Audria's tacos draw crowds

At the recent Pride of Hoyt Days event in Hoyt City Park, different food trucks were set up, offering a variety of foods and beverages for those who took part in the annual celebration in this southern Jackson County community.

But the longest line for food could be found at Audria’s Indian Tacos, a regular at the annual event, because people couldn’t get enough of the fried bread tacos put together by Audria and Blake Garrison and their family — and the family takes pride in keeping fans of their food fed and happy.

“Look at this line of people coming in,” Blake Garrison said, noting that even though the traditional lunch hour had been over for an hour or two, people were still lining up to get a fried bread taco.

Even when the Garrisons don’t have a town event to set up and feed crowds, they can draw a crowd just by setting up in the driveway at their home in Hoyt and putting out signs — and people will just show up.

“We like doing it,” Blake said. “People just have to pay attention.”

The Garrison family has been involved in feeding folks in the area for more than a quarter century, starting in 1999 when Audria and Blake moved to Jackson County from the East Coast, where they were working for friends.

“We were helping a family out of New York while we were living in Connecticut, and it was just a side job,” said Audria, a member of the Big Sandy Rancheria tribe in California. “We just carried it on when we moved here.”

“We just started doing it, and now we’re just… doing it!” added Blake, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. “When we got out here, we took the opportunity and started. It’s just so much more relaxed out here.”

After they arrived in Jackson County, the Garrisons set up a fresh-squeezed lemonade stand at the annual Prairie Band Potawatomi powwow, adding the fried bread tacos later. Since then, it’s turned into a family affair, involving their children and grandchildren.

“The ones that are up front working, taking the orders and the money, they weren’t even around when we started this, and now they’re working for us,” Blake said.

He noted that when they started with the fresh-squeezed lemonade, they were mainly doing it to raise money to buy school supplies and clothes for the kids.

“Now, it’s the grandkids’ sports,” Audria added.

The Garrisons are also fans of motorcycles, and they’re known for selling their fried bread tacos at motorcycle shows across the country. Blake said there’s at least one motorcycle rally where the fans of their food “wait for us.”

“If she doesn’t set up for it, people aren’t happy,” he said. “They let us know about it. They actually whine about it!”

And despite the increasing cost of ingredients — ground beef, vegetables, flour, cooking oil and so on — the Garrisons try to keep their fried bread tacos, along with everything else on their menu, affordable.

“Out in California, they’re paying upwards of $15 and $20 for this stuff,” Blake said. “We want people to eat, but we also have to buy the supplies, and the cost just keeps going up. We’d love to see those costs come back down so we can lower the prices, but you know, people still come.”

“The oil’s getting outrageous now,” Audria added. “It’s almost doubled in price.”

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