueria.
I was nearly sold before I even looked at the food. From the photos, I could see the place had style, and not the 50 shades of beige look that so many Marfa shops seem to go for. La Muerta was spooky—a taco shack straight out of Beetlejuice’s Neitherworld. Housed in a squat black-and-white building with neon string lights, a striped rail led up to the order window, while a large, skeletal rooster sculpture stood guard nearby.
Still, as a born and bred San Antonian, I would sooner die than knowingly spend money on a bad taco, so I scrolled over to inspect their menu. The options were pared down, but the tacos themselves were unlike anything I had seen before.
Where the shop itself was mostly devoid of color, the tacos were bursting with it. Inky black and bougainvillea pink tortillas provided a sharp contrast against fresh green cilantro, magenta pickled onions and sliced radish, pomegranate seeds, red and green salsas, and bright white crumbles of fresh Cotija cheese. Mixed in with slow roasted chicken, pork shoulder, or sauteed nopales (prickly pear cactus), each offering built on the shop’s macabre theme with names like “Ofrenda Roja,” “Mole Nocturna,” “Aloja Bruja,” and “Chicken Verde Lament.”
The brainchild of couple Anissa Lujan and Nicholas Francis, La Muerta began as a pop up in 2023. Francis had spent most of his life working in restaurants in his native New York before moving to Marfa in 2019 for an artist residency. At one of his installations, Lujan stumbled onto his work, and the two just clicked.
Lujan was born and raised in Marfa. Her grandfather, Abe Gonzalez, was the town’s first Hispanic sheriff, and she had come back home to take care of him in 2019. Less than a year after meeting Francis, the couple eloped. Then came the pandemic.
“We were stuck in Marfa and thought, ‘Well, let’s make the best of it,’” Francis says. “The food scene was bleak during Covid, so we started serving fried chicken sandwiches at Planet Marfa.”
The couple had always cooked for themselves at home, but this was a low-pressure way to collaborate and get creative. “When you’re stuck on a desert island, you start getting inventive,” Lujan jokes. “You also start cooking better food for yourself because everything is three hours away.”
As a child, Lujan’s mom cooked practically every meal they ate. Typically, this meant the standard Mexican fare: mole, chilaquiles, tacos. Then her mother began working as a chef at Cochineal, the renowned fine dining restaurant then owned by Tom Rapp and Toshifumi “Toshi” Sakihara. “My mom started bringing home new dishes from Cochineal, like lox bagels and duck,” Lujan says. “I remember thinking, ‘Hey, ya’ll have been holding out on me. This is amazing.’ I never expected that I would end up doing the same thing, and fall in love with cooking.”
Fried chicken sandwiches at Planet Marfa soon grew into a more formal pop-up called “Foxy’s Kitchen,” with an expanded menu that featured items like chilaquiles and poutine. By 2023, the couple was ready to branch out.
They knew they wanted to steer away from Tex-Mex and toward Mexican street tacos with an emphasis on fresh, natural ingredients. It was partly borne out of necessity—Lujan’s food allergies mean she has to avoid Red Dye 40 and avocados, among other things. “I can’t have Hot Cheetos or guacamole, which is a disgrace as a Mexican,” she says.
But more than that, they wanted to create an affordable, healthy option for Marfa locals. “Presidio is one of the poorest counties in Texas,” Lujan says. “We wanted to have something the locals could eat and not get tired of.”
They had spent the previous three years researching and developing recipes, testing out flavor profiles, and seeing what stuck. They knew their salsas couldn’t be too spicy, otherwise they’d risk scaring off tourists. They also knew Lujan’s family mole recipe would be a must-have on the menu. Their tortillas would have to be handmade, and Lujan wanted them jet black. “They needed to be goth,” she says.
So they got in the kitchen, and started experimenting, eventually landing on a charcoal dye made from charred coconut husks. (Their vibrant pink tortillas are dyed with natural beet juice.) “The tortillas are the star of our show,” Francis says. “They opened the door to a whole world of tortilla art, so we’ve been able to design patterns, swirls, zebra print, even faces. I started to go crazy with it.”
The couple opened up La Muerta (“The Dead”) in a small building on Lujan’s grandfather’s property, which he’d previously operated as a barber shop. The “shack” as they called it, gave the restaurant more of a hole in the wall feel. “I loved the idea that people wouldn’t expect a meal like this to come out of a place like that,” Lujan says. “It felt like something Anthony Bourdain would love.”
The name and decor was an homage to Lujan’s own personal style, but it was also a tribute to a side of Marfa that she’s always known.
“If you look at the people who are actually from here, we wear all black. I don’t know how else to explain it, but everyone from Marfa is a little goth, a little metal, a little punk, and very Hispanic,” she says. “I wanted our branding to reflect the real place that I’m from.”
Lujan and Francis have also been navigating life as new parents while juggling La Muerta’s growing popularity. During busy seasons, they’d often go to open the shop and find a small crowd of people waiting and ready to order. When they first opened three years ago, they never expected to outgrow the shack, but this fall, they’re returning to their old digs.
Starting this month, the duo will be taking over Planet Marfa’s kitchen, running La Muerta out of the venue’s beer garden. (The clay-colored adobe building on the patio has already been given a fittingly spooky makeover.) Thanks to the additional kitchen space, they already have plans to add onto their menu, reintroducing customer favorites like loaded nachos piled onto homemade chips. Lujan also has dessert on the mind, and has been testing out some sopapillas.
“When we got the chance to go back, it just made sense,” Francis says. “It’s where we started, and it’s also where all the locals hang out. It’s where our community here gets together.”
