Food truck owner competing for Food Network show spot
Monika Paris owns ZapoTaco, a Tex-Mex food truck that sells tacos, nachos, and other delicious meals.
By ETHAN VANDEN BOSCH
Hungry Horse News
The owner of a Columbia Falls-based food truck is competing in the Food Network show, “Favorite Chef.”
Monika Paris owns ZapoTaco, formerly Dancing Burro, a Tex-Mex food truck that sells tacos, nachos, and other delicious meals.
“I follow Bobby Flay and watch the Tournament of Champions (on the Food Network) a lot. The application just popped up and I was able to use some photos from my old pastry chef days to qualify,” Paris said.
If Paris wins, she would receive a $25,000 prize, plus she would appear on the cover of “A Taste of Home” cooking magazine with celebrity chef Carla Hall.
“If I were to win the money would go to our third upgrade on the truck. Right now we have a cart that involves a lot of packing and unpacking. The bus is awesome but can only hold two cooks and isn’t classified as a mobile kitchen. Our third incarnation of ZapoTaco will be a full-blown mobile kitchen.”
You can vote for Paris on the “Favorite Chef” website using the link https://favchef.com/2024/monika
Paris explained where the name ZapoTaco comes from.
“There’s a region of Oaxaca, Mexico where the Zapotech people are native to. A lot of my ancestors were from Oaxaca, so I just thought ‘ZapoTaco’ and that was that,” she said during a recent interview.
Paris has a dense and diverse culinary resume, she began cooking at 16 at a fine French dining restaurant and fell in love with cooking.
“I kind of bounced around learning from different chefs. Many years later I became the executive chef for a resort in San Juan Dels Soar, Nicaragua,” she said.
She movedhere from Texas after she was offered a job with Montana Raft Co., so she packed her stuff and drove over 1,000 miles to Montana, where she cooked for several establishments over the years while living in Columbia Falls.
Three years ago she opened her food truck and has worked there ever since.
ZapoTaco doesn’t have a formal place to set up shop, instead she choses to travel around to visit different markets. Paris said,
“We haven’t made a home for ourselves in any particular spot. We move around all the time, we have the Bigfork markets, the Kalispell markets, several weddings, and lots of private events,” she said,
Monika’s husband, Travis Paris, helps runs the truck as well.
“My husband is the cashier, so we’re there all the time. We choose a lot of family-friendly events so we can bring the kids with us,” Monika Paris said. The couple have two young daughters Sophia, 11 and Olivia, 10 who both love their mother’s craft.
“The girls are getting into it, they’re still a little young so they serve slushies and sodas to customers. We’re really trying to make it a family business,” Paris said.