Taco Trivia
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57 free Taco trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
54 free Taco trivia questions with answers. Tacos are older than the word for them, and the word may have started life as a stick of dynamite. This taco trivia quiz covers the whole story: the fish tacos eaten in the Valley of Mexico before Cortés, the silver miners' 'plugs', the Lebanese shawarma that became al pastor, Jalisco's birria and Tijuana's quesabirria, Baja's fish tacos, and the limewater soak that turns corn into masa. It also follows the taco north: the hard shell that America made its own, Glen Bell's 19-cent tacos and the Mitla Cafe across the street, the Chihuahua that wanted Taco Bell, the Doritos Locos Taco, the Choco Taco, and the two-word trademark that Taco John's, LeBron James and Taco Bell all fought over. About a third of the questions are easy warm-ups, a third are for regular taqueria customers, and the rest are for people who know what a codzito was. Use it for taco night, a food-trivia round or a solo test. Every answer is checked against a cited source shown under the question.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Traditionally, a taco tortilla is made from which grain?
Corn
Corn: tortillas were traditionally made from nixtamalized maize ground into masa; wheat-flour tortillas are a later, Spanish-introduced habit.
Q 02Aside from food, what does the Spanish word 'taco' also mean?
A plug or wedge
The Real Academia Española lists wedge, wad, billiard cue, ramrod and even 'short, stocky person'.
Q 03One popular theory says the culinary word 'taco' was coined by which Mexican workers?
Silver miners
Silver miners: the popular theory holds that 18th-century Mexican silver miners called their paper-wrapped gunpowder charges tacos, and the name passed to the wrapped food.
Q 04Before the Spanish arrived, what did people of the Valley of Mexico reportedly fill their tacos with?
Small fish
Small fish: anthropological evidence shows lake-region people of the Valley of Mexico folded tortillas around tiny fish; Bernal Díaz del Castillo later described the taco feast Cortés gave his captains in Coyoacán.
Q 05Which region's local name for the taco was 'codzito'?
Yucatán and Quintana Roo
Yucatán and Quintana Roo knew the rolled taco as a codzito; in Guanajuato and Michoacán the same snack was once called a burrito before 'taco' became the national word.
Q 06In 2024, El Califa de León in Mexico City became the first taco stand to receive what?
A Michelin star
A Michelin star: in the first Michelin Guide Mexico, in May 2024, the tiny Taquería El Califa de León, open since 1968, became the first taco stand ever starred.
Q 07Tacos al pastor are cooked on what?
A vertical rotisserie
A vertical rotisserie: marinated pork is stacked on a spinning upright spit, charred on the outside and shaved off in thin slices to order.
Q 08Which Mexican state is considered the home of tacos al pastor?
Puebla
Puebla is considered the cradle of al pastor: Middle Eastern immigrants there adapted spit-roasted shawarma in the 1930s, and local cooks later swapped lamb for chile-marinated pork.
Q 09What does 'al pastor' literally mean?
Shepherd style
Shepherd style: pastor is Spanish for shepherd, and the name recalls lamb roasted shepherd-style on a spit, the meat first used before pork took over in Mexico.
Q 10Where did fish tacos originate?
Baja California
Baja California: battered fried fish folded into a corn tortilla with cabbage and crema was street food in Ensenada and San Felipe before the style spread north into California.
Q 11Which U.S. chain is credited with first popularising fish tacos north of the border?
Rubio's
Rubio's: Ralph Rubio opened his first walk-up stand in San Diego in 1983, selling the battered fish tacos he had eaten on trips to San Felipe, and is credited with popularising them in the U.S.
Q 12What are tacos dorados better known as in the U.S.?
Taquitos or flautas
'Golden tacos' are rolled and fried; the flauta gets its name from its flute-like shape.
Q 13Why are tacos sudados called 'sweaty tacos'?
They are kept in a cloth-covered basket that traps steam
Q 21Populations that ate untreated maize without nixtamalization risked which deficiency disease?
Pellagra
European settlers in the American South skipped the lime soak as unnecessary, and pellagra became endemic among the poor there.
Q 22What does the word 'tortilla' literally mean in Spanish?
Little cake
Little cake: tortilla is the diminutive of torta, a cake or round loaf; in Spain the same word means a potato omelette, to the confusion of many tourists.
Q 23Flour tortillas are typical of which part of Mexico?
The north
Wheat arrived with the Spanish and took root in the arid north, which is why Sonora is famous for its enormous flour tortillas.
The same tacos are sold as tacos de canasta, basket tacos, by bicycle vendors in Mexico City.
Q 14Tacos de lengua are made from what?
Beef tongue
Beef tongue: lengua is Spanish for tongue, simmered for hours until tender, then peeled, chopped and griddled before it goes into the taco.
Q 15What is a mulita?
Meat and cheese pressed between two tortillas
Meat and cheese pressed between two tortillas: mulita means 'little mule', and the cheese melts between two corn tortillas like a small quesadilla, usually around al pastor or carne asada.
Q 16Birria, the stewed meat now famous in dipping tacos, comes from which Mexican state?
Jalisco
Jalisco: birria began around Cocula, near Guadalajara, as goat slow-cooked in a chile adobo, and it remains the state's signature dish.
Q 17The quesabirria, a cheese-stuffed birria taco served with consommé, was first developed in which city?
Tijuana
Tijuana: the city's beef-birria taqueros, who had swapped goat for cheaper beef, began griddling cheese into the consommé-dipped tortillas, and the quesabirria spread north from there in the 2010s.
Q 18How is traditional barbacoa prepared?
Slow-cooked in a pit dug in the ground
The pit is lined with agave leaves; the Nahuatl called the method nakakoyonki and the Maya píib.
Q 19Carnitas, 'little meats', are traditionally made by cooking pork in what?
Lard
Lard: carnitas are pork simmered three to four hours in rendered pork fat in a copper pot, then crisped with a burst of heat, much like French rillons.
Q 20Corn for tortillas is soaked in what before being ground into masa?
Limewater
Limewater: soaking the kernels in an alkaline solution of slaked lime, called nixtamalization, loosens the hulls and frees the niacin that plain cornmeal cannot deliver.
Q 24What is the traditional stone used to grind nixtamal into masa called?
Metate
Metate: a sloped slab of volcanic stone worked with a rolling stone called a mano; the molcajete is the salsa mortar and the comal the griddle.
Q 25Where did the hard-shell, crispy taco tradition develop?
The United States
The United States: pre-formed U-shaped shells were a Mexican-American invention; appliances for frying them were on sale by the late 1930s, and New York restaurateur Juvencio Maldonado patented a shell fryer in 1950.
Q 26The first U.S.-published cookbook with a hard-shell taco recipe came out in 1949 in which city?
Santa Fe
Santa Fe: Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert's The Good Life: New Mexican Food, published there in 1949, printed a hard-shell taco recipe more than a decade before Taco Bell opened.
Q 27Glen Bell got the idea for his tacos by watching queues at which restaurant across from his hot dog stand?
The Mitla Cafe
The Rodriguez family's San Bernardino café was famous for its tacos dorados, and Bell sold a simplified version.
Q 28In which California city did Glen Bell open the first Taco Bell in 1962?
Downey
Downey: the first Taco Bell opened on Firestone Boulevard in March 1962, a walk-up stand with mission-style arches; the building was moved to company headquarters in Irvine in 2015.
Q 29What did Glen Bell sell before tacos?
Hot dogs
Hot dogs: Bell's Drive-In, opened in San Bernardino in 1948 after his Marine Corps service in World War II, sold hot dogs and hamburgers before he added tacos.
Q 30How much did Glen Bell charge for a taco at his early Taco-Tia stand?
19 cents
19 cents: Bell first sold tacos from a side window of his San Bernardino stand at 19 cents each, the shells fried in a wire basket built by a local chicken-coop maker.