Uncle Julio’s was founded in Dallas in 1986. It is a Mexican restaurant that started with the aim of providing delicious handmade recipes from fresh ingredients, and it has since grown into a multi-state chain.
Uncle Julio’s interiors are very distinguishable, and they also have an outdoor dining facility. Some of the very first dishes were the guacamole and the mesquite-grilled fajitas, both still central to the menu today.
Answer: nothing at Uncle Julio’s can be confirmed vegan from an official source. Uncle Julio’s publishes no allergen chart and no ingredient lists, and its only nutrition document is dated October 2019. This page used to say the guacamole was “entirely vegan” and that a few swaps would give you “your vegan version” of the fajitas. Neither claim is supportable, and both have been removed.
What Uncle Julio’s Does And Does Not Publish
This is the part of the page that matters most, so it goes first.
Uncle Julio’s current menu carries no allergen legend, no vegan or vegetarian marks, no gluten-free marks and no cross-contamination statement. Its nutrition pages link to PDFs headed “NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION AS OF 10/2019” — nearly seven years old. Those PDFs contain serving size, calories, calories from fat, total and saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, fibre, sugar and protein. Across all twenty-five pages, the words “allergen”, “ingredient”, “vegan”, “vegetarian”, “lard”, “soy”, “egg” and “gluten” appear zero times.
The only qualifier the brand publishes anywhere is “Menu options may vary between locations.”
So there is no source that says whether the beans are cooked with lard or bacon, whether the rice is made with chicken stock, whether the tortillas contain animal fat, or whether the fryers are shared. Those are the four questions that decide whether a Tex-Mex meal is vegan, and Uncle Julio’s answers none of them.
One Number Worth Knowing: The Beans And Rice
The 2019 nutrition sheet does contain one indirect signal, and it is not a reassuring one. “Beans & Rice” is listed at 17.68 mg of cholesterol per order (13.06 mg for the other listing of it). Dietary cholesterol occurs only in animal-derived ingredients, so the beans-and-rice side as costed in 2019 contained something animal-derived. The document does not say which component or which ingredient, and the brand has never explained it.
For contrast, in the same document the flour tortillas (4 each) and corn tortillas (4 each) show 0 mg cholesterol, as do the tableside, small and large guacamoles. The Three Pepper Spicy Guacamole shows 2.72 mg and the Classic Taco Salad as served shows 27.84 mg.
Treat all of that as a signal, not a determination. A zero is consistent with a plant-only item but does not prove one — vegetable shortening also reads zero — and the document is nearly seven years old with no ingredient statement behind it.
How Many Locations? Not Published
Earlier versions of this page gave the size of the chain three different ways in three different places — “35 restaurants across 11 states”, then “spread across 15 states”, then a list of twelve states. Those cannot all be right, and none of them was sourced. Uncle Julio’s does not publish a location count on its menu pages, so all three figures have been removed rather than one of them picked at random.
Appetizers
Tableside Guacamole (Previously “Made to Order Guacamole”)
The item has been renamed and its description has changed. It is now Tableside Guacamole: “Customizable combination of Hass avocados, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and jalapeños, served in a traditional Molcajete.” The raw garlic and olive oil this page used to list are no longer part of the published description.
The 2019 nutrition sheet shows it at 0 mg cholesterol. That is the strongest thing anyone outside the company can say about it. Uncle Julio’s publishes no ingredient list, so “it is entirely vegan, order it without second thoughts” is not a claim this page can stand behind, and it has been removed. If you order it, the thing to ask about is what goes into it beyond the components named on the menu.
Guacamole
Still on the menu: “Guacamole — Hass avocados, onions, tomatoes, pico de gallo on the side.” Same caveat exactly — the item exists, and its ingredients are not disclosed.
Veggie Quesadillas — No Longer On The Menu
This page used to tell readers to order the Veggie Quesadillas without sour cream and Monterey Jack. There is no Veggie Quesadilla on the current dine-in menu. The only quesadilla listed is “Fajita Quesadillas — Mesquite-grilled fajita meat, sautéed onions and Monterey Jack on flour tortillas with sour cream and fresh guacamole”, which is not adaptable. Veggie and Spinach Quesadillas survive only in the 2019 nutrition PDF.
Fajitas
The Vegetable Fajita — The Old Advice Was Incomplete
The vegetable option is now listed simply as Vegetables: “Zucchini, yellow squash, portobello mushrooms, sautéed peppers and onions”, ordered as a fajita.
This page used to say that omitting the cheese and sour cream would give you “your vegan version”. It would not. Uncle Julio’s publishes the fajita accompaniment set on the same page, and it reads: “served with Mexican butter, fresh guacamole, sour cream, cheese, pico de gallo, Mexican rice, frijoles a la charra, sautéed peppers and onions with our homemade flour tortillas.”
Two problems with the old instruction. First, dropping the cheese and sour cream still leaves Mexican butter, which is dairy. Second, the beans are frijoles a la charra — charro beans — not the “black beans and cilantro rice” this page used to describe. Uncle Julio’s discloses nothing about what is in the beans, the rice, the Mexican butter or the tortillas.
If you order this, the questions are: no Mexican butter, no cheese, no sour cream, and what is in the beans and the rice. It may still be fine. It cannot be confirmed.
Tex-Mex Classics
Classic Taco Salad — It Now Requires A Meat Choice
The salad this page described — with black beans and no protein selection — is no longer the menu item. The current listing is: “Classic Taco Salad — Romaine, avocado, pico de gallo, corn, red onion cheddar, cheese, homemade tortilla shell, ranch or jalapeño ranch — PICADILLO • HAND-PULLED CHICKEN • FAJITA CHICKEN.”
Every one of the three required protein choices is meat. This is no longer a dish that can be ordered meat-free by omission, and the recommendation has been removed.
Drinks
Four of the seven drinks this page used to recommend are no longer on the menu, and the claim that the various tequilas and liqueurs are “vegan-friendly” was never sourced to anything Uncle Julio’s publishes. The prices quoted here previously — a $2 tequila floater, $1 refills — are not published either and have been removed.
Gone from the current drinks list: the Fresh Peach Margarita, the Fresh Strawberry Rita (there is now a “Senorita Fresa” and a Strawberry Lemonade, which are different items), the Fresh Grapefruit Margarita and the Perfect Patron.
Still listed under Margaritas & Cocktails: Julio’s Gold, Tres Amigos and El Jefe. All three exist. None has any published ingredient or allergen information, so none can be described as vegan here.
Mango Passion Lemonade is still on the menu, but it is no longer “the only non-alcoholic drink” — that section now also carries Heineken 0.0, Strawberry Lemonade, Raspberry Tea, Strawberry Basil Lemonade, Jardin Rose and Amor Mojito.
Dessert
Churros — There Is A Second Dairy Dip Now
The current listing is: “Churros — House-made, dusted with cinnamon sugar with chocolate & cajeta sauce for dipping.”
This page used to say to skip the chocolate sauce and enjoy the churros. There are now two sauces, and cajeta is a goat’s-milk caramel — so avoiding the chocolate is not enough.
More importantly, the claim that “churros are traditionally vegan, it is fried flour” was this page’s own generalisation, not a statement from Uncle Julio’s. The brand publishes no churro dough ingredients and no frying-oil information. The dough is unverifiable, and so is the fryer.
Kids’ Menu
The old description — “four options in total, out of which three have chicken” — is out of date. The current kids’ offer is: pick one entrée (Cheese Quesadilla, Bean and Cheese Burrito, Chicken Fajita, Soft Taco, Crispy Taco), one dip (Chips & Queso or Chips & Guacamole) and two sides (White Rice, Mexican Rice, Black Beans, Pinto Beans, Refried Beans, Fresh Fruit, Cheese Sticks, Carrots with Ranch, Corn Wheels, Small Salad, Orange Wedges).
That is five entrées, two of them chicken. Still nothing designated vegan, and the same disclosure problem applies to every bean and rice side on the list.
The Items This Page Never Used To Mention
A vegan reader will hit these before anything else on the menu, and no version of this article has ever addressed them: Black Beans, Pinto Beans, Refried Beans, White Rice, Mexican Rice, Corn Wheels, Fresh Fruit, frijoles a la charra, cilantro rice, Chips and Dip, Corn Pico, Salsa Verde and Salsa Blanca.
Uncle Julio’s discloses nothing about lard, chicken stock or bacon in any of its beans or rice. That is the single biggest gap on this menu for a vegan diner, and the one hard number the brand does publish — 13 to 18 mg of cholesterol in “Beans & Rice” — points the wrong way. These are the items to ask about first.
Conclusion
Uncle Julio’s is a famous chain with genuinely good guacamole and a menu built around mesquite-grilled meat. What it is not is a restaurant that tells you what is in its food. There is no allergen chart, no ingredient list, no vegan or vegetarian marking, and no cross-contamination statement — only a seven-year-old nutrition PDF with a cholesterol column.
On that basis, this page can no longer tell you that anything here is vegan. What it can tell you is what changed: the guacamole has been renamed and its description trimmed, the Veggie Quesadillas are gone, the Classic Taco Salad now requires a meat choice, four of the seven recommended drinks have been dropped, the churros come with a goat’s-milk dip alongside the chocolate, and the vegetable fajita arrives with Mexican butter and charro beans rather than the black beans and cilantro rice described here for years.
If you eat here, ask about the beans, the rice, the tortillas, the Mexican butter and the fryer — and take the answers from the kitchen, because the brand publishes none of them.
