Thanks to quick turnover, I’m seated in minutes on a red bar stool at the counter. The parking lot is full, and the line is out the door. Today, a fourth generation of Avilas runs a bustling diner where photos of famous guests – President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden – line the walls. Joe’s Bakery has been a draw since the Avila family opened a small grocery store on the site in 1935. The next morning, I drive across town, under the interstate, to a local joint with quite the reputation. We dive into homemade chips and a just-spicy-enough guacamole, beset on all sides by a hipster crowd in beards and glasses. I have to keep adjusting where I set my Kolsch to avoid knots in the wood. That evening, I meet a friend at Lazarus Brewery – a modern throwback space with a lumpy, handmade wooden bar and 13 beers on tap. It is light enough to be a good breakfast without slowing me down ahead of a busy day. Refried beans, a light fluffy egg and cheese sit inside a perfect flour tortilla, wrapped to dip in a gentle, red salsa. The cafe serves breakfast tacos made by Veracruz, one of the city’s best-loved taco trucks. His bike shop, Mellow Johnny’s, includes an in-store cafe where the 2017 edition of the world’s most famous cycling race played on a big screen above a handful of industrial metal tables. My first stage began, appropriately, under the yellow jerseys once worn by a Tour de France champion, Austin’s own Lance Armstrong. It illustrated a single dish adored across ethnic and class lines, a delicious thread that keeps a growing city together. My Tour de Taco, as I came to call it, took me from the humble taco truck to family establishments where English is not the first language, from hipster breweries to high-end establishments with expensive cocktails. “Let us break our fast with the tortilla of hope and the egg of peace.” “(T)here is more that unites our tacos than divides them,” Adler said in March 2016 at the signing ceremony. The “I-35 Accords,” named for the interstate that connects two of the fastest growing metropolises in America (they are about 80 miles apart), formally declared each city’s tacos equally delicious. Unlike Trump and Clinton, who continue to take shots at each other more than a year after Election Day, the leaders of the warring taco tribes – Austin Mayor Steve Adler and San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor – came together to pledge peace. It had everything to do with breakfast tacos, and whether Austin or San Antonio could properly claim credit for their creation. This rift had nothing to do with President Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, with coastal elites or rural America. A battle for supremacy raged, insults flew and a long-simmering culture war reignited. The year 2016 opened a deep and divisive rift between two factions already prone to distrust each other.

Queso lazarus brewing