The name gives it away before you walk in. Señor Oink is a carnitas taquería in Farmers Branch that serves one thing — pork — and has exactly zero apologies about it. Mauricio Gallegos, who also owns Xamán Café and the Esquire-recognized Ayahuasca Cantina on Jefferson Boulevard in Oak Cliff, opened this place with a specific idea in mind: a true carnitas spot, the way they exist in Mexico, where the menu is not a menu so much as a conversation about which part of the pig you’d like today. “Traditionally, when you go to a carnitas spot back home, that’s all they serve,” Gallegos says. “No fusion, no long menus, just different cuts of pork done right, with great tortillas and salsas.” The name, he will tell you, is also a nod to the sound a pig makes. He is not embarrassed about this.
The kitchen runs on two copper cazos — large pots shipped directly from Michoacán, the state in central Mexico where carnitas was born and where they have been cooking pork in copper since before anyone was writing about it. Copper heats evenly and holds temperature the way no other material does at this scale, which is why every serious carnitas operation in Mexico uses it and why Chef Leonardo Hernandez, who grew up cooking at a taco stand in Monterrey at age thirteen, insisted on them here.
Whole piglets go into the cazos and cook until the edges crisp and the interior stays tender and the fat renders into the meat in a way that no oven or slow cooker can replicate. “Carnitas is the next big thing in Texas,” Hernandez says. “People are getting to know carnitas more and eating high-quality carnitas. It’s only a matter of time.” He’s right, and the cazos are the reason.
You choose your cut at the counter. The maciza is pork shoulder — leaner, cleaner, the entry point for the uninitiated. The costilla is rib meat, richly porky without being greasy, the one that most regulars circle back to. The barriga is belly, fatty and crisp-edged, the cut for anyone who has decided to fully commit to the afternoon. The cueritos are the skin, shredded finely into something softer than you’d expect from that description. The buche is stomach, which sounds like a dare but eats like a revelation if you’ve had it done properly. And the surtida is all of the above, mixed together, for anyone who either can’t decide or doesn’t want to. A single taco runs $4. Four tacos run $13. A pound of meat with a pack of fresh tortillas handles the table. The guacamole comes topped with crispy pork belly and chicharrón, because why would it come any other way here.
The room is bright and deliberate about it — green and white tables, pink and green accents on gray walls, the color-forward design vocabulary of fashionable coastal taquerías in Mexico City. The drink menu runs tropical alongside the food: micheladas, agua frescas, and pulque — the ancient cloudy pre-Hispanic drink made from fermented agave sap that you almost never find this far from Mexico. The Guarapo Funk cocktail runs pulque with passionfruit. The hibiscus agua fresca is cold and worth ordering on a June afternoon in Farmers Branch. Happy hour runs on weekdays.
The vibe is beach-adjacent in the way that is easier to feel than to explain, which is precisely what Gallegos was going for. “I’ve always been drawn to the energy and flavors of Mexico’s coastal towns,” Gallegos tells us. “So we brought some of that vibe into the branding and experience.”
The neighbors at 12990 Bee Street in the Mustang Station Center include Roots Southern Table, Radici, and Bankhead Brewpub — a stretch of Bee Street that has quietly become one of the more interesting dining clusters in North Dallas. Señor Oink fits without trying to. Closed Monday. Open Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (972) 803-6666.
