Dear young people, Don’t be afraid of your power.

If you haven’t eaten at Lupe’s Situ Tacos in Ballard: Don’t walk; run. 

Owned by Fairhaven College alumna Lupe Flores, Lupe’s Situ Tacos was recently named one of Esquire’s 33 best new restaurants in the United States.

Flores’s Mexican-Lebanese fusion taqueria is in a cozy, pink shop with bright turquoise signs that read “Free cheese for all dogs.” The papas and spicy cauliflower tacos, smothered in their killer hot sauce, and some sipping tequila is the best thing you’ll eat in a month. 

Waving her arms at the vibrant shop bursting all around us, Flores said her restaurant is an homage to her extended family. 

“I’m Lebanese and Mexican. ‘Situ’ is Arabic for ‘grandma,’” said Flores. “My situ is the one who taught me how to cook — since I was 3 years old, I was helping her in the kitchen. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, but I believe in Situ.”

Flores sews her tacos together with toothpicks to keep the filling in while she fries them, just like Situ taught her. An animatronic parrot named Armando — after Flores’s uncle — squawks a warning: “Don’t eat the fucking toothpicks, cuh-CAW!” and eight other phrases from a high shelf near the cash register. 

In the back of the dining room, a pink, neon-lit hallway leads to an ultra-lavish lounge named for Flores’s aunt Matilda. 

“We’re in the bar, Tilda’s Lounge,” said Flores. “She was the bad girl in the family — the nice girl too. She loved everything extra fancy and over-the-top — cheap, gold décor, fake flowers and chain-smoking cigarettes. She taught me how to gamble.”

Long strings of silk flowers and twinkle lights stream down from the ceiling. Flores points toward the far wall at a framed mechanical Elvira that’s spinning her nipple tassels. Then Flores gives a quick, no-nonsense lesson on how to do that move by bouncing on your heels, which she learned working in a cabaret. 

Flores’s restaurant started during the pandemic as a delivery service, which turned into pop-ups, then residencies, and finally, when she couldn’t make enough tacos to keep up with demand, she and her best friend, Kat Wilkinson, set up shop. 

“It was terrifying. I spent all of my life savings and then some,” Flores said.

 Aside from a short-term loan from her parents, Flores didn’t take any outside investments to build her restaurant. She drew on friends who believed in her vision, and they helped her transform an all-black-and-chain-link, barracks-type building into this cozy and colorful taqueria and lounge with a whole wall dedicated to family photos. 

“I have an engineer friend, a plumber friend and an electrician friend. All these friends — in the beginning, when they knew I had zero money and was over budget, just jumped in and did the work to get us open,” said Flores. “Now they have bar and food tabs for life.”  

While building her business, Flores was skeptical of every step along the way but often looked to Wilkinson, her bestie and general manager of the restaurant. They reassured each other and kept going. 

“The day we signed the lease of this place, I laid on the floor and cried for two straight hours — inconsolable. I thought I’d ruined my life,” Flores said. “As soon as I got the keys, I was like, I got to get open right now because I have no money and how are we going to do this?! It was really hard the first six months, but now I have a four-day work week. I get to spend time with family, play music, have a life.”

Flores grew up in Woodinville when it was mostly woods and pasture. She said she didn’t have a community of her own until she moved to Bellingham to go to Western. She fell in love with Bellingham for the dog-walking folks strolling the sidewalks and chatting with one another. 

But in her college classes, Flores quickly learned that multiple-choice tests and big lecture halls weren’t her thing, and she told her parents she was dropping out of school. Just before she went through with it, she found Western’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies. 

Flores is a true creative who values community above all else, traits that seem to come naturally to many Fairhaven students and alumni. 

While at Fairhaven, Flores said she learned so much about connection. 

“The experience of building community at Fairhaven — it’s literally who I am,” Flores said. “I was treated like an equal by the faculty and students, and in our seminar discussions, everyone’s voice had equal power.”

The mentorship Flores received at Fairhaven led to lifelong friendships. 

“[Fairhaven Professor] Stan Tag is my favorite teacher of all time. He had nothing to do with my area of study, but I took four of his classes. He encouraged discussion and critical thinking in a way I had never experienced. He empowered all of us and our stories,” Flores said.

Tag said Flores stands out as one of his favorite students in the 30 years he’s been teaching. Tag remembers a time when Flores, while still a student, coordinated and cooked a complicated meal for a group of Fairhaven folks. 

“Lupe has always been a fabulous cook,” Tag said. “Once, she masterminded a giant wok at the end of a goofy triathlon. Thirty or 40 of us rode our bicycles from Bellingham Bay to Toad Lake, where we swam the length of the lake, then ran through the woods to Squalicum Lake. Along the way, each of us carried ingredients for a big scrambled-egg mix with veggies that Lupe cooked in the wok for all of us.”

Twenty years later, Flores confirms that she’s always cooked for people she cares about because that’s her love language. But she says her restaurant in Ballard was a big-time COVID accident — that it was never meant to be her profession. Drumming is her true passion. 

Flores has played in a number of bands over the years including Sugar Sugar Sugar and Wild Powwers. She currently plays in two different groups, a rock band called Tacos! and a noise band called LORBO! 

Tag is also a longtime fan of Flores’s music. 

“Lupe is a kick-ass drummer. I went to one of her shows at the Shakedown three years ago and saw her wild drumming to heavy metal and loved it. In an interview with Tom Tom Mag, Lupe was asked about her drumming style and she replied, ‘I beat the living shit out of the drums. Plain and simple,’” said Tag. “I love that reply, but I would also add that there is an inspiring artfulness and spunk to her playing that makes you want to move your body.”

Flores’s self-designed degree at Fairhaven was called “Rhythmaculture,” a concentration Tag said he’s been telling others about for years. 

“Often, Fairhaven students have overly long concentration titles, but Lupe created hers with one word: Rhythmaculture. She studied the intersections of rhythm and culture and traveled to West Africa to study drumming as part of her concentration,” said Tag.

Flores has an edgy grit about her. While wearing shimmery, bright red pants, she said she’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, to go in the red, to fail. She’s territorial in the best way, ready to stand up for her people, her food, her work and herself. That scrappiness seems to be part of what drives her success. 

Flores said making it onto Esquire’s 33 best new restaurants in the United States list was super surprising. She said one day she was in a mood, having argued all morning with the city, who was threatening to close down her patio, when a guy came in and ordered an extra spicy bowl of pozole and one of each kind of taco.

Flores poked at him a bit, offering sour cream with a side of condescension when she saw sweat beading on his temples. The man said he loved how spicy the food was and that he enjoys cooking too. Flores eventually softened, and the two had a friendly chat. 

The man said he was a writer for Esquire but didn’t say he was a food critic or that he was reviewing Lupe’s Situ Tacos. A few weeks later, his book arrived in her mailbox. 

“Then I got an official email from Esquire being like, Do you want to come to this really fancy dinner in New York at this French restaurant?” said Flores. “They said, It’s for all the owners on their best restaurants list!”

Lupe’s Situ Tacos was covered in the Seattle Times and elsewhere after that. But what meant the most were the love letters she received from her former pre-K students (now in their 20s) at Western’s Child Development Center, where Flores taught while at Fairhaven. 

“I don’t know why I’m on [Esquire’s] list,” Flores said. “I know I make good food, but I wonder, like, is it just because I was talking smack to him that day? There’s a lot of fancy-ass places on that list. I make great food, and we belong on the list, but we’re not ‘bougie.’”

Flores said she wants young people to know that it’s possible to a make the future that you want. 

“Don’t put yourself in a box, and don’t be scared of your power. There’s no rule book,” Flores said. “Now more than ever, young people are figuring out that they can actually do what they’re interested in if they just go about it in a way that’s creative and unique. There’s room for all of us.” 

Flores continues to be surprised by her success but finally understands it as success.

“If you had told me, even three years ago, that I would have a restaurant and bar with Latino drag queens, tattoo expos happening in our tiny-ass bar and karaoke parties in the street — and on top of all that it’s successful?!” Flores said. “Imposter syndrome knows no bounds in this body. But I just gotta show up. I keep doing it and it’s working. I didn’t pay myself until recently, 'cause I was still waiting to fail. It turns out, I don’t think we’re failing. We haven’t been in the red yet.” 

Flores said she will continue drumming and making tacos and cultivating community with friends and local artists. She’s also got plans to develop a speakeasy entrance to Tilda’s Lounge.

“The whole reason I’ve been successful is because of my community — definitely something I learned through Fairhaven College,” Flores said. “I’m going to keep my people safe and keep feeding them. Community is the only thing we have where we can actually effect change. When the world is burning and we have no power, literally the only thing we have is our community.”