If you’ve recently driven east along Parramatta Road, just past Ashfield Bunnings and before the Marco Polo Motor Inn, you may have noticed plumes of smoke coming from the car park at Metro Petroleum. You may have noticed a queue leading to a mobile food trailer, and festoon lighting above white plastic garden chairs. If you pull over and join the line, you’ll find out it’s for Papi’s, which 25-year-old Lawrence Diaz opened in 2024.

It specialises in birria, which can mean many things in Mexico, including a type of goat stew, but its most common form globally is slow-cooked, spice-throbbing beef folded into tacos. A cup of “consomme” made from the meat’s cooking juices and marinade is served on the side for sipping and taco dunking.

Diaz uses about 30 ingredients for his broth, including dried ancho and guajillo chilies, white pepper, caraway, tomato and onion, and a blend of osso bucco, rib and chuck is cooked in shimmering broth for 16 hours. Tortillas kiss the copper-red liquid before hitting the grill, where they blister and crisp and take on a ladle of the tender meat.

Other highlights from the short menu include a hunky birria cheese-melt on brioche, chicken quesadillas of requisite crunch, and a soft, resilient burrito that’s one of the thickest we’ve ever seen that’s not in Guy Fieri’s hands.

Good to know: Such is Papi’s popularity, there is now a second food truck in Carlton and a Darlinghurst brick-and-mortar store.

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