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After searching for manufacturers and travelling to Los Angeles in 2012, Taco Farm had a taqueria-sized tortilla machine shipped to Waterloo Region.

The gas-fired conveyor-belt device has a 42-inch baking chamber and, at capacity, can crank out 50 dozen fresh, warm tortillas each hour.

But you only need to know that the tortillas are delicious and that the custom-made machine was originally named for an iconic WWE wrestler when it passed through customs and landed at the restaurant.

“Back then, we had a naming contest on Twitter and there were all kinds of humorous suggestions, but Taco Man Randy Savage won the day,” says Taco Farm co-owner Nick Benninger, regarding the play on the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

The point-of-use tortilla machine is unique, Benninger says.

“We went to L.A., ordered the machine and had to be trained there before it arrived in Canada and was installed. (Taco Man Randy now operates out of their facility in St. Jacobs.)

While the machine travelled southwest to northeast, the tortillas made into chips are shipped to all points on the compass, including back into the U.S.

It was, obviously, a plan to make tortillas, but large-scale tortilla-chip production was unintended.

“We didn’t see that coming,” Benninger says. “We thought the chips would be servicing just the restaurant. But the demand grew, and a lot of people wanted to buy them.”

Benninger says he doesn’t believe there are tortillas being made on this scale anywhere in the region and surrounding areas: he calculates they make about 60,000 chips per week.

Vincenzo’s, T & J Seafoods and Dar’s Market in Elora were early adopters on the retail side.

To allow for the purchase of special packaging, over and above selling the chips in plastic bags with hand-printed labels, orders of 5,000 were needed.

“That much packaging was a big commitment for us,” he says. “But chip sales took off.”

Calling the recipe “incredibly simple,” Benninger says the kitchen doesn’t claim any sort of culinary magic at work. “We just tried to honour a tradition and stick to our ethos of quality.”

The chips have a lovely corn flavour and are thick enough for an excellent crunch but not so thick that they are an unwieldy mouthful.

Tortillas start as masa harina, which is nixtamalized corn — a process Indigenous cooks invented thousands of years ago — that has been ground into flour and dried.

“We rehydrate it with water and add salt, and that’s it,” says Benninger.

Key to the finishing process is time: the dough is mixed and rests for 20 minutes before Randy does his thing.

“The finished tortillas are great for tacos as they come out of the oven, but for chips we need to reduce their moisture, or they take on grease when they are fried and become feathery.”

The tortillas are the dried, loosely covered, in the fridge overnight. The next day, the tortillas are cut by hand into tortilla chips. “It’s a good workout,” Benninger jokes.

Finally, the tortilla chips are plunged into a deep fryer for seven to eight minutes before being salted and dried.

“After cooling and aging overnight in our chip cooler, they’re bagged,” he says.

Working with local distributors, including Faire, a Waterloo-based online marketplace, Taco Farm is chuffed to see crates on their loading dock with buyers’ business names and destinations.

“Chip delivery is peppered across North America,” says Benninger. “Our bags say from Waterloo, ‘Canada’s tech and tortilla capital.’”

“I think it’s hilarious for someone in Rhode Island to see and maybe learn something about a different part of the world.”

And to eat some delicious tortilla chips with salsa, too.

Andrew Coppolino of Kitchener is author of “Farm to Table” and co-author of “Cooking with Shakespeare.” He is the 2022 Joseph Hoare Gastronomic Writer-in-Residence at the Stratford Chefs School. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewcoppolino.

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