A spread of Texas barbecue, smoked lengua, and tacos at Vaqueros Texas Bar-B-Q.
Photograph by José R. Ralat
Three years ago, Frank Hernandez opened the King Kups trailer at a McKinney gas station. He originally planned to dish out only elotes, cups of cooked corn kernels doused in cream, butter, queso fresco, hot sauce, and other toppings. “We would come up with different versions of elotes, doing the Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and different flavors. It just grew from there,” Hernandez tells me. A stocky, goateed former nightclub DJ and promoter, the McKinney native decided to go into the food business after years of traveling to California to visit friends and peers in the music industry. They would trade barbs about the differences in Mexican food between their home states. At first, Hernandez wanted to bridge Texas Mexican and Cali-Mex with a laser focus on elotes. But a year after opening King Kups, he met Jen Hui, a Chinese immigrant and entrepreneur looking to invest in a foo