The scent of sizzling carne asada drifts through the doors as customers enter Tacos Supreme. Behind the counter, Joseph Marte moves with confidence as the sole person who built the restaurant from the ground up.
Marte, who is Dominican and born in the Bronx, opened Tacos Supreme on Aug. 30, 2025. Before the tacos, he owned a construction company where he spent years working with Mexican people. Between construction and cooking, a deep passion emerged into a great idea.
“I always had a passion for food — Mexican food,” Marte said. “Even though I’m not Mexican, I’m Dominican. I love to cook. I went to Mexico to learn. When you’re interested in something, you learn quickly. It’s passion.”
“Good food, healthy and fresh.”
Freshness is just a commercialized word here; it’s a policy.
“We don’t actually have meat or any type of food sitting there waiting for you,” Marte said. “We make everything from scratch.”
Marte explains how important it is for ingredients in Mexican food to be fresh, unlike in other cuisines.
“You can’t warm up a taco the next day and put it in the microwave,” he explained. “You know right away if the meat is not fresh. You can taste it.”
What makes Taco Supreme unique is its duality in its menu. Authentic Mexican food and Tex-Mex. While some restaurants try to merge them, Marte shows the difference.
Authentic Mexican tacos? “Cilantro and onions, only,” he said.
Tex Mex? That’s when the topic expands — cheese, sour cream, pico de gallo and avocado.
“That is when it becomes Tex-Mex,” he says. Americans like salads. They like those ingredients.”
Customers, Marte says, know the difference. Some customers come in for the simplicity, others crave loaded versions.
The most personal dish to him is the taco birria because not enough people try it and is a staple to Mexican cuisine—the slow-cooked, deeply seasoned beef with consommé for dipping.
On the Tex-Mex side, the Mexican bowl leads. Topped with creme, pico de gallo, cheese and avocado, it offers a healthier, salad-type option. College students, in particular, gravitate toward protein-packed meals such as carne asada, chicken, salmon tacos, or burritos.
“They love burritos; they go frantic,” he said.
“I can’t tell you one dish,” Marte said of which item would be his best-seller. “They go for everything.”
For Marte, representing Mexican cuisine as a Dominican-born New Yorker carries weight.
“Mexican people are very hardworking,” he said. “If you go to any restaurant, any place, you will always find the Mexican guy working. They work hard for their family, for their kids.”
For him, that work ethnic doesn’t just stop at construction sites or kitchens—it carries directly onto the plate.
Food, he believes, is more than just a meal. It’s a form of storytelling.
“If you eat here today, and you go with your friends,” he said. “They’ll ask, ‘Where’s the best place to eat?’ And you tell them. If the food is good and fresh, you bring them here.”
Marte says the most rewarding part of running Tacos Supreme are his customers.
“I enjoy it,” Marte says. “I like to deal with people daily. Especially the college kids — they’re very nice kids. It’s fun.”
His vision doesn’t stop at just one location. In five years, he hopes to open another one in Orlando, Florida.
“I was in construction. The place was empty,” he recalls of his current storefront. “It kept in my head — rent the place. I saw the vision. You’ve got to push for yourself.”
Now that vision smells like fresh tortillas and slow-braised birria. For Joseph Marte, this is only the beginning.
Bridgette Leahy is an intern at the Bronx Times. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
