These are the 101 best tacos in Los Angeles

Find Tacos El Llano in Palmdale under tents on an unpaved stretch at East Avenue R and 30th Street East. You’ll see the 7-Eleven nearby, and likely rows of parked cars and a swift-moving line of people. The menu centers on classic taco meats: asada, al pastor (graced with a nick of pineapple from atop the trompo), tripa, pollo, buche, lengua, cabeza and chorizo. Each one hits its mark. The asada stood out, perhaps because it was pulled directly from a grill billowing with smoke, chopped and piled on top of a just-cooked tortilla I’d asked to be lined with cheese. I covered my plate with onions, cilantro, lime juice and salsa verde from a stop at the DIY condiment table, stood in the open air under a hot sun, breathed in the wafting scents of sizzling meat and savored this specific moment of taco bliss.

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Al pastor queso taco at Angel's Tijuana Tacos

Tujunga Al Pastor Puesto $

If you see a line forming down the block for a towering, bright red trompo and the team manning the puestos stacked end-to-end looks more like a well-oiled assembly line than a casual pop-up, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled upon one of more than a dozen locations for my favorite al pastor. As the name implies, Angel’s Tijuana Tacos specializes in T.J.-style grilled and sheared meats topped with avocado salsa, cilantro and onions. While there’s cabeza, asada, chorizo and pollo, the al pastor — sliced thin with a flourish and a garnish of pineapple from the top of the trompo — is the signature item.

Angel’s manages to perfectly crisp the marinated pork almost to the point of singed, the flames licking the side of the eye-catching meat obelisk. The result is layers of spice-rubbed pork oscillating between fattiness and crunchiness, and when paired with cheese, that gooey addition pushes the al pastor toward decadent. The handmade corn tortillas get smashed almost paper-thin on a wooden press, then thrown on the comal until they bubble. Don’t let that thinness deceive you; somehow, these fresh tortillas always manage to withstand the onslaught of meat, salsa and as many grilled onions as you can heap on with tongs. Look for Angel’s across L.A. and the Inland Empire, including in Tujunga, Long Beach, Echo Park, Van Nuys, Eagle Rock, Chino and Woodland Hills.

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The barbacoa tacos from Barbacoa Ramirez.

Lamb barbacoa taco at Barbacoa Ramirez

Arleta Lamb Puesto $

Lamb, when slow-roasted in a pit in the ground, sparks an animalistic instinct in the carnivore’s soul. One bite of glistening meat wrapped in earthy corn tortilla evokes the taste of a morning at the rancho in the highlands of Mexico. This experience is plentiful with Barbacoa Ramirez, set up under a tarp on weekend mornings near the Arleta DMV. Look for the taqueros wearing shirts reflecting the Ramirez family’s roots to the town of Atotonilco El Grande, Hidalgo. These tacos, with freshly hand-made tortillas, are a prize of craftsmanship and possibly the finest barbacoa to be found in Southern California. Why? It’s in the unyielding devotion of Gonzalo Ramirez, a fourth-generation master in the Hidalgo style who raises and butchers his own lambs in the Central Valley, feeding them only alfalfa and cracked corn. Enjoy the barbacoa also as a hearty consomé, as pancita, or ask for a taco of moronga, lamb blood sausage unlike any I’ve ever tasted, seasoned with loads of oregano, chiles and onion by an Hidalguense sheep farmer in L.A. An unexpected masterpiece.

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"Carne" guisada taco at El Cocinero

Van Nuys Vegan Dine In $

There is no shortage of vegetarian tacos in Los Angeles. Many celebrate seasonal vegetables in glorious ways, such as traditional calabacitas, nopales and greens such as quintoniles. California farmers market spins include roasted eggplant, battered and fried cauliflower, sautéed broccolini and sweet potato with cashew cheese. But if a tastes-like-meat craving for street tacos hits, then there is one place to go. And that’s Alex Vargas’ El Cocinero in a Van Nuys strip mall (conveniently located a few doors down from a new boba shop) on Sepulveda Boulevard.

Vargas makes “carne asada” and “al pastor” with soy-based meat alternatives that are pretty much ringers for the pork and beef versions fresh from the grill or trompo (complete with bits of juicy pineapple). A lot of regulars are also fans of his fried chicharrón soy curls and the crispy “quesabirria” tacos made with jackfruit and served with vegetarian consomé. A recent addition to the El Cocinero menu is carne guisada: smoky sautéed soy-based meat that combines satisfying and savory beefy-ness with sweet, charred-edge onions and peppers.

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Cabeza vampiro at Tacos El Vampiro

Sylmar Cabeza Dine In $

Among the many theories on the murky origins of “vampiro” to describe a tortilla griddled to a wavy crispness before its final taco form, I’ll always (out of personal delight) cling to the idea that the shape recalls Dracula in bat form. It’s unlikely, though, that any flying mammal could lift off under the generous fillings heaped on the namesake creation at Tacos El Vampiro. The menu at this small, cheerful taqueria nestled in a Sylmar strip mall reads concise: seven canonical meat options for tacos, quesadillas, burritos and mulitas. The cabeza, in particular, has a textbook melting quality that nicely juxtaposes the vampiro’s crunch, and its flavor rings through melted cheese, onion, cilantro, red or green salsa and rivulets of guacamole. Vampiros are widespread throughout L.A. these days; this is the one to seek out in the San Fernando Valley.

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Carne asada taco at Taqueria Mi Ranchito

Sylmar Carne Asada Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

Taqueria Mi Ranchito parks its truck on a stretch of Foothill Boulevard in Sylmar sprinkled with a dozen other trucks and stands. What sets it apart from the rest is the carne asada taco, kissed so thoroughly by the grill that it perfumes both the meat and the handmade corn tortilla underneath. The beef is as tender as a steakhouse rib-eye, well seasoned and plentiful. After I’ve finished plucking off the stray pieces that escape the taco, I like to dress it with grilled onions and both the truck’s orange and green sauces. The green is reminiscent of a cool, creamy cilantro dressing, while the orange is all fire. The raw, sharp chile flavor will leave your lips swollen and tingling.

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Lengua taco at Arturo’s Taco Truck

Pasadena Lengua Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

The lengua taco is the first and only one I’ve ever ordered at this taco truck in Pasadena. It’s not that I’m opposed to trying new things. Or that I’m a particularly finicky eater. The allure of the lengua is so great, the supple meatiness of the hunks of stewed tongue so exact, that I crave it and it alone, every time I visit. The tortillas are of the thin, palm-size variety, with two nestled under the meat. To fully appreciate the lengua, I forgo the salsa for a sprinkle of fresh cilantro and diced white onion. There are few things more enjoyable than a paper plate of lengua tacos eaten while standing in the parking lot with friends.

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Three types of tacos at Carnitas el Momo

Migajas taco at Carnitas El Momo

Monterey Park Carnitas Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

The Acosta family makes its carnitas in large copper cazos, cooking the buche, cueritos and bone-in pork butts in seasoned lard. Romulo “Momo” Acosta learned how to make carnitas from his father in Salamanca, Guanajuato. Fans followed his mobile operation around Los Angeles for more than a decade. Now there’s also a counter-service restaurant in Monterey Park. They make an “aporkalypse” taco with all the cuts of meat, but the burnt ends may be the most intense, purest celebration of pork. The migajas are their own sort of aporkalypse, consisting of the pieces that collect at the bottom of the pot. Caramelized bits mix with meat that goes slack and wobbly, succumbing to all the fat. It’s slick and sticky in the tortilla with a wallop of glorious pork flavor. I like to add slivers of pickled onion and some fresh cilantro. Some people like to drizzle on the juice from one of the provided pickled peppers. You do you.

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The Taco Combo Plate at Saucy Chick / The Goat Mafia.

Birria queso taco at Saucy Chick Goat Mafia

East Pasadena Goat birria Dine In $

Juan Garcia and his family have origins in Jalisco, the birthplace of birria. There, making the long-simmered dish with goat is all but law. Garcia interprets a recipe tracing back to his great-great-grandfather: It involves steaming the meat first before it melds over low heat with spices that include dried and smoked chiles, ginger, chocolate, cinnamon, garlic, black pepper and often, juice from the oranges of one of his uncle’s trees. It stands out as extraordinary even in a town rife with birria. As a taco, the chopped mix of ropy-slick textures bonds to a corn tortilla via melted Monterey Jack. The presence of cheese manages to amplify the birria’s smokier, brighter tones, so by all means indulge. Find Garcia’s masterwork in two locations: on Sundays as a vendor at Smorgasburg L.A., and Tuesday through Saturday at the Pasadena restaurant that serves both the specialties of Goat Mafia and the Indian-Mexican mashups of fellow Smorgasburg regulars Saucy Chick Rotisserie.

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Suadero taco at King Taco

Pasadena Suadero Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

According to Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, you can credit King Taco founder Raul Martinez Sr. as the inventor of the modern taco truck, one of the great contributions that L.A. has made to world civilization. While I wasn’t around for the original East L.A. truck, the Pasadena restaurant was a mainstay during my formative high school years. It’s a neighborhood institution, where construction workers, hospital staff, students, lawyers and cooks from the restaurant down the street crowd the entrance in line. The suadero is the taco I order each time. I’m addicted to the char on the beef, the way it’s rough chopped so that some bits are crisp and others grisly, amplifying the layers. I’m equally transfixed by the way the tortillas, barely large enough to contain the meat, soak up the juices. Team green salsa for life. The tart tang is too good to ever quit.

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Fried fish taco at Playa Del Carmen

Pasadena Fish Dine In $

The Mexican seafood options in Pasadena are scant, so on a recent weekend afternoon, Playa Del Carmen is filled with diners ordering bounteous goblets of shrimp cocteles, platters of whole grilled fish and ceviche tostadas. But I’m here for the fish tacos, expertly fried by owner Mario Velasquez — who is a one-man operation with a menu of nearly 75 dishes last I counted. I place my order with him at the cash register, and then he disappears into the kitchen to grill, fry and plate the orders at hand.

“Seafood is easy to cook,” he says, “I just have to know the timing. But it’s a lot of work, it’s 24/7. I buy seafood every day, it has to be fresh. Plus I don’t have a lot of storage space anyway.” He tells me he seasons his tempura batter with paprika and cumin among other spices and the fish fillets are battered and fried to order. “The temperature has to be right to make it really good,” he says. “If it’s too high the fish won’t cook, too low and it’s not going to be crispy.” His fish comes out of the fryer hot and crispy and light and airy — simultaneously puffy and crackly-crunchy — piled with shredded cabbage and topped with crema and pico de gallo that’s extra lime-y.

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World-famous shrimp taco at Taco Nazo

South El Monte Shrimp Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

It may be a hot take, but I prefer the shrimp tacos at Taco Nazo to the fried fish. I can’t confirm that the shrimp taco is actually world-famous. The restaurant’s fish taco boasts the same claim in its name. But I can tell you that the fried shrimp taco is the finest I’ve had outside of Ensenada. The shrimp are plump and jumbo in size, encased in a fried batter that’s light, crisp and fractures on contact. I’d happily eat a bowl of the shrimp on its own. They pile enough shrimp on the corn tortillas to create a mound, then dress it with shredded cabbage, chopped onion, tomato and cilantro. Each taco gets a generous squirt of the signature sauce, a thick crema with herbs and seasonings that reminds me of a tangy ranch dressing. If you get through this blurb and you think you’re still partial to the fish, order both.

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Pork costilla taco at Avenue 26 Tacos

Eagle Rock Pork Costilla Puesto $$

Despite the loss of its longtime home in Lincoln Heights, Avenue 26 Tacos is still thriving. Puebla-born founder Erasmo Reyes set up his stall on an empty street more than a decade ago; his operation became so successful that new vendors joined, and it became the bustling Avenue 26 Night Market, which the city shut down in 2021. These days his puestos can be found in Eagle Rock, Little Tokyo and, more recently, Hollywood, but Eagle Rock alone serves what could be Reyes’ best taco yet: pork costilla. Added to the menu in spring, it’s now his most popular taco. Large hunks of pork rib charred fresh on the grill fill the palm-sized tortillas, rubbed in a spice blend akin to the al pastor’s. The just-crisp exterior hides a succulent, fatty center, and it can all be pieced apart by hand to separate it from the cartilage or eaten all at once. Whichever way you enjoy it, load up on the bevy of salsas.

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Potato taco at El Atacor No. 1

Cypress Park Potato Dine In $

First there is the sound of the taco. The crisp shatter of a well-fried tortilla gets your attention. Then you break through to the taco dorado’s soft inner core, a fluffy mash of potatoes supercharged by its quick-fry bath in hot oil and cooled with crema and gently spiced taqueria guacamole slashed across the top plus a sprinkling of white cheese. This is the El Atacor Taqueria No. 1 potato taco, possibly the city’s best of its kind.

Of course, if you are a longtime Los Angeles taco aficionado you know that there was another El Atacor down the street — El Atacor No. 11 — that was even more famous for its potato tacos (not to mention its so-called porno burrito). I used to eat there with the late Jonathan Gold, whose description of No. 11’s potato taco helped him win his 2007 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. But in 2016, El Atacor No. 11 suddenly shut its doors. No one we talked with at El Atacor No. 1 has anything to say about El Atacor No. 11, and though there are other taquerias around Southern California with the El Atacor name, most seem to be independently operated — and not all of them serve potato tacos. Until the mystery is solved, we will stick with the potato tacos at No. 1, which in our most recent tastings around town for potato tacos emerged as our favorite.

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The Don't Mess with Texas breakfast taco from HomeState.

Don’t Mess With Texas taco at HomeState

Highland Park Tex-Mex Dine In $

While L.A. is home to some of the best regional street tacos and Alta California cuisine, its Texas-style versions are few and far between. Enter HomeState, one of the city’s few bastions of breakfast tacos and a place where dietary restrictions, frozen palomas and community fundraising are always on the menu. Briana “Breezy” Valdez brought a bit of her Texas roots to L.A. in 2013 and has since expanded across L.A. and recently, into Oceanside. Corn tortillas are always available, but the flour tortillas shine here, especially as they feature butter instead of lard, and they’re freshly made using a Valdez family recipe. Multiple vegan and vegetarian options make this a destination for diners of all walks, though one of its meatiest tacos is perhaps its best: The Don’t Mess With Texas fills the tortilla to almost bursting with creamy refried charro beans, bacon, potatoes and shredded cheddar — a smoky, salty, satisfying taco for any time of the day. Keep an eye out for the rotating “band” tacos, where musicians and other celebrities design tacos whose proceeds go to such local organizations as the Watts Empowerment Center and No Us Without You.

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Fish taco at Mariscos El Faro

Highland Park Fish Food Truck $

The blue-and-white food truck is a beacon. Mariscos El Faro is a long-running destination for Sinaloa-style seafood that can draw lines down the sidewalk and find customers gathering in the neighboring park. They huddle over to-go plates of tostadas piled with chilled lobina (sea bass) or empanadas served piping fresh and stuffed with chopped shrimp. While there are plenty of colorful signatures such as campechanas, botanas and aguachiles, the more humble fish tacos are just as enticing. Order them freshly beer-battered by hand, the crispy encasement well seasoned and light as air, or fried without batter, as owner-operator Ana Ibanez used to eat it as a child in Mazatlán. True to how her mother prepared it, Ibanez’s sea bass is coated in a citrusy marinade flecked with black pepper. Both versions are served in thin, soft but surprisingly sturdy corn tortillas along with cabbage, pico de gallo and crema, making for a bright, light, tangy taco.

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Pierna de pollo queso taco at Villa's Tacos

Highland Park Pollo Dine In $

“Tacos estilo Los Angeles” is Victor Villa’s motto for the pop-ups he began in 2018 and which grew into two freestanding locations: a small, always-busy taqueria in Highland Park and a newer, equally popular counter in Grand Central Market. Villa’s style of taco embodies the L.A. dreamer and doer. His blue-corn queso taco — maximal in every way with layers of griddled cheese, frijoles, cotija, onion, squiggled-on crema and dolloped guacamole — takes two hands to comfortably wield. It’s a construction built on charisma. One has no choice but to be pulled in. There are no wrong turns among fillings: fragrant chopped asada, nubbly chorizo, a couple of smart vegan options including half-pureed black beans scattered with cactus salad. Highest marks, though, go to the rich, hashed chicken thigh meat that absorbs mesquite smoke down to a cellular level. To echo the flavor, ladle over the salsa (among eight options) labeled “jiquilpan.” It’s based on a recipe riddled with smoked chiles that Villa’s father learned in Michoacán.

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Shredded beef and refried beans taco at Asadero Chikali

East Los Angeles Shredded Beef Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

This stand makes some of my favorite flour tortillas in the entire city. They’re put together in front of you throughout the day, a steady procession of dough rolled by hand and then cooked on the flat top until mottled with toasty brown bubbles. They’re buttery, slender and surprisingly sturdy. My usual order is the carne asada chikali style, with the bits of smoky meat served under a spoonful of beans and guacamole. (“Chikali” is a locals-only nickname for the border city of Mexicali.) But on my last visit, I asked the taquero to surprise me with his favorite order. I watched as he used a spatula to smear refried beans onto a flour tortilla, then add a heap of shredded beef. The meat was tangled with stewed onion, peppers and tomato, a little sweet and full of long-simmered flavor. It melted into the creamy beans beneath. I rolled the tortilla and ate it greedily before the juices had a chance to drip out the back or soak the tortilla. The taquero is never wrong.

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Lamb barbacoa at Barba Kush

Boyle Heights Lamb Puesto $

For much of the last decade, some of L.A.’s most spectacular lamb barbacoa came from the hands of Petra Zavaleta, who learned the skill as a young woman cooking with her family in Tepeaca, a town in Puebla, Mexico. Lately she’s in residence on Sunday mornings at Armando’s Bakery in Boyle Heights. She often sells the thoroughly seasoned meat, just unwrapped from maguey leaves, by the pound. Ask for a taco, though, and she pats out a big tortilla, griddles it to order and fills it with soft ropes of barbacoa. If you had a raucous Saturday night, her mole de panza, a Pueblan style of menudo heady with lamb and spices, will restore you to the living. Follow Barba Kush on Instagram to see where Zavaleta and her family next pop up.

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Taco plato at Birria El Jaliciense

Boyle Heights Goat birria Puesto $

You’ll probably smell the succulent roast goat from blocks away before Birria El Jaliciense slides into view. The Ramirez family’s Saturday-only sidewalk operation started out serving tacos and platos made from one goat each week, and due to popularity, scaled up to three. Family members roast the meat for seven to eight hours, scenting it with a rub of garlic, onion, black pepper, cloves and other spices. Their consomé combines the chivo pan drippings with tomato, garlic and onion, and simmers away in a large pot during service. The family begins preparing at 5 a.m. the day before, and arrives in Boyle Heights early on Saturday mornings to fire up the oven where the morsels of goat gain a golden hue and crispy edges. There are tacos dorados, queso tacos and soft, straightforward tacos filled with the juicy, tender goat in light sauce, and they’re all worth ordering. But the best way to taste the robust, lightly gamey flavor of the meat is plato style, where various cuts — such as ribs or shredded meat — come with a side of warm tortillas to assemble your own tacos. The most popular plate is the No. 1, the surtida en plato with consomé, which is Jalisco-style chivo in an ode to patriarch Hector Ramirez’s hometown. Hector and his family begin selling around 8 a.m. and continue until the chivo is all gone. Come early and hungry.

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Poseidon taco at Evil Cooks

El Sereno Octopus Puesto $

Since 2018, the Eastside taqueria from Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta has been bringing the rebellious attitude of metal music to modern L.A. Mexican cuisine. The pair first went viral for their McSatan taco, which transforms the classic American cheeseburger: The patty is smashed in a tortilla press and topped with American cheese, bacon, caramelized onions and creamy guacamole on a house-made corn tortilla that’s griddled with mozzarella cheese. Everything from pork to octopus, ice cream and lengua can get stacked on the trompo and shaved directly into tortillas, but the Poseidon is a favorite. Curling octopus tentacles are coated in the signature recado negro blend and stacked on the vertical spit with a pineapple and a white onion speared at either end. The taco is served with salsa quemada, pickled onions, cilantro, guacamole and pineapple and hits every note of spicy, sweet and earthy with a pleasant chew thanks to the slight char. The black pastor and asada tacos are almost equally delicious, or you can embrace the dark side with the Asesino that mixes octopus and pork pastor in a single taco. Evil Cooks also pops up at Smorgasburg L.A. every Sunday.

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Carnitas tacos at Carnitas Los Chingones.

Maciza carnitas taco at Los Chingones

Boyle Heights Puesto $

Carlos Escobar and his team set up the large copper cazos around 5:30 a.m. every day but Friday, stewing some of L.A.’s most succulent carnitas for hours in a mix of lard, garlic and Coca-Cola. The pork bubbles away, plumes of fragrant steam lifting from a corner of the black-tented puesto in Boyle Heights. Carnitas are the specialty at Los Chingones, and the chilaquiles — especially topped with carnitas — have taken on a life of their own. But the more simple tacos are also worth the stop, with Escobar and his team thwacking the fresh maciza, buche, costilla, cueritos and more with butcher knives, then scooping a hearty portion into warm corn tortillas. The straightforward maciza is juicy, just-salty and perfectly unctuous, the meat chopped into large morsels that shred away under the weight of the salsas. Be sure to load up on the salsa featuring slim slices of nopales tossed with tomatoes and onions in addition to the more ubiquitous fixings.

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Barbacoa (lamb) flautas from Los Dorados.

Lamb barbacoa flauta at Los Dorados L.A.

El Sereno Lamb Food Truck $

From an ice-blue trailer covered in overlapping murals that also occasionally flaunts a disco ball, Steven Orozco Torres serves tacos dorados — a.k.a. flautas — in a handful of excellent variations. I’m here chiefly for the flauta that begins with a lamb barbacoa recipe passed down to Torres from his father-in-law, who learned the method for steaming and then roasting the meat to melted lushness in Texcoco, Mexico. Torres and his team roll the lamb into a tortilla and it’s dunked in the fryer until smashingly crisp, painted with crema and salsa borracha that gives off a distinct whiff of beer, and finished with flurries of cotija. It’s at once earthy and sharp, creamy and crumbly. The effects are similar for chicken tinga humming with chipotle and a duo of chorizo and potato. It’s all a masterclass in flauta engineering. Los Dorados lists its locations (mostly Friday through Sunday, and often in El Sereno) on Instagram weekly. Torres, a former bartender, often parks in front of bars and breweries. Needless to say, dorados are ace drinking food.

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Lamb barbacoa taco at Los Garduños Barbacoa

Lincoln Heights Lamb Puesto $

On Saturday and Sunday mornings in Lincoln Heights, look for the covered stand Josefina Garduño sets up with her family in front of the Smart & Final parking lot, near the intersection of Pasadena Avenue and South Avenue 24. Her sole focus: lamb barbacoa, cooked overnight using family techniques honed in Capulhuac, a village about 30 miles southwest of Mexico City where many residents perfect barbacoa to sell in the capital on the weekends. The crew behind Los Garduños Barbacoa sets up an efficient assembly line: One person chops a mix of meats to order, either by the number of tacos or by the pound, while another shapes tortillas for the grill. Salsas lean dense and intense; a particularly potent roja registers as mulchy and earthy, an ideal pairing for the fragrant, simply seasoned lamb. Someone will ask if you’d like a side of grilled nopales, or a cup of spicy consomé bobbing with chickpeas and wisps of meat. Say yes to both.

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Brisket taco at Macheen

Boyle Heights Brisket Dine In $

No one is doing it quite like Jonathan Perez. The chef is building a loyal following across Los Angeles through his indefinite residencies at Milpa Grille cafe and modern-Mexican gastropub Distrito Catorce, plus his new torta shop Birote Deli. Though all of these are worth repeat visits, his taqueria, Macheen, serves a kaleidoscope of color and flavor on freshly pressed corn and flour tortillas. At Milpa Grille and on Sundays at Smorgasburg, Macheen’s cheffy but familiar tacos don’t speak for themselves so much as they sing: The morning tacos feature soft-scrambled eggs made with cotija, Swiss cheese, butter and olive oil, and are so custardy and light they’re easily some of the best breakfast tacos in the city — if not the best. Sometimes they include fried chicken, sometimes longaniza. While many of the proteins can be found on both the breakfast and lunch tacos, the toppings and flavors differ wildly. No matter the time of day, order the brisket if you see it on the menu: Perez confits it for six hours with pork lard, fresh garlic, bay leaves, onions and Coca-Cola to the point where the morsels of meat practically disintegrate on the tongue, and the residual liquid is used to make Macheen’s fresh flour tortillas. At breakfast it’s served with eggs, cotija and salsa, and then at lunch, find the brisket in El Chilango taco with a slick of chorizo-and-bacon beans, tangy escabeche and aguacate on a thick blue-corn tortilla.

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Marlin taco at Mariscos El Cameron Pelado.

Marlin taco at Mariscos El Camaron Pelado

Lincoln Heights Fish Dine In $

This mariscos restaurant has been a mainstay for nearly a decade in Lincoln Heights, and while it’s known for its micheladas rimmed with shrimp and cucumber, its tacos are top notch. The marlin taco sandwiches the meaty fish between layers of mozzarella, which oozes out of the griddled, just-blistered corn tortilla in large bubbles, resulting in a perfect crunchy-chewy dynamic in each bite. A sauté of tomatoes, onions, cilantro and garlic is reduced to a potent, textural sauce that keeps the taco moist and messy, juice and oil running down your fingers and hands. Don’t let a flavorful drop go to waste.

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Shrimp dorado taco from Mariscos Jalisco.

Tacos dorados de camarón at Mariscos Jalisco

Boyle Heights Shrimp Food Truck $

For 22 years, Raul Ortega has been parking his shiny lonchera on Olympic Boulevard, serving what has become one of the city’s canonic dishes. His tacos dorados de camarón ensnare a mixture of spiced, minced shrimp with the elegance of a Venus flytrap. The edges of the tortillas sizzle and crisp in the fryer, while the filling cooks to improbable creaminess. Be careful: The first bite is usually lava-hot, even with the cooling relief of sliced avocado and thin red salsa flooding the surface. Reaching ideal temperature, the range of textures races so fast over the palate that it’s hard for the brain to keep up. I’ve long believed Ortega’s masterpiece is a worthy first-ever meal in Los Angeles. He operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the zeniths of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most incredible seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track pass into the city’s culinary identity.

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Poseido at Mariscos 4 Vientos

Boyle Heights Shrimp Food Truck $

What’s better than an order of crisp-shelled, piping hot shrimp tacos dorados? At Mariscos 4 Vientos, the answer is simple: the Poseido, or the fried shrimp taco piled with a small mountain of aguachile rojo. The local family empire that began in 1989 is now overseen by its founder’s son, Erik Luevanos, and encompasses two Boyle Heights restaurants and one downtown, plus a food truck. While highlights include a rich, gooey smoked-marlin taco, seafood tostadas piled to the heavens and a gobernador laced with seared jalapeños, the fried shrimp tacos at this Jalisco-style mariscos shop are fan favorites and some of the oldest in L.A. Level them up by ordering the Poseido, which tops the classic fried shrimp-and-potato taco with sliced avocado and a hearty portion of meaty octopus, plump shrimp, cucumber and red onion all sauced in a creeping, potent heat. The juxtaposition of fresh-from-the-fryer hot tacos and bracingly cold aguachile rojo makes for a memorable, satisfying bite.

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Chicken neck taco at Tacos Santa Rita Jalisco

East Los Angeles Pollo Food Truck $

Can you judge a person by the way they eat a chicken neck taco?

At Tacos Santa Rita Jalisco, longtime specialists in pescuezos de pollo, some regulars unabashedly chomp through the tortilla draped over the fried chicken necks, maneuvering around the bones and nonchalantly pulling any stray bits from their mouths. Others are almost surgical in their approach. Using their hands to carefully pluck the meat from the six necks that come in every order, they arrange everything in neat piles and then assemble tidy tacos with a pleasing ratio of tender chicken meat and crisp skin plus a dollop of the stand’s warm red or green salsa, spooned still steaming from Santa Rita’s salsa station on the freshly scrubbed covered patio where a goofy larger-than-life plaster rabbit watches over the terrazzo tables beside the permanently parked taco truck.

Most of us fall somewhere between the carefree and the deliberate, using snatches of tortilla to pull the chicken off the bone and adding a splash of salsa. But no matter which style you use, the first thing to do after you get your order of pescuezos is lift the tortilla and find the neck with the biggest puff of chicken skin. Pull it off the bone and pop it in your mouth. It’s one of the best bites of food you’ll ever eat in this city.

I first tried pescuezos de pollo in 2014 with Jonathan Gold when he featured Santa Rita as a Taco Tuesday pick in this paper: “The skin is pushed up the neck before frying, which gives the effect of a tanned, meaty cylinder surmounted by an Elizabethan collar of pure crunch.” Ten years later, the crunch hasn’t diminished.

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Carnitas taco at Sergio’s Tacos

East Los Angeles Carnitas Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

Sergio’s is not a destination-type place with a single specialty that attracts fans in droves. It’s a place where you can get a $10 burrito on Tortilleria La California tortillas that will keep you full for 12 hours. There’s menudo every day. And the carnitas tacos are the variety you can and should eat by the half dozen. The meat is slightly stringy and tender with crispy bits on all the edges. It’s a generously stuffed taco that I like to dress with diced raw onion, cilantro and enough of the red salsa to make my eyes water. There are three locations, though I prefer the dining room and the dinky television at the one on East Olympic Boulevard.

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Cachete tacos from Tacos al Vapor El Canelo.

Cachete taco at Tacos Al Vapor El Canelo

East Los Angeles Cachete Dine In $

For true connoisseurs of cachete, there is no better beacon than cabeza specialist Tacos Al Vapor El Canelo, a walk-up window in a strip mall on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. (you can’t miss it — the parking lot is lined with banners and colorful papel picado flags). A favorite cut of beef, the cheek is tender but flavorful, fatty enough but with plenty of lean meat — a gateway to the deliciousness of cabeza, which refers to various parts of the cow’s head. It’s hard to find taco artisans who parse the intricacies that make up the cabeza universe of flavors and textures: cheeks, lips, brains, tendon and tongue. At family-owned El Canelo, each of these gets its own taco. Labio is unctuous with bits of gelatinous blobs. Sesos are soft, mild and creamy, while nervio includes cartilage that clings to the meat, crunchy and chewy. The cachete is especially flavorful here, infused with aromatics, herbs and spices added while the meat is long-simmered. Before serving it’s steamed along tortillas and plated simply — a purist’s portion of tortilla and meat with requisite cilantro and onions and your choice of salsa verde or habanero. Eat your tacos in the shade on the single red bench provided in front of the shop, with an essential Jarritos tamarindo.

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Tacos árabes especiales at Los Originales Tacos Árabes De Puebla

Boyle Heights Árabes Food Truck $

Puebla-style tacos árabes trace back to at least the 1930s, maybe earlier, and their exact origins are murky and contested. Around the end of the Ottoman Empire, either Lebanese or Iraqi immigrants arrived in east-central Mexico and introduced their tradition of shawarma: layering well-spiced, thinly sliced lamb meat on a spit and slicing to order as it spun and roasted. Pork, which had been introduced by colonizers to North America in the 1500s, eventually replaced the more-expensive lamb, and the adaptive seasonings came to include lime juice and chipotle. The now-classic vehicle for tacos árabes remains a yeasted flour tortilla, often called pan árabe, thin but with just enough fermentation to recall flatbread.

Staffers at the Boyle Heights truck owned by Merced Villegas and her husband, Alfredo, will happily recount a version of this history, while urging you to try tacos árabes especiales: cumin-scented pork carved from the trompo, enfolded in the hybrid tortilla, squiggled with chipotle salsa and dressed with sliced avocado and lacy strings of quesillo. It tastes, in the best sense, pretty much as you might imagine: a dish of two cultures merged by circumstance and acumen.

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Fried fish taco at Tacos Baja

East Los Angeles Fish Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” creeps into my head whenever I pull into the parking lot of Tacos Baja in East Los Angeles. “Simply the best” is the restaurant slogan, featured at all three locations, on the social media accounts and written on all the signage. The restaurant is known for its excellent Ensenada-style fish and shrimp tacos, both battered in a tempura-like coating or grilled. The fried fish is the one I use to measure against all other Ensenada-style fish tacos. The filet of sea bass is plump and meaty with a thin, golden fried batter that supplies crunch but does not overpower the fish. There’s a heap of shredded cabbage, chunky pico de gallo and a drizzle of crema that work together to cool the hot fish and temper the heat of the salsa. The two corn tortillas are just strong enough to hold it all in without too much spillage. You’re simply the best, better than all the rest.

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Papa con chorizo at Tacos De Canasta El Abuelo

Boyle Heights Papa con chorizo Puesto $

Every morning at 7 a.m., next to the AutoZone in Boyle Heights, a stand is set up to sell one of L.A.’s best examples of a specific street food: tacos de canasta. The technique commonly involves layering small corn tortillas — stuffed with a modest amount of filling and folded into half-moons — in a basket. Ladling over hot, chile-infused oil and then covering the small tacos in kitchen towels helps keep them warm throughout the day. Tacos de Canasta el Abuelo has a short menu with three variations: softly textured chicharrón, stewed beans and, my favorite for its contrasts and porky oomph, papas con chorizo. In their cocoons, the steaming tortillas take on the smoothness of crepes. You’re encouraged to generously dress your order with crema, queso, salsas, chopped cabbage and pickled vegetables, all of which turn the flavors from simple to symphonic.

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Adobada at Tacos Don Cuco

East Los Angeles Adobada Food Truck $

It can feel like dinner and a show: If you catch team members on a spirited night, they sling salsas into the air by the spoonful, catching them with tacos one after the next. But at Tacos Don Cuco, the showmanship from the eponymous taquero and his staff is only part of the draw. The Tijuana-style taco operation, with four locations across L.A. and Pomona, piles mesquite-grilled meats into thin, freshly made corn tortillas that spill textural guacamole and salsas out of their slightly conical-formed paper wrappers. It’s difficult to go wrong with any meat here — chorizo, carne asada, pollo asada, tripa and al pastor — always chopped fresh from the grill or sliced to order right off the trompo. Perhaps best of all is the adobada, which is thick with rubbed spices, caramelized and crispy at the edges, and garners even more smokiness off the mesquite grill.

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Lengua taco at Tacos El Toro

East Los Angeles Lengua Puesto $

Benjamin Padilla has a way with a cleaver. He pulls a hunk of lengua from his vaporera, a large steel steam table set up in his East L.A. yard, and thinly slices the fatty, tender tongue. If you ask for it picada, he chops it into a fine dice, working quickly, the edge of his knife hitting the board rat-a-tat fast. Everything is cut to order.

Through a haze of steam, you can see tortillas on top of the mounds of meat, like patches of snow on a hillside. Padilla grabs the warm, vapor-infused tortillas — pale but with charred edges and slightly thicker than most, sourced from Tijuana — and fills them quickly. He throws the tacos onto a plate in a circular pattern, sprinkling them with onions and cilantro as he goes, and dousing them with salsa verde, with the final taco always placed on top in the center.

An al vapor maestro, Padilla says his uncles in Jalisco taught him to cook the specialty cuts of tongue, cachete, labio and cabeza, all from the head of the cow, all boiled with aromatics and steamed (except for the asada, which is grilled first) to ultimate tenderness. Each cut of meat is a study in different mixtures of fattiness and texture — cabeza chopped so fine it’s almost a chunky paste, cachete nearly shredded and labio with pockets of gelatinous gobs. Eat them from a bench on the sidewalk, and watch Padilla at work in a steam cloud dream.

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A loaded taco at Taquearte California in Pico Rivera.

Taco campechano at Taquearte California

Pico Rivera Campechano Dine In $

Time your visit right and you can eat Taquearte California’s acclaimed chilaquiles for breakfast and then, if you linger until noon when the menu expands, add a taco to share. And you will have to share if you’ve been eating chilaquiles. This taco is loaded.

Early customers will remember the overlapping two-tortilla construction of the open-faced Taquearte taco. It’s since evolved into a single plate-size homemade tortilla as its base, put to its best use in the taco campechano, which here means crumbles of crisped chorizo added to the meat you’ve chosen – bistec, costilla, pechuga or chuleta grilled and then seared on the plancha. I like the all-pork chuleta and chorizo. Then come grilled onions and, surprising to many who have not seen this Mexico City taco style, a layer of fluffy mashed potatoes ready to absorb your choice of Taquearte’s killer salsas (don’t miss the salsa macha).

Owners Anyelo Farfán and Monica Quinto will let you get even more elaborate with cheese, avocado and, yes, bacon. But then you might need a fork.

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Chicken shawarma taco at X’tiosu Kitchen

Boyle Heights Chicken shawarma Dine In $

I’m addicted to the green tahini salsa at X’tiosu Kitchen, the Boyle Heights walk-up window where you order the Mexican-Mediterranean specialties of brothers Felipe and Ignacio Santiago. That means I get the chicken shawarma taco every time. The spit-grilled meat that Lebanese immigrants brought to Mexico produced al pastor. But it was also working in the Lebanese restaurant Sunnin in Los Angeles that inspired the Santiagos to create what they call Arabesque Oaxacan cooking. The spice-rubbed roasted chicken is shaved over corn tortillas and ladled with a generous amount of that green garlicky salsa verde, also referred to at X’tiosu as Arabesque salsa. The garnishes — onions and cilantro along with the pink turnip pickles that are ubiquitous in Levantine dishes — are key here to straddling two cuisines.

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Puffy taco at Bar Amá

Downtown L.A. Tex-Mex Dine In $$

Josef Centeno is a son of San Antonio. At his downtown cantina, he bridges the Tex-Mex traditions of his origin city with the farmers market obsession of his chosen home. Few dishes remain static on Centeno’s menus — he’s one of our most restlessly creative chefs — but one fixture that remains constant isn’t even listed among the items. You need to know to ask for puffy tacos, a San Antonio specialty with connections to Arturo’s Puffy Taco in Whittier. He and his team fry golf ball-size rounds of fresh masa into soft, billowing shells that crackle lightly on the outside. Fillings may rotate. I most love the snap of shrimp but would never turn away from ranchero chicken or, for a meat-free option, soyrizo. They arrive lightly dressed in shredded cabbage, tomato salsa, crema, chopped onion and cilantro. Eat them fast while they’re hot and nearly floating. They’ll deflate by nearly the last bite, which is part of the fun.

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Costilla tacos at Carnitas Los Gabrieles.

Costilla taco at Carnitas Los Gabrieles

Downtown L.A. Carnitas Puesto $

Bright red banners advertising “carnitas” welcome you to Carnitas los Gabrieles, a puesto next to Mercado Olympic in downtown. The street stand overflows onto the sidewalk with plastic red tables and stools, planchas and a row of aguas frescas in vitroleros. At the center of the action is taquera Guadalupe Baez, who churns pork in a massive cazo that bubbles golden-brown under the morning light. Colanders with handles sit on the perimeter of the deep-bottomed vat and hold different cuts of meat — buche, cueritos, lengua, nana (pig uterus), oreja (pig ear). Order them by the pound or in tacos with handmade corn tortillas that are cooked to order. If you’re torn between the options, Baez will gently guide you toward the most popular selections: carnitas, mixto and costilla. All are delicious and a stellar representation of Baez’s skills, which were honed in Huetamo, in Michoacán state, under the direction of her cousin, but my favorite is the costilla, luscious with fat and brightened with the full range of dressings available: chunky pico de gallo, pickled onions, cooling green and spicy red salsas and a squirt from a lime wedge. Open every day at 8:30 a.m., Carnitas los Gabrieles usually sells out by noon.

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Idol potato taco with chorizo beans at Chuy’s Tacos Dorados

Downtown L.A. Potato Dine In $

For many Southern Californians, their taste for tacos dorados probably stems from an amalgam of collectively nostalgic varieties: the American hard-shell tacos of pre-made crunchy tortillas with seasoned ground beef, lettuce and shredded cheddar; the filled, fried tacos of regional cuisines across Mexico; and flautas or taquitos. Betsy Leon’s version at Chuy’s Tacos Dorados is, at its core, a family recipe handed down from generation to generation, starting with relatives who owned a restaurant in Culiacán and filled tortillas with seasoned potato or carne deshebrada before frying. These are the foundational fillings for Leon’s tacos at Chuy’s, located inside a loading dock of a former meatpacking company in the Arts District. They’re topped with fistfuls of shredded cheddar and citrusy pickled onions, and all are expertly fried so that they are deliciously crunchy without being at all greasy. Several meat-and/or-potato combinations are offered, and everyone is going to land on their own preferences, all of them served with Leon’s warm, brothy salsas. I live close to Chuy’s, and my favorite taco has become an addictive habit: the Idol potato taco with chorizo refried beans. Sometimes it comes topped with onions and sometimes it doesn’t, so now I remember to ask for them.

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Beef taquitos with beans and rice at Cielito Lindo on Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Beef taquito at Cielito Lindo

Downtown L.A. Taquito Dine In $

Any chronicle of tacos in Los Angeles will include Cielito Lindo, the tiny stand on historic Olvera Street that has been rolling and frying taquitos for 90 years. Aurora Guerrero created the recipe for the beef-filled rolled tacos ladled with her tangy, bright avocado sauce and opened Cielito Lindo in 1934. It is now operated by her grandchildren. The thick house-made tortillas yield substantial taquitos that are each the size of a small rolling pin, filled with shredded hunks of beef. Once fried, the ends are crispy, and as you eat toward the center of the taquito, it’s satisfyingly chewy. On a recent weekday afternoon, the line extends 10 people deep, and though the menu also lists chile rellenos, tamales and burritos, everyone’s here for the taquitos. The two customers ahead of me each order taquitos by the half-dozen, lined up in neat rows on their plates, blanketed in so much green sauce it is spilling over the rims. You can get a snack of two taquitos for $6.50 or combine them in mixed plates, such as combination No. 1 — three beef taquitos with beans and cheese for $12.50. Taquitos by the dozen for cooking at home are available, and you can even buy the avocado sauce by the gallon (it’s that famous).

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Lobster taco at Del Mar Ostioneria

Mid-Wilshire Lobster Food Truck $$

Housed in a La Brea strip mall with a wedding chapel, this mariscos-themed truck was opened in early 2023 by partners Roberto Pérez, whose father owns the parking lot, and Francisco Leal, a chef who grew up in coastal Sinaloa and once ran his own sushi restaurant in Baja California Sur. The truck with a focus on high-quality mariscos tinged with Japanese influence is also home to the best lobster taco you’ll find in the whole of Los Angeles. The taco comes on a thick blue corn tortilla with griddled queso, a generous portion of lobster that’s guaranteed to spill, thick slices of avocado, strands of crispy leeks and a house chipotle sauce drizzled on top. It’s a majestic and indulgent taco with buttery meat and an operatic range of textures and flavors. You’ll also find Kumamoto oysters and a selection of sashimi topped with house ponzu and yuzu sauces, plus aguachiles and ceviches. But the crispy octopus with a spicy tamarind sauce, Baja fish with breaded halibut and decadent filet mignon taco with pistachio sauce prove nearly as delicious as the lobster taco. My advice is to invite at least one friend. As you watch other customers retrieve their orders from the window, your hungry eyes will no doubt place orders that your stomach alone can’t cash, so you might as well share.

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Fish flauta at Ditroit

Downtown L.A. Fish Dine In $

Enrique Olvera’s restaurant group, Casamata, opened its outdoor taqueria in the alley behind Arts District jewel Damian in December 2020. Since practically its first week, the fan-favorite at Ditroit has been the fish flauta. The fish in the filling can change (it’s often swordfish), but the setup is consistent: A tortilla rolled into a thin, extra-long cylinder sizzles in the fryer to thorough crispness, arriving at the table dressed with crema, punchy salsa verde, cabbage slaw and a sprinkling of queso fresco. It’s wonderful. Beyond the flauta, Ditroit could use an infusion of energy. The quality of the other meats — usually suadero and carnitas — lean dry, and L.A. is too competitive a field for consistent disappointments. Happily, the flauta (or two if you’re really hungry) rates as a complete meal on its own, paired with cucumber-yuzu agua fresca perfumed with palo santo.

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Goat birria tacos at El Parian Restaurant

Pico-Union Goat birria Dine In $

The Pico-Union neighborhood that houses El Parian has changed immensely since The Times’ late restaurant critic Jonathan Gold first reviewed the restaurant in 1990. El Parian might even appear shuttered at first glance, with wrought-iron box cages over its street-facing windows and door. But enter through the parking lot and you’ll find a preserved interior with the same decor that Gold described: a colorful painted map of Mexico along one wall, brick-tile flooring and rows of refrigerators stocked with Mexican beer.

The restaurant opened in 1968, and its signature dish is still Jalisco-style goat birria, available by the pound. It comes bobbing in a bowl of ruddy consomé with handmade tortillas, chopped white onion and cilantro sprigs on the side. The goat is earthy, only slightly gamey and so tender that it practically dissolves in your mouth. The tortillas are thick and chewy enough to stand up to a generous serving of the birria. The consomé packs enough flavor to drink on its own. I preferred topping my tacos with the chunky red salsa served with complimentary tortilla chips over the bottled option that arrived with my plate.

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Chile colorado taco at El Ruso

Echo Park Chile Colorado Food Truck $

Taquero Walter Soto and tortillera Julia Silva had a viral moment just before the pandemic, when they set up a trailer along with a few covered tables on a side street off Olympic Boulevard in Boyle Heights. The magnificence of the tacos — Silva’s supple, consummate flour tortillas married to Soto’s savvy with meats and mastery over the griddle — made El Ruso an Instagram-famous stop on the Los Angeles taco circuit. But as a team they were no overnight sensation: They’d been working together, for others and themselves, for 20 years. These days, the El Ruso lonchera parks most frequently near Sunset Boulevard and Echo Park Avenue. The menu might change a little daily, but their collaboration yields tacos as layered in flavor and as generous of spirit as ever. The Sonoran-style chile colorado, based on Silva’s mother’s recipe, glows a radioactive red-orange, and the spice comes across more earthen than incendiary. Its rich, satiny texture nearly melts into the tortilla, making for a taco that can slip and slide like a water balloon. The deliciousness merits the juggling.

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Ground beef and pickle tacos at Esquela Taqueria.

Beef and pickle taco at Escuela Taqueria

Fairfax Gringo Dine In $$

By Jenn Harris

This is one of the tacos I recommend most in the city, partly because it’s delicious and so unexpected. It’s a singular flavor, though the name may dupe you into thinking you’re in for a hamburger taco. The fried shells are always scorching, bubbly and glistening with residual oil. The ground beef and potato in the filling become one entity, a savory paste-like substance in the bottom of the curved, hot tortilla. There’s a handful of shredded cheddar cheese that’s half melted by the time the taco hits your table. A few dill pickle chips are balanced precariously over the top, just peeking out and over the shell. I would never think to add dill pickle to a taco, but that bite of acid and freshness hits the same as a handful of pickled onions. The tacos are on the smaller side, so I typically eat four at a time. No salsa required.

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Sweet potato taco at Guerrilla Tacos

Downtown L.A. Sweet potato Dine In $$

Guerrilla Tacos has always taken a boundary-pushing, L.A.-specific approach to tacos. Its name is a reference to the innovative strategies used in guerrilla warfare and the tenacity of street food vendors that persist in spite of threats from code enforcement. Founded by chef Wes Avila as a food cart in 2012, it grew into a truck the following year and the mural-bright Arts District restaurant followed in 2018, now helmed by owner Brittney Valles alongside chef Crystal Espinoza.

Several of the OG tacos that earned Guerrilla Tacos a Bib Gourmand nod from the Michelin Guide in 2019 are still on the menu. The hard-shelled Pocho with ground chuck is a tribute to the “gringo”-style tacos that Avila ate as a kid, but the best option on the permanent taco menu is the sweet potato that veers into Peruvian and Mediterranean flavors with rounds of buttery, skin-on sweet potato, crispy corn, slightly sour feta cheese, chopped scallions and a thick, nutty almond-cashew chile sauce. It’s a symphony of textures composed with a Gustavo Dudamel-level of culinary prowess.

If I’m being honest, I love the lomo saltado taco just as much as the sweet potato. It bulks with juicy strips of marinated steak, roasted potatoes, sauteed red onions and tomatoes, aji verde and finely chopped cilantro on a fatty, char-spotted flour tortilla. It’s available only seasonally, so don’t skip one if you see it on the menu.

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Mole poblano taco at Guisados

Downtown L.A. Mole Poblano Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

The downtown Los Angeles location is where my budding love for corn tortillas turned into an obsession. When my office was down the street, I used to come for lunch at least twice a week. I watched the woman in the window massage a mound of masa in a large bowl. When an order came in, she would break off a golf ball-size nub, roll it in her hands and then use a tortilla press to flatten it. The entire process took all of three seconds. She threw the newly formed tortilla on the comal, where it bubbled, blistered and turned a pale gold. When you cradle your taco, the tortilla is still warm. The filling that most accentuates the pure corn flavor and the sturdiness of the tortilla is the mole poblano. The shredded chicken breast is saturated in a chocolate-colored bittersweet mole that’s voluptuous in the mouth with spice and chiles. A cooling zigzag of sour cream and crumbles of queso fresco bolster its decadence and temper the heat. There’s some crunch from toasted pepitas and a single sliver of raw red onion. I usually end up ordering an extra tortilla to help sop up any mole that may have escaped the taco.

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Cochinita pibil tacos at La Flor de Yucatan.

Cochinita pibil at La Flor de Yucatán

Pico-Union Cochinita Pibil Dine In $

The small storefront of this long-running Yucatecan operation in Pico-Union belies the span on its menu. Its bakery case displays shelves crammed with sweet and savory breads, pastries and cakes. A mounted screen flashes a broader repertoire of dishes: tortas, tamales, burritos, starters like empanadas and mint-flecked kibbeh and specials that include morcia and relleno negro (turkey stew stacked with layers of spice). The children of Antonio Burgos, and his wife, Rosy, who founded the business in the 1970s, continue to prepare the family’s recipe for cochinita pibil: They steep the pork in a traditional marinade of achiote and sour orange juice, slowly roasting it in the oven, swaddled in banana leaves. Tufted on corn tortillas, the tender threads of meat taste especially rich and citrusy against the requisite garnish of sliced pickled onions. These are tacos to wolf down quickly and happily on one of the restaurant’s sidewalk tables.

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The gringo gobernador taco at La Tostaderia.

Gringo taco at La Tostaderia

Downtown L.A. Seafood Dine In $

Don’t let the name fool you: There’s much more to love beyond the tostadas at this mariscos stall in Grand Central Market. Tacos, ceviches, aguachiles and daily specials abound at the space from chef-restaurateur Fernando Villagomez, who also founded nearby booths Villa Moreliana and La Frutería. To find his bright and tangy spin on seafood in multiple forms, look for the neon mermaid sign within the historic food hall. For many, the words “gringo taco” likely conjure hard-shell tacos stuffed with ground beef, shredded lettuce and ribbons of cheddar cheese. At La Tostaderia, the gringo taco takes an almost gobernador-like form, with not only shrimp but meaty chunks of octopus blanketed by Oaxacan cheese. The seafood and cheese are seared on the plancha and served gooey with crisp edges in a soft corn tortilla, hidden under a mountain of shredded radish, pops of Fresno chiles and green onion, and a squiggle of sweet-spicy chipotle aioli. Hot, crunchy, cool, chewy, cheesy, refreshing — this taco’s got it all. But if you’d rather sample Villagomez’s mariscos, La Tostaderia also offers a mini-taco sampler of six varieties.

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Goat birria quesataco at Tacos Y Birria La Unica

Mid-City Goat birria Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

I would never turn down a beef birria taco from the Tacos y Birria la Unica truck, but for that distinct, pure animal funk, there’s only goat. The meat is stewed until the strands are limp, then nestled into a crisp, bubbly shell cushioned with a glob of melted cheese. The accompanying Styrofoam cup of consomé is tinged with cinnamon and clove and cluttered with stray bits of goat. A squirt of the red salsa powers through the richness of the added cheese. There is only one way to describe the state I find myself in mid-goat birria quesataco with my chin glistening with consomé and my mouth full of crunch, meat juice and cheese. Feral. When you leave, there should be a faint orange rim around your mouth and a graveyard of red-stained napkins to pile into the trash bin. The truck in Mid-City is preferred for personal geographic reasons, but the one that parks in Boyle Heights is just as stellar.

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Al pastor tacos topped with pineapple from Leo's Taco Truck.

Al pastor taco at Leo's Tacos

Mid-City Al Pastor Food Truck $

As soon as you see the spinning trompo with a massive hulk of crimson-red pork pastor glistening in the gas station parking lot next to Leo’s Tacos truck, you know in your heart it’s what you must order. The Oaxacan-owned taco truck first parked on La Brea Avenue and Venice Boulevard in 2010, and it’s been there ever since, though you can now find them at nine additional locations across L.A. and from Arleta to Wilmington. I favor the original location. It is dangerously close to my home, making it far too convenient to stop by spontaneously for lunch or after a night out. Not only is al pastor Leo’s specialty but it’s ready almost instantly no matter how long the line is (the truck is especially busy on weekend nights). A taquero elegantly slices thin strips of the juicy marinated meat and pineapple into tortillas and hands them to you directly. The open salsa bar was discontinued after the pandemic, but you can still request your preferred fixings at the window. Pickled veggies, radish, chopped cilantro and onion, crescents of lime and salsas ranging from earthy to cool avocado to extra spicy are available for dressing.

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Chicken taco at MidEast Tacos

Silver Lake Pollo Dine In $

Armen Martirosyan’s MidEast Tacos is truly an L.A. story. The second-generation restaurateur, who also operates Mini Kabob with his parents in Glendale, began combining his family’s celebrated Armenian kebabs with Mexican flavors as specials at their takeout shop in 2016, then expanded with a pop-up at Smorgasburg and a Highland Park parking lot. In early 2024, he and partner Aram Kavoukjian opened MidEast Tacos in Silver Lake, where they serve Martirosyan’s just-charred and perfectly juicy meats in soft tortillas doused with house salsas and toum. A marinade of 24 to 48 hours makes for some of the city’s most succulent chicken, which is coated in a similar dairy-based brine as the poultry at Mini Kabob — both tinged with Aleppo pepper and toasted black pepper. Once skewered and grilled, the thighs are pulled from the heat and chopped, then spooned into a locally made Mejorado flour tortilla and topped with a vibrant house-made salsa roja that’s packed with guajillos, chiles de árbol, tomatillos, serranos and cilantro. It also receives a squiggle of MidEast Taco’s secret-recipe chile de árbol toum, a zippy blend of the garlicky Levantine sauce and earthy chiles — it’s a nod to a component of one of Martirosyan’s favorite tacos: the iconic sweet potato taco that Wes Avila created for Guerrilla Tacos, which also appears on this list.

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Oxtail tacos with roasted tomato, shreded kale and whiskey reduction.

Oxtail taco at My 2 Cents

Mid-Wilshire Oxtail Dine In $$

My 2 Cents translates soul food through the lens of chef-owner Alisa Reynold’s L.A. upbringing, including spring rolls stuffed with mac and cheese and a handful of taco options. That’s why we’re here. The fried catfish tacos with house remoulade and crunchy purple slaw are worth an order, but it’s the oxtail tacos that you’ll keep coming back for. White corn tortillas are packed with juicy stewed oxtail, pulpy roasted tomato, slivers of red onion and topped with a fistful of kale and whiskey reduction sauce. The soft tortillas sag under the weight of the fillings, urging you to take each taco down in one or two bites so as not to waste the dripping glaze of meat juices. Raw shredded kale is a necessary foil for the sweet, tender meat, and the tacos are small enough that your order of three will disappear fast. Visit on Tuesday when dine-in taco orders come with a free taco — a crispy plantain and callaloo taco veers into dessert territory, and a ground turkey option with cheese recalls those commonly served in Black Californian households, but I wouldn’t blame you if you opted for four oxtail tacos instead.

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Lamb taco at Roast To Go

Downtown L.A. Lamb Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

All the tacos at this walk-up counter in the middle of Grand Central Market are served with a heap of warm tortillas. They’re more like bowls, with enough meat piled into the middle to feed a small family. The beef cheek is so rich and fatty that it seems to melt. Each lengua taco looks as if it involves an entire chopped tongue. There is no wrong order here, but the lamb is always right. The sinewy strands are bathed in a rust-red liquid mixture of grease and meat juice. The distinct gaminess of the lamb is present but not overpowering, tamed further by a dollop of green salsa and diced white onion. If you love lamb or just think you might like it, are indifferent or hesitant, this is the taco for you.

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Taco de tripas at Santa Cecilia

Boyle Heights Tripa Dine In $

Tripas are a tricky taco order for the uninitiated. Many expect tender pieces of tripe, of the type that go into menudo, inside the tortilla instead of funkier bits of small beef intestine. It’s a hardcore but worthy taco if you know where to go. At Santa Cecilia, on Los Angeles’ famed Mariachi Plaza and fittingly named for the patron saint of musicians, crispiness is the virtue that sets apart Armando Salazar’s tacos de tripas. Where others can be overly chewy, the Santa Cecilia tripas taco crackles with just a hint of animal essence set off beautifully with chopped onion, cilantro and a splash of spicy salsa inside a homemade white corn tortilla. I like to order mine with a tongue taco and sprinkle some of the tripas on top for one of those perfect tender-crisp bites that make you happy to live in taco-rich Los Angeles.

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Fish al Pastor taco at the Simón mariscos truck.

Fish al pastor at Simón

Silver Lake Fish Food Truck $

As a taquero, Francisco Aguilar leans modernist. From the admiral-blue mariscos truck he parks at Sunset Triangle Plaza in Silver Lake, he often re-conceptualizes classic combinations. See, for example, his take on al pastor, subbing fish (often tilapia, but the selection can vary) for pork over a handmade tortilla and incorporating classic elements: the ruddy stain of achiote, a slice of charred pineapple alongside, a slick of guacamole to smooth textures and unite flavors. The taco also departs from tradition. Onions appear two ways — fried for crunch and caramelized with soy sauce for umami. Cilantro, as on most of Aguilar’s tacos, appears as fronds with soft, small leaves or tiny white buds. Beyond tacos, Simón’s menu also runs through a concise list of ceviches, seafood cocktails and aguachiles. The sauce for an aguachile negro is particularly vivid, made by charring tomatillos until they’re blackened and then pureeing them unpeeled with ice and Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, habanero and garlic. Its pungency happens to pair very well with a couple of Aguilar’s al pastor tacos.

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Sonoratown's taco plate with a grilled steak and a chorizo taco.

Caramelo with costilla at Sonoratown

Downtown L.A. Beef costilla Dine In $

The splendor of Teodoro Díaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s taquerias rests literally and spiritually on the Sonoran flour tortillas cranked out by their master tortilla maker, Julia Guerrero. They are as stretchy as they are durable, and like the most accomplished pie crusts, they manage to be both flaky and buttery (though in this case, the secret ingredient is lard). Among the specialties on the concise menu: the caramelo, elsewhere sometimes fashioned from two tortillas bound by cheese. In this case, we’re talking about a large-format taco folded over a veneer of Monterey Jack, pintos, a few shreds of cabbage for crunch, plus avocado and spicy red salsas. Meat options include grilled chicken, tripe, chorizo and the newest addition, cabeza cooked to such beefy tenderness that the molecules barely hold together. Still, I must chiefly recommend the costilla, a mix of boneless short rib and chuck robed in mesquite smoke. It’s the pride of Rodriguez’s always-full grill, and the soul of the Sonoratown experience. A Mid-City location joined the downtown original in 2022, and there are plans for a third location, in Long Beach, by year’s end.

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Cabeza taco at Tacos Tamix

Mid-Wilshire Cabeza Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

Tacos Tamix is emblematic of everything that is essential to our city’s taco truck culture. You can spot the red and yellow glow of the truck from a mile away. The menu boasts tacos, burritos, tortas and mulitas, plus, to sip, warming champurrado. The salsa bar is abundant, with chopped vegetables and pickled white onions that are typically blazing hot with chiles. It is a truck that is there for you at breakfast, lunch, dinner and through fourth-meal debauchery until 2 a.m. The cabeza will be the best $2 you spend at a truck. With a medley of mostly cachete (beef cheek) and lengua, the meat is as meltingly tender as a fine beef stew. Add a sprinkle of raw onion, a few slivers of hot pickled onions and a splash of the bright green salsa too.

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A chicken taco at Tacos Tumbras a Tomas.

Pollo taco at Tacos Tumbras a Tomas

Downtown L.A. Pollo Dine In $

Tacos Tumbras a Tomas is purported to serve more than 300 pounds of its Michoacan-style carnitas daily, which makes sense considering that the amount of meat heaped into one taco is enough to make three or four tacos. Tomas Martinez’s family-owned business has been part of the market for more than 50 years, and the chicken taco here is a standout. Juicy, chopped chunks of chicken fill the tortilla, with bits of well-seasoned, fatty chicken skin sprinkled into each bite. A modest garnish of cilantro and white onion top the poultry pile-up, and you can put the extra tortillas folded into each order to good use by making additional tacos with your bounty.

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Perron taco with carne asada at Tacos 1986

Beverly Grove Carne Asada Dine In $

Jorge ‘Joy’ Humberto Alvarez-Tostado and Victor Delgado both grew up in Tijuana, but their paths didn’t cross until adulthood when they teamed up to open Tacos 1986. The taqueria mimics the style of tacos popularized by the Mexico border city with handmade tortillas, flame-grilled meats, onions, cilantro and a creamy dollop of guacamole. Since launching as a taco cart in Hollywood in 2018, Tacos 1986 has grown to seven brick-and-mortar locations across L.A., drawing in passersby with bright red logos and the wafting scent of smoky meat. The taco to order here is the off-menu perron, which substitutes the usual corn tortilla for flour and adds a scoop of pliant pinto beans, melted Monterey Jack cheese, guacamole, salsa, chopped cilantro and onions and your choice of meat, though carne asada is the standard. Crusted with cheese, the supple tortilla gains a crispiness and the tender grilled meat imparts an earthiness that offsets the richness of the beans and avocado. Load up on your preferred salsas at the bar and toss in a few slices of radishes for additional crunch and freshness. The house-made jamaica is a perfectly sweetened concoction to wash down your tacos, especially if you tend to overestimate your ability to handle the spicy salsa fresca as I do.

See also: The taquero hero’s journey that led Jorge ‘Joy’ Alvarez-Tostado to create Tacos 1986

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Carne asada and al pastor tacos at Brothers Cousins.

Carne asada taco at Brothers Cousins Tacos

Sawtelle Carne Asada Puesto $

Brothers Cousins, in the diverse Sawtelle neighborhood, is an institution. At 5:45 p.m. — 15 minutes before the puesto opens — a line is already down the sidewalk, wrapping into the adjacent Rite Aid parking lot. Blue tents with dangling light bulbs are propped up and a hulking trompo spins while festive music blares from a speaker. Seniors, parents pushing kids in strollers and baggy-pantsed teenagers wait patiently as the taqueros prepare for service. The assembly line moves quickly and efficiently once the stand opens, with six or so taqueros who slice strips of al pastor, stir meats in a choricera, dress tortillas, ladle aguas frescas into cups and take cash.

The pastor is the most eye-catching option. It outsizes the taquero who watches over it, shearing thin slices and finishing them on the plancha directly below. But the carne asada, with crispy edges still juicy with fat and flavor, most impressed me. It has a deep earthiness and hints of citrus that are enhanced with creamy avocado, smoky red and medium-spicy green salsas, not to mention pickled, sauteed and fresh veggies (nopales are a nice touch), cilantro and lime.

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A mixed plate of tacos including one with calamari, pork, and short rib, left to right, at Kogi BBQ.

Short rib taco at Kogi BBQ

Palms Short Rib Food Truck $

By Jenn Harris

Despite the many imitators and the unwavering fickleness of diners in a place like Los Angeles, the magic of the Kogi BBQ truck never faded. When it opened in 2008, it was a phenomenon that brought the city together, with fans following the truck’s every movement on Twitter, willing to venture to a new part of town for the promise of Korean barbecue-filled corn tortillas and good vibes. I was one of them. I considered myself a part of “Kogi kulture.” I waited in line with friends after drinks at a nearby bar. The short rib taco was the first thing I tried, and it’s still the taco I recommend to anyone who visits the trucks. The edges of the diced short rib are crusty and caramelized in a slightly sweet marinade reminiscent of bulgolgi on the grill. There’s a heap of cabbage slaw dressed in chile, soy and sesame seeds. I crave the sting of the salsa roja, with a punch of heat from both Mexican and Korean chiles. And that cilantro, onion and lime relish comes in with an eye-widening zap of freshness. It tastes like the revelry I chased in my 20s. It tastes like Los Angeles.

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Jackfruit tinga taco at Socalo

Santa Monica Vegan Dine In $$

By Jenn Harris

If they’re as delicious as this one, then jackfruit should be the focal point of more tacos. The strands of the unripe fruit are adept at committing to whatever flavor or marinade you desire, and the texture is practically meaty. It’s the centerpiece of the tinga tacos at Socalo, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s Santa Monica restaurant. Opened after the pair ended a 26-year-run at the Santa Monica Border Grill, the chefs continue to blend the culinary cultures of the various states of Mexico and Los Angeles. They cook the jackfruit with peppers and onions in a sauce redolent with chipotle, cumin and sweet tomato. You won’t mistake it for tinga de pollo, but you might prefer it. It’s a chef-y taco with a handful of supporting components that all happen to be vegan. Ladled over the jackfruit is a mild but bright avocado salsa. It’s garnished with fried rounds of sliced jalapeno for crunch, crumbled fried kale for more crunch and slivers of pickled onion, and served on a good blue corn tortilla.

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Al pastor taco at Tacos Por Vida

Eagle Rock Al Pastor Puesto $

Chef Roy Choi flipped our definition of what constitutes an L.A. taco when he introduced Kogi BBQ in 2008. But his newest taqueria, Tacos Por Vida, is a celebration of the city’s street taco culture with a tight menu featuring meats cooked over a charcoal- and wood-burning grill and recipes honed alongside staff who have been with the chef upward of a decade. Carne asada is usually my go-to, and Tacos Por Vida makes a worthy rendition that blends an array of styles, yet the al pastor is the taco that best demonstrates the celebrity chef’s skill. Korean influence makes its way into a marinade that features more than 30 spices and seasonings, including gochujang, garlic, orange, harissa, sesame oil, achiote, green onion and pineapple. And even though there’s no trompo in sight, the flavors sing through just as bright — the sweetness of the tropical fruit is so apparent that I found myself searching for bits of singed pineapple among crumbles of caramelized pork. The tacos are served on fresh handmade tortillas that are chewy and dense thanks to a corn-flour blend. They come dressed with finishing salts and a generous scoop of cilantro-studded green sauce, with radishes and limes served on the side. After getting its start next door to Roi’s Kogi truck in Palms, Tacos Por Vida has gone mobile, popping up in Eagle Rock, San Pedro and beyond. Stay up to date on the taqueria’s whereabouts on Instagram.

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Birria de res taco at Teddy’s Red Tacos

Venice Beef birria Dine In $

One of the most compelling taquero origin stories in L.A. is that of Teddy Vazquez’s role in helping establish the city’s current obsession with Tijuana-style birria de res. Vazquez, who picked up the style while working in TJ, famously started out by hiding his birria in his car trunk while driving a ride-share, allowing the cinnamon-y scent of the dish to waft toward his passengers. One thing led to another, and by 2018, Teddy’s Red Tacos was born as a truck parked on the phantom train tracks of Slauson Avenue. That truck has remained as Teddy’s expanded into a network of 10 locations. The rapid growth has resulted in inconsistent quality at some of the spots. But in Venice, Teddy’s birria and his consomé-dipped “red” tortillas feel almost re-articulated. Reacquaint yourself here, where locals are proud of their Teddy’s, and lines are long on weekends. A few tacos and an agua fresca on the patio are a perfect cap to a Venice beach day.

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Tito’s taco with cheese at Tito’s Tacos

Culver City Gringo Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

I once spent an entire day observing how Tito’s tacos are made for a behind-the-scenes L.A. Times video. I started before 4 a.m. at the factory in East L.A. that supplies the corn tortillas, then progressed to the kitchen where the taco filling stews for nearly three hours and is mixed with onion, salt, oregano and potatoes in something called the “buffalo chopper.” Did you know that the tacos here are filled and folded using a special machine, then deep fried to order? Frying the folded tortillas around the meat allows for the shell and filling to fuse into one. Each is filled with what looks like an entire block of shredded cheddar cheese and a sizable wedge of shredded iceberg. I’ve eaten at least 100 Tito’s tacos over the years, and I‘ve never ceased to marvel at the paste-like filling or how my lap gets covered in a mixture of fractured taco shell and stray cheese. I associate the enduring allure of this specific taco — hot shell, cool lettuce, an abundance of cheese — with the city itself. It is perennial. As is the line. But if you get there about 30 minutes before closing on a weekday (or if you did before I published this tip), you can be in and out in 20 minutes.

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Carnitas and mixtos tacos at Carnitas el Artista.

Mixto taco at Carnitas El Artista

Inglewood Carnitas Dine In $

Chef-owner Gustavo Chavez first launched in his Hawthorne backyard, and the third-generation carnitas specialist now operates out of a brick-red taqueria in Inglewood, where he offers Michoacán-style carnitas in tacos, burritos and by the pound. The shredded carnitas tacos are solid, but I’m a fan of the mixto that piles different cuts of meat into one hefty taco, so each bite bounces between succulent strands of pork, springy bites of buche, fatty lengua and crisp cuerito. They’re served on white corn tortillas with red onion, cilantro and wedges of lime, and you’ll want to eat these tacos immediately before the slow-cooked meat soaks through the tortilla and turns it fragile. Stop by the salsa bar, namely for the tomatillo salsa verde that’s so thick you’ll struggle to squeeze it out of the bottle. On Fridays and Saturdays, the house specialty — Guadalajara-style carne en su jugo — is a must order.

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The marlin tacos with choice of mango habanero sauce, left front, or habanero at Coni'Seafood in Inglewood.

Tacos de marlin at Coni’Seafood

Inglewood Fish Dine In $$

Conversations around the universally loved Inglewood mariscos restaurant tend to begin with pescado zarandeado, the Nayarit specialty of róbalo (also known as snook) that’s splayed, brushed with a mixture of mayonnaise, spices and sauces, and then grilled in a wire basket to improbable delicacy. It’s an essential dish. But on the subject of tacos, I will bypass the menu’s fried fish and the excellent tacos al gobernador, all snap and crunch, to most recommend the tacos de marlin. Tomatoes and onion balance flaky smoked marlin, already powerful in flavor, in a dense stew that stays put in flour tortillas lined with cheese. On the griddle, the contrasts sharpen: crisper, brighter, meltier. It tastes at once of fire and sea. It’s also fantastically consistent, thanks to the watchful eye of owner Connie Cossio, who took over early last decade from her father, Vicente “Chente” Cossio.

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The Tour of Oaxaca appetizer platter at Madre.

Tacos oaxaqueños at Madre Oaxacan Restaurant & Mezcaleria

Torrance Oaxacan Dine In $$

Of the four Madre restaurants that mezcal scholar Ivan Vasquez operates across the metro area — which also includes locations in Palms, West Hollywood and the newest one in the Valencia neighborhood of Santa Clarita — his original 7,000-square-foot stronghold in Torrance remains my favorite. The menu showcases the cuisine of Oaxaca, Vasquez’s home state: moles, tlayudas, memelas and molotes. A trio of tacos that smartly honors the flavors of the region is an expression of his culture not to be overlooked. Thick, almost nutty corn tortillas receive a smear of black bean paste and strands of quesillo. Chorizo crowns the first, chicharron the second and chile relleno filled with epazote-scented chicken the third. Try a different, individually ordered mix of tacos (fish, barbacoa, nicely chewy tasajo) during happy hour alongside — what else? — shots from one of the bar’s hundreds of bottles of mezcal.

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Fish taco at Tigre’s Fuego

Redondo Beach Fish Dine In $

In my mind, the debates over the status of the Baja California-style fish taco in Los Angeles might come down to simple geography. Fish tacos just taste better, truer, the closer you are to the shore. This unscientific theory springs to mind when tasting the fish taco at Tigre’s Fuego, a casual storefront taquería with a counter and a few stools. Well-known to coastal locals, this spot is a beacon for taco excellence for the beach cities of the South Bay.

Chef Jimmy Tapia, a Culver City native, and the restaurateurs behind Baran’s 2239 offer a short menu of tacos, burritos and ceviches; fans are especially fond of Fuego’s Peruvian-style ceviche and the weekends-only breakfast burrito. I’ve enjoyed the carne asada taco on flour, topped with frijoles de la olla. Then, despite my honor as a border native, I ventured to try the fish taco. It works. Beer-battered cod in a soft corn tortilla is adorned with the standards of pico de gallo and cabbage, crema and a “fuego sauce.” The taco achieves that laidback Rosarito Beach feeling but with that unspecific Alta Californian confidence. I guess it helps that the sands of Redondo are just around the corner.

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Carne al carbón taco and sope from Apache's Carne al Carbón.

Carne al carbon taco at Apache’s Carnes Al Carbon

Huntington Park Carne Asada Dine In $

Flecks of char go airborne every time the chef tosses steak on the charcoal grill at Apache’s Carnes Al Carbon, a Huntington Park hole-in-the-wall with just a couple tables and barstool seating. This is the meat that crowns almost every menu item, with sopes ordered in equal measure to tacos. The dense and chewy discs are worth trying, but the simplicity of the taco, on a small corn tortilla and dressed with chopped white onion and cilantro with a mild red salsa on the side, really lets the deep, smoky flavors shine. The tacos are compact, delicious and addictive and you should order more than you think you’ll want. Get the signature Apache’s agua fresca that mixes jamaica, horchata and strawberry to wash them down.

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Media luna at Bee Taqueria

West Adams Seafood Dine In $

Find chef-owner Alex Carrasco’s vibrant taqueria shrouded in a verdant patio space on a nondescript corner in rapidly changing West Adams, with his taco-focused omakase held just next door. When ordering at the window, it’s tempting to make your own multicourse taco feast. Blue corn tortillas are stuffed with near-caramelized roasted mushrooms, slow-braised pork, tinga-style shredded beets or tender skirt steak, but at least one media luna taco is a must. Shrimp and scallops are encased in a fried yellow corn tortilla with a generous stripe of morita aioli on top and a shrimp consomé served on the side for dipping. The mariscos are bright and citrusy, the shell adds crunch and the aioli lends a muted spiciness to the bite. The warm consomé adds depth, slightly softening each bite with brine and earthiness. It’s unlikely that just one media luna will suffice.

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Customers dig into fresh barbacoa beef tacos at Barbacoa Estilo Hidalgo.

Lamb barbacoa taco at Barbacoa Estilo Hidalgo

South Park Lamb Barbacoa Puesto $

A group of people huddling over a table one Saturday morning led me to make a U-turn and stop at this modest weekends-only puesto in the South-Central core. “Barbacoa,” the signs said, and my first bite confirmed the hypothesis that when you see a crowd of brown people around a taco stand in L.A., stop there. The puesto sets up weekend mornings on a sidewalk before an auto shop, serving a quietly perfect example of lamb barbacoa in the style of the central state of Hidalgo, rich with its own barbacoa traditions. The taquera, Demetria Lopez, is all business, with little small talk or niceties; she doesn’t need their employ. Her barbacoa de borrego is top-notch in terms of juiciness and flavor without any hint of the unpleasant gaminess sometimes associated with this dish. She minces onions and cilantro and composes her own salsas. Her stand distinguishes itself, ultimately, with its tortillas. A hand-pressed pliable tortilla with little pockets of char off the comal and a rich maize flavor is indisputably the base component to any excellent taco. Order a consomé and picture yourself deep in the pueblo, fed and content. Arrive early to ensure a plate before it sells out.

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Chicharrón taco at Chichén Itzá

Historic South-Central Chicharrón Dine In $

Fans of Gilberto Cetina Jr.’s Chichén Itzá — one of the original food stalls inside Mercado La Paloma — know his father’s cochinita pibil, a family recipe for the Yucatecan signature dish of pork marinated with sour oranges and achiote and cooked in banana leaves, served with the regional fillip of pickled red onions. But the taco menu is not to be slept on, celebrating several favorite pork preparations from the Yucatán peninsula. That includes the much-loved pibil, poc chuc, longaniza, chicharrón, tacos árabes on Thursdays and the juiciest lechón on Sundays. It’s hard to choose just one favorite. The longaniza tacos are filled with the sturdy, coarse, smoky sausage, made in-house in the Yucatán style — tinged red from a recado rojo of spices, chiles and achiote; the links are split open lengthwise, quickly charred and served on freshly griddled tortillas that always smell sweetly earthy. But the tacos de chicharrón (all tacos come two per order) with fried pork cracklings, pico de gallo and diced avocado are texturally astounding. The crumbly chicharrones are crunchy like a porcine version of Grape Nuts, exploding with flavor and accompanied by bursts of juicy tomato and chunks of creamy avocado. The chicharrones are excellent sprinkled with Chichén Itzá’s own bottled brand of habanero hot sauce.

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Smoked kanpachi taco at Holbox

Historic South-Central Fish Dine In $

In 2017, Gilberto Cetina opened Holbox, his colorful marisqueria counter angled stylishly near the entrance of the Mercado la Paloma in Historic South-Central. It has grown to become one of our city’s vital dining destinations, an ever-busy showcase for seafood prepared with exceptionally creative skill. Among ceviches, aguachiles and entrees like Gulf of Mexico octopus grilled over mesquite, the menu usually includes half a dozen different tacos. They’re all excellent, constructed on fragrant yellow or blue corn tortillas made by longtime staffer Fatima Juarez; the smoked kanpachi taco is particularly inspired. Cetina and his team smoke the heads and collars of the fish over applewood, while simmering the separated meat with aromatics to create a deliciously mulchy and collagen-rich spread. The mixture gushes from its griddled tortilla, sealed with queso Chihuahua, garnished with salsa cruda and avocado and drizzled with the electric oil of peanut salsa macha. It’s more than you ever imagined in a seafood taco, a conduit equally for culinary pleasure and possibility.

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Cecina taco at Tacos Guadalajara

West Adams Cecina Puesto $

When I first heard that an old-school Mexico City taqueria named El Califa León had won a Michelin star — the first for a taco spot in Mexico — I thought immediately about the taco or two I had eaten there over the years and how its influence has spread to denote a Mexico City sub-style not often seen on the streets of Los Angeles. In Southern California, meats are generally chopped down to small bits to serve. The Califa style, however (or “gaonera” when it includes a layer of cheese), involves a single, extremely thin slice of high-quality bistek, costilla, cecina or chuleta that is slapped onto a hefty handmade tortilla, and that’s it.

I rely on one puesto in Los Angeles near my home that I know makes this taco well. It sits unassumingly in front of an upholstery shop on West Adams Boulevard. Tacos Guadalajara, named after Mexico’s major western city, is manned by a taquero from Oaxaca and makes a perfect local version of the Mexico City Califa style. There’s no sign. It pops up Tuesdays through Sundays on the sidewalk, enduring despite the hyper-aggressive campaign by developers to gentrify the boulevard by practically any means necessary. I go for the cecina. The slices of cured beef are thin enough to be almost transparent. The meat meets the grill for about 20 seconds on each side, and that’s about all it needs before settling into a tortilla. I add a small spoonful of the puesto’s frijoles de la olla and grilled onions, and a tiny dab of its blazing orange habanero salsa. Simple. I take a bite and am transported to the streets of beloved “D.F.” on a late night. Or, in other words, taco nirvana.

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Al Pastor tacos from Tacos Los Güichos.

Al pastor taco at Tacos Los Güichos

Florence Al Pastor Food Truck $

In a city where corner street vendors carving pork from fire-kissed trompos help define our urban landscape, the al pastor tacos at Los Güichos are a vital and arguably underrated part of the conversation. Mariano Zenteno has been operating since 1992, currently serving from a trailer in the parking lot of an auto shop on West Slauson Avenue. His pastoreros wield their saber-like knives with mesmerizing skill, shaving slivers of meat along the spice-stained stack’s contours with a butcher’s practiced precision. Notably, Zenteno skips the pineapple in his al pastor recipe, which leans on lime juice for its brightness. The tacos are small and go down fast; I can easily scarf three or four, though that means forgoing room for other near-equal options, including the crackly edged suadero and the juicy, compelling pollo splashed with salsa verde.

Two important notes: Los Güichos serves tacos all day but only sets up the trompo for al pastor after 5 p.m. Also, the taqueria has lent its name to an outpost in the wonderful new Mercado González in Costa Mesa. The tacos are solid — and include pineapple in the seasonings — but they don’t achieve the greatness of the original location.

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Barbacoa quesataco and tacos with cabeza and cachete at Tamales Elena Y Antojitos.

Quesataco rojo at Tamales Elena Y Antojitos

Watts Barbacoa Food Truck $

As the name suggests, many head to this family-run food truck for husk-wrapped tamales packed with red pork, spicy green chicken, cheese and jalapeño, with sweet options such as pineapple and strawberry on the weekends. But don’t miss out on tacos, prepared with the same level of care and expertise. After opening the city’s only restaurant dedicated to Afro Mexican culinary traditions that trace back to La Costa Chica in Guerrero state, chef-owner Maria Elena Lorenzo has since downsized to a truck that parks in Watts. The quesatacos feature fried and folded corn tortillas stuffed with shredded beef barbacoa that drips consomé, gooey cheese, chopped cilantro and raw white onion — squeeze a wedge of lime on top for a bite that bounces among crunchy, fatty, rich and acidic. The street tacos are similarly addictive, with the usual carne asada and pollo offered alongside cuts of delicate cachete and nubbly cabeza. Tied baggies of salsa are provided alongside chile, limes and rounds of cucumber, but make sure you add a cup of thick, rust-hued consomé that bobs with bright cilantro leaves and diced onions for dipping before every bite. And if you’re stopping by during the summer when pescadillas — deep-fried fish tacos — are on the menu, add a couple to your order.

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Carne asada taco at Tire Shop Taqueria

Historic South-Central Carne Asada Puesto $

Angelenos can eat tacos in a thousand different settings, but one nightscape conveys a specific romance: the large tent sheltering grills and bodies in constant motion, blue smoke swirling around bare light bulbs, a horde of people who picked up the scents of mesquite and beef even before they turned the corner and joined the jagged, swiftly moving line. That’s the promise of Tire Shop Taqueria, the Historic South-Central taco stand that originally set up across the street next to the now-closed El Jarocho tire shop. The nickname stuck, though the banner that lists the options for tacos, mulitas, vampiros and other variations says, “Taqueria San Miguel.” Stay alert when it’s your time to order. The crew works to maintain its rapid tempo. Tortillas hit the griddle to order, and the taquero flicks on the dressings for the Tijuana-style tacos in nanoseconds, finishing with a generous blotch of guacamole. Chorizo, pollo, cabeza and al pastor all hit their essential marks, but it’s the feathery-crisp carne asada that best embodies the scene’s smoky allure.

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Short rib taco from Amor Y Tacos

Cerritos Short Rib Dine In $

By Jenn Harris

It is nearly impossible to glorify just a single taco at Thomas Ortega’s Cerritos restaurant. If it is served on one of his warm, thick but pliable corn tortillas, it is an excellent taco. You could pile a heap of chopped rubber shoes onto the fresh tortillas and I’d happily chew away. A woman hand-presses the tortillas at a small table near the door. Her motions never stop as orders roll in throughout the day and into the evening. The tour de taco comes with any five tacos from the nine available on the menu, so I suggest inviting chaos to the table. Have your fried Brussels sprouts taco with carnitas, some rajas con queso and maybe a taco filled with carne asada and salsa de arbol. But for the purposes of this highly specific list, I will tell you that when pressed, I’m most fond of the short rib. You can shred the squares of meat with your fork, while the edges are perfectly caramelized. The taco is dressed with habanero crema, sweet grilled onions, pickled radish, a tangle of fresh arugula salad and a sprinkle of cotija cheese. It’s a fully composed dinner, hyper-focused and reconstructed as a stellar taco.

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Picadillo taco at Arturo’s Puffy Taco

Whittier Tex-Mex Dine In $

It can take a minute to even make out the taco, buried as it is under lettuce, chopped tomato and cheddar cheese that looks like it was shredded on a hand grater manufactured in the mid-20th century. Dig the tortilla out from the deluge and marvel at its construction: a thin shell of masa, in the shape of a balloon imploding on itself, remarkably crisp, airy yet sturdy. It shatters and then melts on the tongue. The Lopezes of San Antonio, writes José R. Ralat in his book, “American Tacos: A History and Guide,” claim the credit for the puffy taco, as a happy accident at the fryer annotated by family matriarch Maria Rodriguez Lopez. Her grandson, Arturo Lopez, moved from Texas to Southern California with his wife, Gloria, and opened the first Arturo’s Puffy Taco in 1977, right over the Orange County line in La Habra. A subsequent Whittier location remains the sole outpost, still operated by Gloria and her children. (Arturo died in 2015.) At once a Tex-Mex vestige and a Los Angeles institution, the puffy taco straddles cultures and generations. Options for fillings include carne asada, carne guisada (beef in gravy), chicken and carnitas, but nubbly, gently seasoned picadillo tastes exactly right in this creation. No need to cross-sample the menu’s other tacos on flat corn or flour tortillas: The glory here is all in the puff.

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Gobernador tacos at Balam Mexican Kitchen.

Gobernador taco at Balam Mexican Kitchen

Lynwood Shrimp Dine In $

The only things more plentiful at Balam than the unique tacos on the menu are the inventive T-shirt designs that line the walls featuring the taqueria’s jaguar mascot. Owner Rosendo “Chendo” Jacquez worked in fashion before he opened the taco spot with the Mayan word for jaguar as its name, and he uses the same creative spirit for tacos as he does for his designs. At Balam, a hibiscus-infused slice of jicama could be a tortilla, and Korean-spiced asada goes inside a breakfast burrito. Of all the tacos, gobernador is the standout. The taco usually associated with Sinaloa combines shrimp and cheese for a folded snack that fuses the best parts of a taco and quesadilla. Besides plump bits of shrimp, Balam’s version includes a mix of diced bell pepper, celery, tomato, onion, carrots and mozzarella, crisped up to perfection on the plancha.

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The plato de birria con pistola at Birrieria Barajas.

Birria de chivo taco at Birrieria Barajas

East Compton Goat birria Puesto $

Robert Barajas Jr. wakes up every morning at 2 a.m. to start making birria horneada — “ovened,” he says. “We used to make it in the ground, now we use conventional ovens in order to have that crispy taste.” It is never simmered, adds Barajas. His father started the business several years ago, serving birria de chivo much the way the family has been making it for three generations in Tecalitlán, Jalisco. Birrieria Barajas opened first as a puesto on Compton Boulevard and then launched a truck across the street, parked in front of Eddie’s Liquor every day but Monday, beginning at 6:30 a.m.

“When we started we wouldn’t even sell half a goat,” Barajas says. “By word of mouth and faith we started to get going week by week. There are a lot of people that make birria. But it has to be goat, and it’s supposed to have your special mole, a kind of rub, your own recipe. Maybe that’s why we have good clientele, because we make the rub, everything, every day.”

The most popular order is the plato birria de chivo con pistola, a bowl of the spicy, fall-off-the-bone goat meat bathed in consomé that comes with a shank and tortillas, onions, cilantro, radishes, chiles and lime wedges for composing your own tacos. Of course there are regular tacos, and there are tacos dorados, folded and fried, with cheese if you want quesabirria. Every order comes with a complimentary small fried bean taco, and the beans are a recipe from Barajas’ grandmother, who died earlier this year. “My grandmother told my dad to ‘give customers a nice gesture,’” Barajas says. And once a month Barajas Sr. still prepares montalayo, a fried ball of goat stomach with sausage-like tripe stuffing; order it chopped into a taco.

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Perro taco at Perro Exquisite Taco

Cerritos Carne Asada Dine In $

The namesake taco here is a behemoth: a girth-y flour tortilla filled with mesquite-smoked flap steak, griddled mozzarella cheese, creamy and plump Peruvian beans, purple onion, cilantro, salsa roja, guacamole, lime, radish and a charred jalapeño. Perro’s short for perrón, the taco style made famous in Rosarito Beach by legendary El Yaqui taqueria, which reportedly received its name when a customer asked for “everything” on a taco and deemed it “perrón” (the same taco inspired Taco 1986’s off-menu perrón too). This one doesn’t disappoint, and it’s so big it’s almost shareable — almost — you’re probably going to want your own. Brothers Luis and Pablo Gavan launched the business from a cart near USC and now have multiple locations — in Cudahy, Cerritos and Lawndale — importing their flour tortillas from Tijuana, where their mom makes these hefty versions with a load capacity to bear all the fillings. The menu has expanded too, now with vegetarian, keto and breakfast versions of the Perro.

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El Pariente taco at Tacos Culiacáncito

Bell Carne Asada Dine In $

The sign for Tacos Culiacáncito at Florence Plaza reads, “Tacos 100% estilo Sinaloense,” so you should already be expecting Sinaloan vampiros and chorreadas on crunchy flame-charred tortillas with squiggles of avocado salsa, the latter with a layer of asiento de puerco. The primary meat choice is thinly cut, juicy and crisp-edged carne asada estilo Culiacán. It’s the star of another kind of taco here: El Pariente, which is a thick handmade tortilla filled with asada and melted cheese and the same delicious lard as in the chorreada. But you’ll also want tacos de chilorio, the Sinaloan braised pork that’s cooked with chiles and then fried in lard. The chilorio is served on palm-size tortillas that you can eat in two or three bites. (Also not to be missed are the papas, loaded potatoes topped with crema, scallions, crumbly bacon and more. The papa exclusiva is served without its skin and in large hunks on top of a layer of asada. Ask for extra of the charred tortillas that are used for vampiros and top those with the potato-asada mixture.)

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The mixto vampiro plate at Tacos La Carreta.

Chorreada mixto at Tacos La Carreta

Santa Fe Springs Chorreada Dine In $

In late summer 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal began operating a food truck on the northern fringes of Long Beach, serving a style of tacos his father had learned to craft in a town called El Verde not far from coastal Mazatlán in Mexico’s Sinaloa state. The success his son quickly fostered led to the opening of a taqueria in a Whittier strip mall at the beginning of the year, with a nearly identical menu. The defining Sinaloan specialty is a chorreada, which begins by crisping a corn tortilla on the comal and sprinkling on white cheese and, crucially, asiento, a rendered paste made from the remnants of frying chicharrónes and sometimes carnitas. Its taste overlaps the nutty, caramelized purity of homemade ghee with the unmistakable richness of pork. Morales makes three meats: carne asada, adobada and tripa. I like a mix of either the asada or adobada with tripe for its crisscross of smoke, seasoning and funk. The taquero adds layers of finely minced cabbage, chopped onion and a ladle of warm, thin tomato-based salsa. At the condiment bar, I pile on a chunkier fresh salsa and a more-than-healthy splotch of silky guacamole. For taco lovers it’s a familiar joy of crunch, chew, meatiness and heat. The asiento, though, adds enough intrigue to keep the cortex on high, happy alert.

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Costilla taco at Tacos La Güera

Florence Beef costilla Puesto $

This is where I want to spend a perfect, breezy L.A. afternoon, eating tacos de guisado and drinking Sidral Mundet. Here there is no trompo of spinning al pastor, no choricera bubbling with carnitas. The gentle star of the show is a wooden press for white corn tortillas. Deep steel pans with lids hold guisados, and there’s a pot of refried beans for smearing on the teleras for tortas. Underneath the plastic tarp that stretches over the sidewalk between the Tacos La Güera truck and an iron fence on 59th Place, I sit on a plastic stool at a folding table decorated with stacks of melamine plates, bright yellow squeeze bottles of French’s mustard (for hot dogs), salt shakers, napkins, satin roses, a large molcajete. On a small TV screen attached to a corner of the truck, Colombian bullfighter Rocio Morelli gives an interview, answering questions about her brilliantly embroidered traje de luces, “suit of lights.”

The sounds lull me into a Sunday reverie: the slapping of fresh masa and the squeak of the tortilla press, then the cacophony of a metal spatula hitting the steel flattop to break up small piles of asada and cochinita as they sizzle. The tacos de costilla are made with thinly sliced short rib meat, seasoned with chile and spices and then sautéed on the griddle, just until juicy, and served in warm, freshly cooked tortillas. They need nothing more than onions, cilantro and a squeeze of lime.

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Taquitos de papa at El Barrio Cantina

Long Beach Potato Dine In $$

For an easy afternoon of fun drinks and good food in Long Beach, my local friends lately have been gravitating to El Barrio Cantina, an approachable spot for solid cocktails and a showcase for the casual Alta Califas-style cooking of chef Ulises Pineda-Alfaro. The cantina offers a full mariscos sheet and a spate of traditional dishes from fajitas to a torta ahogada. But the chef’s signature dish is also El Barrio’s most popular bite: the taquitos de papa. Four snappy fried potato taquitos arrive topped with a bright green tomatillo and avocado sauce, crema and queso fresco with cilantro already mixed in. The tacos are crunchy, filling, spicy and cool all at once. Just like an abuelita would make, you might think. The recipe is actually from the chef’s mother, Guadalupe Alfaro, who was from San Luis Potosí and passed away just months before Barrio opened. “It’s her little grain of salt in Barrio Cantina,” the chef says, “because she was never able to witness it.” These papa taquitos are thus a lovely homage we are lucky to share in.

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Nayarit-style sucking pig with mustard salsa.

Suckling pig taco at Los Sabrosos Al Horno

Wilmington Suckling pig Puesto $

The sight of a whole roasted pig drew me immediately to David Delfín’s stand at the Taco Madness event hosted by L.A. Taco last year. His Nayarit-style taco is like nothing else I know in Southern California: He chops a combination of yielding meat and crackling skin and piles it on two small corn tortillas with sliced cabbage and a duo of thin salsas both twanging with mustard. Its flavor at first pounces like a squiggle of Bertman Original on a ballpark hot dog before mellowing on the palate and melding with the pork. My Southern roots compel me to mention the chance similarity between Delfín’s masterpiece and South Carolina whole-hog barbecue, also traditionally served with mustard-based sauce. Los Sabrosos Al Horno can be elusive to find: It’s most often a weekend pop-up that appears either in Cudahy or Wilmington. Follow its Instagram account, and also check its Facebook page, for information about locations and availability. These tacos are more than worthy of the hunt.

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Al pastor taco at Tacos Lionydas

Long Beach Al Pastor Puesto $

Since popping up for the first time in early summer 2022 near Long Beach’s Los Alamitos traffic circle, Lionydas became an instant locals favorite for sizzling al pastor that seemed to raise the bar for this taco category in the Harbor area. Lionydas, initially named Tacos Lionel, is powered by Mixe taqueros. These Oaxacan cooks have carved out a formidable reputation in taquero circles for their masterful skills at the trompo. At Lionydas, that oaxaqueño touch emphasizing spice and sweetness in the pastor adobo plays gloriously against other options like cabeza and mesquite-grilled asada. Focus on the al pastor, yes, but if pressed, my personal go-to here would be the chorizo taco. Fragrant, crumbly almost like cake, the chorizo is Mixe-style to the max.

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Surtido taco at Alebrijes Grill Taco Truck

Santa Ana Surtido Food Truck $

The Alebrijes Grill taco truck is best known for its taco acorazado, or “battleship” taco, a specialty from Cuernavaca. Its pink truck has been parking in front of Northgate Market, in the 100 block of West Cubbon Street in Santa Ana, since the early 2000s. It’s a hard-won right owner Albert Hernandez fought for against the city in 2006. Then, in 2020, he braved the COVID-19 pandemic. The Alebrijes truck is, in a word, unsinkable. I am glad its Mexico City-style offerings like tortas de milanesa and alambres are still being served out of the small service window and enjoyed by patrons on milk crates and the hoods of parked cars. Feeling indecisive? The best taco is the surtido; a mix of buche, carnitas and cueritos brings the best of all textures into one perfect bite. The cueritos, pickled pork rinds, provide the right amount of vinegar to cut the soft carnitas and decadently fatty buche. All tacos are topped with chopped cilantro, white onion and a healthy serving of sautéed onion and nopal.

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Carne asada queso taco at Bandito Taqueria

Santa Ana Carne Asada Dine In $

Born and bred in Santa Ana, Jorge Cantoran and Jesus Aceves grew up together and went off to school in the Bay Area before returning to their hometown, where they opened a taco catering business. They were forced to pivot during the pandemic and began dishing up tacos from a stand that popped up around town. About a year ago, the pair opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant in downtown Santa Ana. The carne asada taco is solid. Where lesser stands serve meat with the texture of shredded tires, Bandito serves its carne asada juicy and tender — a flavorful foundation for the accompanying cilantro, onions, spicy salsa and guacamole slathered atop the Tijuana-style tacos. The tortillas are fresh and actually carry the flavor of corn. Don’t let the pink hue turn you off. Freshly squeezed beet juice is incorporated into the fresh masa “just for fun,” Cantoran said. It’s also an homage to his grandmother, who liked to lace her masa with other ingredients, such as chiles — an old-fashioned Mexican tradition. But as much as I like Bandito’s carne asada taco, I’m partial to the carne asada quesotaco. While you’re there, also try the chicken and the al pastor, adorned with a ripe slab of pineapple.

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Carnitas taco at Carnitas Uruapan

Santa Ana Carnitas Dine In $

Carnitas Uruapan in Santa Ana is a carniceria that has been specializing in pork carnitas since 1995. Prepared in the traditional Michoacán-style and served by the pound from steam trays behind a pork-fat-slicked window, these carnitas are not for the faint of heart. Most pieces are tender for shredding, but there are also delicious crunchy bits with concentrated flavor like chicharrón mixed into the mounds of meat that also include crispy skin, velvety fat and even some elastic tendon, made soft by hours of slow cooking. The boisterous staff makes burritos, tortas or tacos with your meat order and their size is determined by the amount of meat you request. A pound and a half is enough to make four of the tastiest and most generous carnitas tacos con todo, with curls of white onion, chopped cilantro and lime wedges.

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Baja fish taco at Fonda Moderna

Orange Fish Dine In $

Fonda Moderna has been an outpost for chef Danny Godinez’s casual taqueria inside Mess Hall, a Tustin food court, since 2019. The menu includes street tacos, guisados and vegan options, but it’s the Baja fish taco that keeps me coming back again and again. Hunks of sole are lightly battered and seasoned, resulting in a crispy jacket around the white fish. The fried fish is buried beneath lime-dressed cabbage, creamy chipotle aioli that isn’t overly smokey, mild roasted tomato salsa and minced cilantro; it’s all served in a warm house-made flour tortilla that is soft, toasty and thin enough to not be too filling. If the paleta cart is parked in front, don’t miss out on the strawberry con crema. The pink, red and white marbled pop substitutes a tart Greek yogurt for the traditional heavy cream for a palate-cleansing finish to a sampler platter of tacos.

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Citrus marinated chicken taco at Lola Gaspar

Santa Ana Pollo Dine In $

After a 2019 trip to Mexico City, chef Luis Perez was smitten with the capital’s mezcal and taco culture and felt inspired to revamp Lola Gaspar, his goth-punk bar that opened in Santa Ana in 2008. He homed in on mezcal, tacos, quesadillas and churros. It’s a tight menu and everything is good, but the star here is the tacos, particularly on Tuesdays when the meats are cooked and smoked with mesquite in a deep-pit Santa Maria-style grill in front of the restaurant’s patio. The chicken — my favorite — is marinated for 12 hours in fresh orange, lime and lemon juices along with garlic and chipotle before it’s grilled and served on a thin, nearly transparent flour tortilla. Pickled white onion, radish and chopped cilantro tops it off and, really, that’s all it needs. Perez sources the uncooked flour tortillas from El Metate Mexican Food Products in Santa Ana. Be sure to also try the shrimp taco. Perez sources the shrimp from Baja California and marinates it in paprika, garlic, onion and olive oil. Also served on flour tortillas with the same toppings as the chicken taco. Chase your tacos with the hibiscus pájaro de selva, a cocktail with pineapple and ginger. In May, the restaurant scored a spot on the Michelin Guide’s “new discoveries” list.

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Beef tacos dorados at Sariñana’s Tamale Factory

Santa Ana Shredded Beef Dine In

In a tiny house that shares a parking lot with a liquor store in the Artesia Pilar neighborhood of Santa Ana, you’ll find some of the most satisfying tacos dorados around. Built in 1939 by Juan and Felipa Sariñana, Sariñana’s Tamale Factory is said to be the oldest Mexican food restaurant in Orange County. Today it’s owned by Teresa Nieves, who worked for the family in the ‘70s and married one of the owner’s grandsons. The menu is large and features Mexican classics such as tamales and chicharrónes — both good. But the hard-shell tacos dorados are standouts, prepared on crisp corn shells fried to a beautiful bronze. They come stuffed with tender diced meats, a bit of iceberg lettuce, slices of tomato, shredded cheddar and a healthy dusting of cotija cheese. The taco provides a delightful crunch, and the meat is so tender that its juice tends to run down your hands. The beef filling is made from chuck, which they boil. The cook finely shreds the chuck with a machine, which gives it a particularly airy texture. It’s my favorite, though the chicken taco with hand-shredded chicken breast is nearly as good.

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Filet mignon tacos at Tacos Los Cholos

Anaheim Carne Asada Dine In $

Before they became taco entrepreneurs, Josue Maldonado and Michael Alvarado were childhood friends who grew up in Anaheim and got into some trouble running with the wrong crowd. As adults, however, they operate a business so successful that a line regularly spills out the door of their original brick-and-mortar restaurant near Katella High School. They also run restaurants in Fullerton and Huntington Park and plan to open two more locations in Huntington Beach and Santa Ana.

The duo first started selling tacos in front of their homes before they opened their first Tacos Los Cholos in 2019, named as a nod to their former cholo life, says Josue’s brother, Alvaro Maldonado, who manages the Anaheim spot. The tortillas are made fresh every morning by a vendor in Santa Ana. The salsas are delicious and abundant — with seven varieties at the salsa bar when I last visited. And there are 13 different taco fillings – from panela cheese to tripa and two “prime” picks, ribeye and USDA filet mignon – so it can be hard to choose. If you press me on it, the filet mignon taco is my favorite. Mesquite and olive wood charcoal is used to smoke the filet, leaving the meat succulent and flavorful. The filet takes well to a little bit of onion, cilantro and a dash of red salsa. I like the roja salsa because of its mild smokiness with a bit of sweetness. But don’t overpower this taco with too many condiments. Just a bit will suffice. Tip: Avoid the long lines and visit when the restaurant is slow, generally between 2 to 3:30 p.m. on weekdays.

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Wood-fired steak taco at Taco Mesita

Tustin Carne Asada Dine In $

White breeze block walls surround the little oasis that is Taco Mesita, a former Alberto’s-turned-gourmet taco spot. The orange neon glow of the restaurant’s bandito logo lights your way along the drive-through to a tight menu of tacos, burritos and snacks available for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Taco Mesita opened in 2023, a concept from Taco Mesa and Taco Rosa founder Ivan Calderon, with his son Nico Calderon at the helm. The Calderons have set out to challenge the notion that fast-food tacos can’t be good tacos by offering a chef-driven menu with competitive prices. Partner and designer Max Moriyama is responsible for the retro branding and outdoor seating, while the Calderons handle the kitchen’s wood-fire grill and take-out window. Fresh pressed tortillas made of organic, finely ground masa hold slow-cooked meats like 12-hour pork shoulder and rotisserie chicken, but it’s the wood-fired steak taco that should be part of every order. Webbed slices of mesquite-grilled skirt steak are cradled in a smooth, blue corn tortilla. Rather than the usual intense bite of raw diced white onion and cilantro, onions are cilantro-pickled. A complex and earthy salsa macha seeps orange through the white taco paper. For more heat, add some of Taco Mesita’s whipped jalapeño salsa, an aerated light green condiment that complements anything on the menu from the chile seasoned tortilla chips to the charred elote. The drive-through, open until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, is convenient, but if you have time to grab a seat on the patio, you can enjoy a margarita made with fresh-squeezed lime juice or Modelo or Great White on draft.

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Mushroom tinga taco at Tiendita

Anaheim Mushroom Dine In $