Rosa Castellanos: The Founder of La Toxica

What path led Rosa to La Toxica?

Before restaurant kitchens, Rosa worked as a flight attendant. When the pandemic and border closures forced her to consider another path, she found a calling in Laval that connected her entrepreneurial energy to her Mexican heritage.

In January 2021, a TikTok trend around birria tacos caught her attention. The dish was still hard to find across Greater Montreal. Rosa returned to her grandmother's recipes, prepared tacos at home and shared them with followers as an invitation to taste part of her family story.

Word of mouth reached another level when Quebec rapper Tizzo, followed at the time by 27,000 people on Snapchat, introduced her tacos made with heart. Orders poured in. To protect family life, Rosa rented the commercial kitchen inside the former Hot Dog MontRougeau snack bar in Fabreville, a place she had visited as a teenager, and produced there on weekends.

A mother to a young daughter, Rosa credits her child as her source of courage. Every day she balances finance, marketing, cooking and family. That range now supports the first restaurant on Saint-Hubert Street, the second on Saint-Laurent Boulevard and a catering service for businesses, weddings and special occasions.