Before Torchy’s, before Velvet Taco, before every bar in town put a fried avocado on a tortilla and called it a special, there was Tin Star.
Rich Hicks opened the first one in Uptown in 1999. He’d come up through Macaroni Grill, where he was an area director at 25, and his idea was simple: take the taco seriously, put it in a fast-casual room, and charge accordingly. Brisket and queso. Pork and kimchi. A portabella taco with roasted corn and sweet potatoes that people still bring up by name. In North Texas at the time, that was a strange way to sell tacos.
It worked well enough that Tin Star grew to 16 restaurants and franchised into Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Carolina. That’s where it came apart. A small company in Plano couldn’t support stores that far away, and the food was harder to execute than a burger chain’s. Hicks sold in the late 2000s. The brand changed hands a few times and limped along another decade before the last location closed…