Hot Dish: Birria Ramen at Taconah Cantina

Crystal and David Chiong at their restaurant Taconah Cantina in Goldens Bridge. Their Mexican-Japanese-Chinese dish, birria ramen, features fresh fragrant ingredients. AMY SOWDER PHOTOS

By AMY SOWDER

When the day is dreary with a drizzly chill, a steaming bowl of fragrant soup is just the ticket. Heck, a sunny, warm, dry day also calls for soup, when it’s the birria ramen at the family-owned Taconah Cantina. 

The mostly Mexican-style restaurant with 35 seats, a small bar and outdoor options has tucked itself into the ACME Markets shopping plaza since April 2024, across from the train station in Goldens Bridge. 

Amid their playful Lucha libre Mexican wrestling decor, owners David and Crystal Chiong have been eating birria ramen at least once a week with their two young children, who like the meaty, flavor-packed noodle soup too. The Chiongs introduced the soup to diners as a special in February, and it’s been a knockout ever since.

David Chiong relates this Mexican-Japanese-Chinese dish to his own Cuban-Chinese roots.

“You think in both languages,” he says, “The dish came from our love of all things Asian and thinking that the broth would lend itself to a lot of different dishes.”

Crystal Chiong agrees as she positions the fragrant bowl towering with toppings on a hand-built wooden table. 

“We built in a lot of different textures,” she says of the soup.

The soup’s heftiest ingredient is the beef braised in birria-spiced broth. The bavette cut of meat is also called a bottom sirloin, just above the flank. That beef is seared first. The birria ingredients are combined with chicken stock to make the broth, and then the meat marinades for three hours before a cook shreds it for a potent mess of flavor. 

When an order comes in, the cook scoops some onto the flat-top grill with a sizzle. To plate the dish, the soup bowl receives the mound of noodles before the meat, followed by roasted corn and minced wood ear mushrooms, popular in Chinese cuisine and known for its crunchy texture and ability to absorb flavors. 

“The mushroom has a nice crunch, and it can hold its own in the soup,” Crystal Chiong says. 

A sprinkling of diced green onions comes just before a couple ladles full of broth. To top it all off, pickled radish arrives with a stack of mung bean sprouts, cilantro and a drizzle of chili oil.

Birria tacos went viral on social media in 2020 for their amped-up succulence. The offshoot recipes are as myriad as your imagination. Taconah Cantina’s menu has six other ways to get your birria thrill — like the taco, of course, or a burrito and hero. Birria seasonings vary depending on the cook, but chiles are pretty important — and so is that broth.

“The broth has so many ingredients, it’s almost like making a molé,” David Chiong says about the sauce of dried fruits, nuts, Mexican chillies, dark chocolate and spices like black pepper, cinnamon and cumin.

Taconah Cantina’s birria-spiced broth has star anise, allspice, cloves and four kinds of chili peppers, among other ingredients.

The prep cooks start on the broth the day before the batch will be served, and continue on the day-of before the eatery opens, seven days a week. 

“It’s like a conveyor belt of a well-oiled machine,” David Chiong says, “A lot of the things we do require a lot of time.”

Taconah Cantina is located at 108 North County Shopping Center, Goldens Bridge. For more information, visit taconah.com.