Claudia Lopez’s brother had a birthday, and she didn’t know what to get him.
After some thought, she and husband Ben Kendall offered something a little unconventional – Kendall, who had learned good Mexican cuisine from Lopez’s mother, would cater a birthday cookout.
Kendall cooking for Lopez’s family – which came from Mexico to Madison just before Lopez started high school – became kind of a thing, and soon he was cooking for friends as well, and later added work functions for his call center coworkers to his catering repertoire – introducing a decidedly brats-and-burgers crowd to authentic Mexican tacos (“not Ortega,” as he puts it).
“There were guys who were very picky on what they would eat, and a couple of those guys actually came back to the line twice,” Kendall said. “It was a big hit.”
That first birthday party was in 2017, and by 2022, Kendall was burnt out on the office job life. He found himself with regular catering gigs and decided to go all in and buy a food truck.
“I went along with his hobby,” Lopez said. “We’re doing caterings, we were getting calls from friends and family, co-workers, about birthday parties, weddings, graduation parties, and then it just kind of like started spreading, and then Ben said, you know, I think this is what I want to do.”
In his call center days, he found people had an inexplicably difficult time with the name “Ben.”
“I would get Bill, Bob, Don, any three- or four-letter variations,” he said. At some point, someone, again inexplicably, thought his name was “Steve,” and, he said, “I rolled with it.”
So, naturally, he named his food truck “Steve’s Tacos.”
There’s another advantage to giving your business a name that’s not your own.
“Why don’t I just name it Steve’s,” he thought, “and he’ll be the owner that’s just never around.” So when salespeople came around, he could just say … “Sorry, Steve isn’t here right now.”
Steve’s Tacos really got up and running as a food truck late in 2024, setting up outside office buildings and at festivals around the Madison area. Kendall did prep work in a leased kitchen space in Verona.
Last fall, they had the truck at a music festival in Mt. Horeb, about 15 miles west of Madison. In the afternoon, they stopped in at Fink’s Cafe, a tiny spot at the west end of Main Street that they regularly hit for breakfast when in town. It was already closed for the day, but on the door was a “for sale” sign, and a light bulb went on: Steve’s Tacos could own its own kitchen.
Lopez and Kendall came by the next day and things moved quickly. Fink’s previous owners closed it in November; Kendall and Lopez bought it in February, and by March it was open once again.
A beloved institution
Fink’s Pizza was a Mt. Horeb staple as far back as the 1980s and has changed hands a number of times over the decades. By the mid-2010s, it was Fink’s Cafe, primarily a breakfast spot that also did Friday night fish fries.
As they learned more about the history of the cafe – a dozen or so tables situated along two walls in a narrow block of a building, not even 900 square feet in total – Lopez and Kendall started rethinking their plan to use it as little more than the base kitchen for Steve’s Tacos. The previous owners told them of customers who’d been coming for years, even from before their time.
Then while they were working on renovating the space, they’d have people stopping by, asking when they’d be open for breakfast.
“We were like, wow, maybe Fink’s stays the way it is … instead of growing Steve’s more, maybe we’ll keep the restaurant open, the breakfast place open, and then also use the kitchen to prep for Steve’s, and we can see. We can make it work,” Lopez said. “I think that would be the right thing to do, which is, you know, just leave it as Fink’s and not change a lot, just tweak it a little bit.”
The tweaks included the addition, (alongside breakfast essentials like pancakes, omelettes and biscuits and gravy) of chilequiles, a Mexican breakfast staple made with tortilla chips and chile, and topped with eggs.
“Customers can tell that we are not using a tortilla chip bought from the store, that we’re actually making it,” Lopez said.
But, she said, they didn’t want to overhaul the menu completely.
“Our doors are open for everyone, every size, shape,” she said. “I don’t want to scream it out like, ‘Hey, we’re a Latino business.’ I just like it to be known.”
The chilequiles recipe – and the house salsa – comes from Lopez’s mom, who came on board with many years of experience in food service. Lopez also recruited chef Pedro Escamilla, who was working as a kitchen manager at Olive Garden.
“He’s someone that enjoys creating, working with the food, and he has so many ideas,” Lopez said.
Now, Fink’s has a team of about 10 altogether, and Steve’s Tacos has its own crew, also based in the Fink’s kitchen.
The hours might change a bit in the future though; Lopez and Kendall recently added a special fish & chips to the Friday lunch menu, and they’re considering reinstating the Friday night fish fry.
Just, not sure when.
“There’s so many ideas that float in our mind,” Lopez said. “But we’re new at this, so we wanted to take it slow.”
Fink’s, at 204 West Main Street in Mt. Horeb, is open every day except Monday. During the summer, it opens at 6:30 and closes at 1, except for Saturday, when it stays open until 2.
