Michael “Mico” Rodriguez died last week. He was 68.
Mico was my friend. For a while now, the two of us had been working on a book about his life, and there is a lot of life to tell. So this isn’t an obituary in the usual sense. It’s a few things Dallas ought to remember about the man who changed how this city eats Tex-Mex.
He came by it honestly. Mico grew up in the business, working alongside his mother at Mia’s on Lemmon Avenue. Restaurants were part of his story from the time he was a kid.
In 1991, he struck out on his own. He opened the first Mi Cocina at Preston Forest Village with a group of partners, and a big part of the starting money came from customers who believed in him, $82,500 by his own count. That would barely cover the light fixtures in a new restaurant today. Mico liked to tell the story of walking out of the restaurant one day and having his brother chase after him to tell him he was going to change history.
His brother was right. Mi Cocina helped bring a more polished style of Tex-Mex to Dallas, the kind you dressed up for. When a loyal customer nudged him toward Highland Park Village, Mico took the leap, and he later said that move took Mi Cocina to another plane of existence. Within about a decade there were roughly a dozen of them, with Mico running the company.
And then there’s the Mambo Taxi. Frozen margarita swirled with frozen sangria. Mico helped create it, and he was proud of it. It’s hard to think of another drink that belongs to Dallas the way that one does.
Mico’s road had plenty of hard stretches, and he never pretended otherwise. He fought alcohol. His marriage ended. He parted ways with Mi Cocina, the company he helped build. In the years after, he was part of Taco Diner, the Mercury and Mesero, and in 2022 he opened Doce Mesas near Walnut Hill and Central. Some of those worked better than others. By his own count he founded or nurtured 14 brands, and he said the point was never that every one of them succeeded. The point was the doing.
He got sober, and he talked about it openly, including the rehab stays that he said saved his life. In his last years he described himself as softer and more understanding. He called himself a survivor and spoke about being grateful for a second chance. He spent a lot of time mentoring, his daughter first, and young restaurateurs coming up behind him.
He was still building at the end. His last project was Cinco Cocinas Food Nation on Maple Avenue, with his longtime friend and business partner Ray Quintanilla, who grew up in the same neighborhood, and later with JJ’s Cafe chef Jose Ramirez. It was a homecoming of sorts, a nod to the part of town where Mico once threw newspapers as a kid.
Ramirez put it simply after Mico’s death. The next time you sit down to upscale Tex-Mex in Dallas, he said, remember that Mico was the one who pioneered it.
That’s the right way to remember him. Every polished Tex-Mex dining room in this city, every frozen swirl on a Friday night patio, every restaurant that treats enchiladas like they deserve a nice tablecloth owes something to Mico Rodriguez.
I’ll miss him. I’ll miss the stories, and there were always more stories. We didn’t get to finish the book, but I will.
Order a Mambo Taxi this week and raise it to Mico.
