The first season of Beat Bobby Flay is a document of overconfidence — Bobby's overconfidence, specifically, in the belief that his restaurant-trained technique would carry against any dish from any tradition. Brian Tsao, now operating Mission Sandwich Social in Brooklyn, walked into S1E4 with meat tacos and the kind of quiet assurance that CBS News found interesting enough to profile after the win.
Tsao's taco strategy was about fat management in the protein: he braised his meat at 300°F with a chile-and-citrus liquid, then pulled and crisped the shreds in the rendered braising fat — the confit finish — before they went onto the tortilla. The tortilla itself was pressed and toasted to order, not held. The difference between a corn tortilla pressed and toasted in front of you and one that's been sitting in a stack for twenty minutes is the difference between a structure and a suggestion.
Mission Sandwich Social is the current home base, but the win at S1E4 is the origin story. Bobby Flay, cooking tacos in the first season of his own show, had not yet learned what first-season hubris costs.