Eddie Vargas grew up around Vernor Highway. He spent the past several years cooking other people's restaurants for them. He managed at Vertical Detroit, ran the catering company Izquitl, did pop-ups with the El Parian hospitality group, and last year took over Frame in Hazel Park for a month.
The Frame residency is what put him on the radar of people who didn't already know him from the neighborhood. Tacos Wuey opened July 18, 2025, at 3970 W. Vernor in Southwest Detroit, just west of West Grand Boulevard.
The space was a restaurant called El Coma before. Vargas and his father Jose took over and rebuilt it as a forty-seat modern taquería with a mustache motif (framed mustachioed gentlemen on the wall, mustache wallpaper) and a Tulum-leaning interior of rattan and warm wood. "Wuey" is a phonetic nod to güey, the Mexican slang for buddy or friend.
It is also the closest most non-Spanish speakers will get to pronouncing it correctly. The food is the reason. The family birria recipe is the centerpiece, and it shows up everywhere.
Quesabirria with chihuahua cheese in a ten-inch flour tortilla, served with consommé. Birria ramen. Birria egg rolls, which sound implausible until you eat them.
The ceviche salpicón is shrimp with sliced onion, cucumber, tomato, and a chile de árbol citrus sauce, cooled with an ancho mayo. Gobernador tacos run shrimp, onion, poblano, cream, and cheese. The guacamole comes with chicharrón chips.
There is a tlayuda on the menu, the Oaxacan dish most local Mexican restaurants don't bother with. Vargas is doing his version of regional Mexican rather than what the dominant Mexicantown restaurants have served for forty years. He says it himself.
No rice, no beans, no apologies. The hibiscus tea is house-made. Mexican Coke is in the cooler.
The thing that puts Tacos Wuey above other Vernor openings is whose hands the food is in. Vargas grew up in Southwest Detroit and went away long enough to learn what the rest of the country wants from a taquería. He came back.
He and his father Jose are running the kitchen at 3970 W. Vernor with the family birria recipe at the center of the menu, regional Mexican on the rest of it, and a forty-seat dining room that opened in July.
3970 W. Vernor Highway, Detroit.
