Since beginning to feed the town of Hillsdale in the fall of 2020, New York Taco has updated its menu and invited customers inside to dine.
Updates to the menu include new breakfast selections and easy-to-order combo lunch box options.
“Our mission is to be able to make sure anybody can afford to come and eat,” said David Karim, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Fibi Karim “Our food is really good. The customers who eat here, they come again.”
New York Taco, located on W. Carleton Road in Hillsdale, is open from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m. for drive-thru service and currently has a 50% indoor dining capacity.
The menu carries about 450 items, including tacos, burritos, nachos. The menu also features vegetarian meals, desserts, and inexpensive family-size options that include free two-liter drinks.
“I feel blessed because we do have regular customers right now,” Fibi said. “People are looking for comfort food.”
The new numbered lunch box orders are posted at the bottom of the drive-thru menu, where they’re easy to read and choose from. The main dishes vary, but they all come with two Mexican donuts and a drink.
“So they will come in and say, ‘Lunchbox number four, and I want to drink this,’ and move quickly,” David said. “So this way, the line is not being held up.”
The new breakfast menu mainly features different kinds of breakfast burritos and quesadillas. They also recently added 10 different kinds of Mexican sodas.
Their burrito bowl option allows the customer to build the bowl, choosing from about 15 different kinds of meat and a variety of toppings, David said.
“A lot of the college young people choose that option because that’s more healthy,” Karim said.
Junior Anna Cannon visited New York Taco on the recommendation of a friend and loved the chicken burrito bowl, topped with avocado hummus, that she ordered there.
“My friend said it was really good, and she told all of us that we should go to support another small business,” Cannon said. “They had a lot of options, which makes it really fun.”
Cannon said she would definitely recommend New York Taco to Hillsdale students as a good alternative to Taco Bell.
The restaurant’s food has only improved since they first opened, according to Fibi.
“Anybody who knows about it, they tell their family,” Fibi said. “So we have a lot of customers who come and say, ‘Oh, we’re coming because our friends, our family, our friends at work recommended it.’ So that’s a good sign.”
Customers’ tips are donated to a charity in Egypt: Fibi’s father’s church. She’s excited whenever people give tips because she feels they’re going to a good cause, she said.
“It is nice because it makes a difference to them during the holidays especially. Their Easter is next month,” Fibi said. “We send stuff more during the holidays because we sponsor 50 families to feed them during the holiday.”
Fibi said building relationships with customers is important to her and sometimes asks customers how their day is going or how she can pray for them.
“We’re friendly people. This is our nature,” Fibi said. “My friends tell me that my window is like a heavenly window.”
In the future, New York Taco will look to expand to a new location in Coldwater or Jackson, David said.
“There’s no food I don’t like here. Everything is great,” Fibi said. “I put my heart into the food because this is the way I want to eat, so I give it to people.”