A Deep Dive Into the Millennial Burger Joint Meme and the Search for an "Authentic" Taco Place

Blog story by Woosung Choi

You know the place. Exposed brick, tiny hanging lights, metal stools and a chalkboard menu that says "shareables" instead of appetizers. Fries in a little wire basket, tossed in truffle oil, served with a metal ramekin of aioli, with a $20 burger on a brioche bun.

If you've been online in the past year, you've watched Gen Z drag this exact restaurant across TikTok. And this morning, in my trip to downtown Austin, I just happened to walk into one, though it was not a burger but a Taco place.

I paid $18 for a taco topped with pineapple and mac and cheese. Twenty minutes earlier, I'd eaten a nearly perfect one for a few dollars in a building that looked like it was about to fall over. In the same neighborhood, five-minute walk to each other, I found two drastically different places. How?

Well, I'm going to share a story that just happened the day of writing this blog, as it is not only interesting but there are some insightful parts to it.......

The Beginning

If there's one food I missed from the U.S. during my summer in Korea, it's tacos.

The mix of sweet and savory with a little acidity at the end, wrapped in a texture juicy enough to make you pause mid-bite! You know, it's pretty rare for me to not get sick of eating the same thing over, but Tacos were an exception.

There were Tacos in Korea too, but my own pride forbid me from tasting them since, I was a performative fanatic for niche, local, authentic foods. Thus, industrial-style franchises to me, were not only a crime, but also a place where I wouldn't be satisfied - even if they tasted really good.

Anyways.

The day (Today, as of writing this blog) started with a volunteering shift at the Austin History Center, where I spent a few hours hauling cardboard boxes and stacks of printed material around to help set up an exhibit. After this grueling but worthy work that drained me out of any bit of energy (I didn't even have the energy to walk or speak), I headed to the rail station for the hour-long ride home. (An hour on the train is a long time, but I didn't want to spend that $60 on Uber.)

And then, with the perfect timing the universe seems to save for people who are already tired, I watched the train pull out without me. Well, there was another 30 minutes to go, and I was, most important of all: HUNGRY.

There was a taco place right across from the station. It looked expensive in appearance, so I skipped it, along with everything else nearby that looked either overpriced or too slow to finish before my train. However, on a quick google search, I found "Taqueria de Diez".... "Tijuana-style street tacos served with"...., "4 minutes away"..... as an avid fanatic of local, authentic food, here it was.

The Hidden Gem: Taqueria de Diez

When I got there, I was standing on the sidewalk for a minute, confused.

Without a sign or a visible entrance, the building itself looked like it was in the middle of giving up on being a building, with peeling paint and edges that sagged. Attached to one side was a bar that did not show a even a slightest trace of food, let alone a restaurant.

"must've been closed"... I thought

I had already turned halfway back toward the station, convinced I'd misread the address. Then I noticed people slipping through a doorway tucked into the side of it - all of them moving with the type of confidence radiating the feel of "I've done this a hundred times before."

So I followed them in, not expecting anything surprising. However, as soon as I set my foot past the metal doors, I found a completely different world inside. Bright, clean, packed shoulder to shoulder, the room was filled with joyful and lively Mexican songs. At the center of it, there was an open kitchen where the cooks build your order right in front of you along a steel counter, passing it down the line in immeasurable speed.

Everyone ahead of me was busy staring at the handed out menus, so I stepped up and ordered first. The chef built my taco in maybe three seconds. He asked what I wanted on it.

"Con todo." I replied, as no-leaving out, eating as it is, was my philosophy.

(Picking out anything, from onions to Cilantros, is really my pet peeve.)

Carne asada. Tender, glistening meat in a corn tortilla so soft it basically surrendered before I finished chewing. Two salsas, a scatter of fresh cilantro. As soon as I took a bite, it was not "good for the price," but rather, perfect.

I turned around to order a second one and found the line had exploded while I wasn't looking, filled with everyone who'd been busy deliberating a few minutes earlier.

Here's what caught my eye. The people in line, phones out, scrolling and comparing, mostly looked like they'd found the place through a viral post online. The people already eating, on other hand, standing shoulder to shoulder without glancing at a menu, were mostly Mexican customers and neighborhood regulars who'd clearly been coming here for years. There I noticed two crowds in the same room, with completely different relationships as to why they came here.

The line won. I couldn't wait it out. I even circled partway back hoping the crowd had thinned, took one look, and turned around again.

Photo of the kitchen of Taqueria de Diez

A Controversial Millenial Taco Place

That left me with fifteen minutes and an unfinished craving. And somewhere in there, a thought crept in about that expensive place across from the station.

The entrance of Austin Taco Project

The entrance itself already gave red flags. First of all, the design caught my eye. The art, though vibrant, gave off an unmistakable feeling that it will not be authentic, nor local.

It even gave 2010 tech bro vibes, (or whatever it's called) which made me raise eyebrows.

(Context piece for my thinking: Skip this part and move on

For some context, from roughly 2004 to 2009 there was an aesthetic called Frutiger Aero. If you're unfamiliar, it's the glossy, sun-drenched look of that era: water droplets and bubbles, tropical fish, blue skies with fat white clouds, everything reflective and slightly wet. (Note Windows Vista wallpapers or the Nintendo Wii menu.) It ran on one optimistic idea, that technology and nature were about to merge into something beautiful.

Then flat design killed it around 2012, and what replaced it was "Corporate Memphis": cheerful figures with noodle arms and no faces, floating in blocks of pastel color. Unlike tall soulless glasses with no designs, one might say that gives some life to corporate offices, and are thus, better suited to give a more "warm" environment; however, I am strongly against that, for not only killing my favorite aesthetic, but also giving an artificial warm feeling)

Furthermore, I took close attention to the name "Austin Taco Project," and also to the awkward phrases like "TacoDillo," "Viva La Marc," and "Let's Taco 'Bout it." hanging on the front door. These for whatever reason, gave me an cringe feeling.

Inside, there were rows of empty tables stuffed with neatly folded napkins and an enormous illustrated mustachioed man printed on every single door. Beneath the tall ceilings looking like an echoing hotel lobby, there was a large bar off to the side, completely empty.

Two servers greeted me with warm smiles and offered me a drink. I asked if there was anything I could get in fifteen minutes, before the train next to the place leaves.

"Of course, have a seat." Glass-bottled water arrived before I'd finished sitting down.

Then I opened the menu, which confirmed my initial suspicion and worry.

The cheapest item was $15. Carne asada, the exact dish I'd eaten across the street twenty minutes earlier, was $18. I had already sat down and accepted the water, so I was locked in and there was no graceful way (at least to my face-conscious self) to exit the place

What arrived was a taco topped with pineapple and mac and cheese.

(I don't think I need explanation on this one.)

To be fair, fusion food can be great when someone knows what they're doing. (As in Torchy's Tacos, which somehow combines a pineapple well into the meal) This wasn't fusion, but was closer to a costume.

Across the street, $18 would have bought me three identical ones.

The part that stuck with me came at the end. I was out of time, so I skipped the tip and asked for the rest to go. The warmth evaporated on contact. Smiles went flat. My takeout came back carried by the grimmest face I'd seen all day. That's when the math clicked. The hospitality was never for me. It was for the version of me they assumed had walked in, someone with money to burn. I was very much not that guy.

The only other customers the whole time were five bald men who looked airlifted in from a Seattle tech office. There was no lively music nor conversation, although the place was super fancy on the outside and way larger than the original Taco place. And near the entrance, a plaque announced the place as a Tripadvisor top-rated destination, which felt ironically weird in that empty restaurant serving a taco with mac and cheese.

Clean, nice looking but hollow interior of the Restaurant, Austin Taco Project

The Abomination

What the morning actually taught me

On the train home, still annoyed about the $18, I wanted answers for why that place had bothered me so much. The food being bad wasn't it. Plenty of food is bad. This was a different, lower-grade ick.

Then I remembered the "Millennial Burger Restaurant" meme I'd seen going around.

Searching where it came from, I found it began with starter packs in the late 2010s, mocking exposed brick, string lights, and menus that say "shareables." Then TikTok got hold of it in early 2025 and one video hit 14 million views. Somewhere in the comments, "just two guys with a crazy idea" became the unofficial motto. In the clips I scrolled through, the restaurants shown had an unmistakable resemblance to the one I'd just walked out of.

But the brick and the puns weren't the problem. The creator behind that video said what got him wasn't any particular restaurant, but was the sameness.

And suddenly it became clear, and the answer was smaller than I wanted it to be.

Comparing the two with each other, Austin Taco Project was trying to look authentic, while Taqueria de Diez was just trying to make tacos.

Everything in that restaurant, from the contrived neon signs to all the little interiors devices were straining to give off "hipster" vibes and look authentic, and that effort was exactly what made me cringe. Meanwhile the taqueria had no sign and no visible entrance, practically hiding behind crumbling walls, because it didn't need one.

Well, at the end, it was packed at noon regardless.

That's when the part I disliked most occurred to me.

I refused to eat tacos for an entire summer in Korea. The ones at the franchises weren't horribly bad nor offensive. Some were probably good. But eating there would have undermined the story I was telling about myself, the one where I only eat real food.

And that's the thing. The taco this morning was real. It was better, and I'm not walking that back. What wasn't real was the version of me who deserved credit for finding it. That guy was a construct, broadcast only to myself.

So what bothered me at Austin Taco Project wasn't superiority, but was recognition. They were selling a story about tacos, I was selling a story about myself, and I noticed theirs faster because it was hung on a wall in front of my train station and Hilton Hotel.

The difference is what each story replaced. Theirs stood in for the food. Mine sat on top of food I genuinely liked, which is less damning but not exactly clean, and it still cost me, which is why I don't fully trust the meme either. Spotting the formula and feeling above it is the same move the mural is making: a claim about who you are, doing the work that something real should be doing. It's cheaper than $18 and it has still never fed anyone.

Works Cited

Bowie, James I. "Lyft, Hipster Finger Mustache: Mustache Logos Are Booming." Slate, 3 Nov. 2014, slate.com/human-interest/2014/11/lyft-hipster-finger-mustache-mustache-logos-are-booming.html.

Chayka, Kyle. "AirSpace, Redux." Kyle Chayka Industries, 13 Feb. 2023, kylechayka.substack.com/p/airspace-redux.

Chayka, Kyle. "Welcome to AirSpace." The Verge, 3 Aug. 2016, www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-global-minimalism-startup-gentrification.

"Corporate Memphis." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis. Accessed 1 Aug. 2026.

"Frutiger Aero." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_Aero. Accessed 1 Aug. 2026.

"'Millennial Burger Joints' Are Getting Roasted on TikTok: 'Handhelds' and 'Shareables.'" TODAY, 13 Mar. 2025, www.today.com/food/trends/millennial-burger-joints-rcna196144.

"Millennial Burger Place." Know Your Meme, 25 Feb. 2025, knowyourmeme.com/memes/millennial-burger-place.

"Restaurants Are Investing in Photogenic Decor to Attract Instagram Users." CNBC, 19 Apr. 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/04/19/restaurants-invest-in-photogenic-decor-to-attract-instagram-users.html.

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"What Is the Viral 'Millennial Burger Place' Meme on TikTok?" Dexerto, 26 Feb. 2025, www.dexerto.com/tiktok/what-is-the-viral-millennial-burger-place-meme-on-tiktok-3146267.

"What's a 'Millennial Burger Joint' and Why Is It a Meme?" NewsNation, 10 Mar. 2025, www.newsnationnow.com/entertainment-news/food/millennial-burger-joint.