When friends would visit Jason Scott at the barbecue restaurant he co-owns, BBQ Rush, he’d serve them with a tortilla, tomatillo salsa and deep-fried serranos on the side.
“It tastes better with those items,” he’d say to people who questioned him. The hidden gem, tucked away in a KOA campground, was where he knew Texas-style barbecue could survive in Tucson.
His new restaurant, Texas Burrito Company, on Tucson’s south side, is the natural extension of this concept. He calls it Texican, to differentiate from Tex Mex.
Jason Scott is the owner of Texas Burrito Company, a restaurant that incorporates his Texan ranch heritage and barbecue into traditional Sonoran food.
“You can do spicy and sweet,” he said. “You can take a burrito that has beans, rice and pico de gallo... put a little bit of barbecue sauce in it?” He paused for effect. “The umami you get from the beans and the rice and the smoked meats, maybe a charred serrano on the side. Fresh lime juice? It’s amazing.”
Their most popular menu item so far is the El Jefe burrito.
“It’s because of the meats,” he said. “It’s pretty much all meat in that burrito.” Beef brisket, pulled pork and smoked sausage (made at a local meat market using Jason’s family recipe) share a flour tortilla with some barbecue sauce.
Family photos of owner, Jason Scott, show his father, uncle and other relatives and friends of the family at El Tigre ranch hang on a wall.
Texas Burrito Company’s meats are smoked in the style passed down from Jason’s Texan ancestors, some of whom fought in the Alamo. “When I was little, growing up on ranches in Texas, that’s how we would eat the BBQ,” he said. “There was always someone making fresh tortillas and smoking fresh fajitas, putting brisket and chicken on the smoker, too.”
While Jason would visit his grandfather, aunts and uncles on Texas ranches, with cows that towered over his child-sized frame, he grew up in Tucson and lived in Nogales for almost 20 years. He and his wife Marina, who is from Sonora, love the food from our region. That’s why the tortillas he sources for his restaurant are from Sasabe, Mexico.
“Basically, we are offering Sonoran-style Mexican food, with smoked meats,” he said.
Texas Burrito Company also features a burrito named after the family’s ranch, El Tigre, which has more in common with burritos you’d find elsewhere in Tucson, with a big twist. On top of the rice, beans and pico, this burrito has brisket instead of carne asada.
Lilly Arvizu makes a burrito in the kitchen at Texas Burrito Co., located at 1570 E Tucson Marketplace Blvd. on May 13, 2022.
Breakfast is where the fusion delineates. While you can get a burrito stuffed with four different kinds of smoked meats, you can also get more traditional Sonoran machaca or chorizo breakfast burritos, or Texas-style biscuits and gravy.
"We started off as a food trailer ... in 2013," Jason said. "We got into the KOA for BBQ Rush. We just worked really hard every day; we don’t take vacations, we don’t take breaks.” He brought in a design company from El Paso to build a high-end website and cohesive interior design. “We want to turn the Texas Burrito Co. into a chain,” he said. “We want to have multiple locations.”
Texas Burrito Company is located at 1570 E. Tucson Marketplace Blvd.
Texas Burrito Company
Location: 1570 E. Tucson Marketplace Blvd.
Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily
For more information, check out their website.
