Urban Taco, founded by SMU alum Markus Pineyro, is located on McKinney Avenue in Uptown and Mockingbird Station across from campus. (Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus)

While a student at SMU, Markus Pineyro felt a modest attraction to the restaurant industry.

What began as a mild interest, grew into Pineyro’s eventual career: he is now the founding owner of the successful restaurant chain, Urban Taco.

Pineyro began at SMU in 2000. He majored in economics and Spanish and was a co-captain of the swim team. Upon his graduation, he began working with Mexican restaurant chain La Paloma. Pineyro explained that he “always had a thing for restaurants and understanding how they operated.”

His keen understanding of the industry and the business skills he learned at SMU made Pineyro a good fit with the company. Yet, prior to his employment with La Paloma, Pineyro had no formal experience with the restaurant industry.

Clearly, this minor obstacle was no match for Pineyro’s ambition. After a year with La Paloma, just one year after his graduation from SMU, Pineyro opened his first Urban Taco in Mockingbird Station.

The idea behind Urban Taco was to create a “modern Mexican kitchen” that featured traditional recipes with a few modifications. When creating the menu, Pineyro drew on childhood memories of the foods his mother prepared at their home in Mexico.

For example, barbacoa normally refers to a certain preparation of goat or lamb meat. Pineyro and his head chef opted to cook the dish in the traditional manner but chose shredded beef to avoid the gaminess that goat meat usually affords.

Another recipe Pineyro helped create that employs this idea of tradition and modernity is the roasted peanut habanero salsa. The ingredients signify tradition; all are commonly used in Mexican dishes. The recipe, however, is new and innovative.

Urban Taco also brought innovation to the Dallas dining scene by being one of the first restaurants to build on the gourmet taco idea.

Pineyro saw that while there were plenty of fast-food style places to eat a taco in Dallas, “there weren’t many restaurants who thought to serve them on a ceramic plate.”

In the past five years, Pineyro has expanded Urban Taco with additional locations in Uptown, the DFW airport and San Antonio. The menu has extended to include a wider variety of items, but the authenticity is unyielding.

When searching for a new dish to add to the menu, Pineyro admitted to frequently calling home to ask his mother, who still resides in Mexico, for input. You don’t get much more authentic than that.

Though Pineyro did not follow the typical path of an economics major, he regards his time at SMU as immensely valuable and beneficial. His four years as a Mustang gave him opportunities to grow, mature and learn the basics of business.

Pineyro fondly remembers many occasions when a professor described a life lesson that seemed irrelevant at the time.

Yet, nearly seven years of successful entrepreneurship under his belt, Pineyro remembers his professor’s teachings that “will make sense when you least expect it.”