Michael “Mico” Rodriguez, one of the original founders of Mi Cocina, is being remembered for the “new level of creativity, energy, and style” he brought to Tex-Mex and the Dallas dining scene after his death at 68.
Rodriguez, along with president and managing director of Highland Park Village Ray Washburne, his brother Dick Washburne, and Bob McNutt, opened Mi Cocina in a 12-table space at Preston Road and Forest Lane in 1991.
“In 1991 when Mi Cocina opened in Preston Forest, Michael Rodriguez took the traditional way of preparing and presenting Tex-Mex food in a new direction. His brilliance in design and food helped to lift the entire restaurant scene in Dallas to a much higher level. Watching him as his partner as the evolution continued over the years was amazing. The culinary scene in Dallas will miss him,” Ray Washburne told our sister publication D Magazine.
They opened a second Mi Cocina location in Highland Park Village two years later that remains popular among the see-and-be-seen crowd. The restaurant quickly became renowned for its upscale take on Tex-Mex cuisine and Mambo Taxi drinks.
Mi Cocina has grown to have locations across Dallas-Fort Worth and in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Rodriguez’s influence extended to other restaurants, such as The Mercury, Mesero, and Doce Mesas.
Rodriguez’s legacy is complicated, though, with allegations of embezzlement having been made against him by his business partners, as D Magazine reported.
His impact on Tex-Mex cuisine and Dallas dining “is difficult to overstate,” though, as the current CEO of M Crowd Restaurant Group, Edgar Guevara, said in a statement.
“Mico Rodriguez’s impact on M Crowd and the Dallas restaurant community is difficult to overstate. When Mi Cocina opened in 1991, he brought a new level of creativity, energy and style to Tex-Mex, helping establish what would become M Crowd while shaping Dallas’s evolving dining scene,” Guevara said. “Mico understood that a restaurant was about more than the food. It was the entire experience: the design, atmosphere, hospitality and energy guests felt when they walked through the door. His vision and entrepreneurial spirit remain an important part of who we are more than three decades later. For many of our longtime team members who knew and worked alongside him, his influence is deeply personal and continues to shape the way they approach their work and care for our guests.”
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