Watch out, Tomás, Ricardo and Enrique! Japanese taco scientists in Little Tokyo have recently developed a chicken taco with a taste so luxurious it could only be compared to one thing….
Industry analysts expect our hometown taco engineers to counter with a deluxe carne asada featuring factory-installed hydraulics and Virgin of Guadalupe paneling.
La Chicken
228 E. 1st St.
Los Angeles
www.lachicken.com
(7 tacos)
Local culinary superman J. Gold recently checked out Eagle Rock’s Cacao and filed the following report:
Here is the topic for today’s discussion: Why isn’t duck carnitas on every Mexican menu in town? Because if you think about it, the dish is almost inevitable — duck meat simmered in fat until it nearly collapses, perfumed flesh arranged atop crisply fried sopes, a shotgun marriage of traditional and European cooking techniques of the sort that have been going on in Mexico since the conquest. If life were fair, you would be able to get duck carnitas from every respectable taco truck on the Eastside.
Carnitas, of course, is made from pork shoulder boiled slowly in its own lard until it is difficult to discern the medium from the product being cooked, and the magnetic pull of the giant copper kettles traditionally used to prepare the dish sometimes seems sufficient to pull the whole of the Earth toward Michoacan. Duck confit, its equivalent from Southwest France, involves salted duck legs cooked in their own fat for many hours until they, too, achieve concentrated flavor and extreme succulence.
Read the rest at the LA WEEKLY
Photo by Express Monorail
(6 tacos)
Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell (and Der Weinerschnitzel), has died at the age of 86 at his home in Rancho Sante Fe. The Southern Calfornian and former Marine is survived by his wife, three children, and four grand-children.
Many taco purists bemoan the rise of Taco Bell, which is many Americans’ first exposure to tacos or mexican food. The bastardization of the street taco into the crunchy, cheesy, lettuce-y fast-food taco induces revulsion and contempt in street gourmets the world over, and rightly so. However one cannot deny that to date, Glen Bell is the man most responsible for bringing the words “taco” and “burrito” to the farthest corners of the planet, setting the stage for the global taco revolution. As people discover authentic tacos, they realize that the transcendant flavors and aromas of a taco can reveal the lies behind corporate hegemony of all aspects of life. Or something like that.
Bell was a fast-food titan and originator, one of the original crew of Southern Californians who invented fast food. Like the others, he started out slinging hamburgers, but switched to tacos to both differentiate himself and introduce people to his favorite food, tacos. He is the direct or indirect inspiration for SoCal taco-preneurs from Southgate to San Diego. Originally sold for 19 cents out of a window in his taco shack in San Berdoo, the empire grew and grew and grew before it was sold to Pepsi in 1978 for $125m. Today there are more than 5,000 Taco Bells in 14 different countries including China and Dubai.
(3 tacos)
The table was set up in front of Christine’s Super Taco Mexican and Italian food. A lot of Taqueria’s do this nowadays. It’s hard to get people in the doors but once they see the smoke and meats cooking up on the grill outside they get interested.
The al pastor was cut from the spit then finished on the grill where it was mixed with onions then scooped up on to corn tortillas. Tubs of salsas were set on a separate table along with other condiments – onions, cilantro, cucumbers and radishes. For three tacos it was $3 dollars a deal that never ceases to amaze when considering the high quality and the amount of condiments available.
Continue Reading at DailyTaco.org
(4 tacos)
Well the truth is I can never love the regular Jack in the Box tacos. I only have love for the monster taco. And the monster taco is gone. Not the temporarily type of gone. The gone for good gone. And so a long love affair with yours truly and the monster taco has ended. A love affair that began some 25 years ago when I was a young lad whose knowledge of what a taco was reached about as far as the jack in the box monster taco(then called the super taco) would take me. And it took me far. From the picnic blankets at Douglass park in Santa Monica as a young boy to the kitchen table of a beer fueled twenty-something. The monster taco was my homeboy.
(7 tacos)
El Paladar Oaxaqueno
Barry Ave and Santa Monica Blvd
Nightly after 8pm
El Paladar Oaxaqueno is the only taco truck on the Westside that has an al pastor spit so if it’s meat tacos your looking for stick to the pork. If a couple tacos isn’t enough do yourself a favor and order the Tlayuda, a crisp flour tortilla stuffed with your meat of choice, black beans, avocado and salsa. Read the rest of the review at DailyTaco.org.
We reviewed this truck back when it was still a wagon in 2006.
(1 tacos)
The King of Baja Fish Tacos
The Taco Task Force was first and foremost assembled in the spirit of adventure and fun. I talked with several blogger friends that I thought would engender a broad range of experiences. Cathy Danh, Josh Lurie, Javier Cabral, Matthew Kang, and myself would take on the LA taco scene to give another perspective on “tacoing” in Los Angeles.
The very popular taco blogs had already turned on foodies and bloggers alike to the local taco trucks, stands, and taquerias. I had gone to many of these places in recent years to find out that they weren’t very good, nor did many resemble what I’d encountered traveling throughout Mexico. There was a complete lack of criteria, baseline, or understanding of what makes a great taco. It was more or less, ” I like this place, the tacos are good, I give it 3.5 tacos(stars)”, with no explanation why it deserved the score. The result was a comprehensive list of mediocre to bad tacos.
There are solid regional and authentic tacos in LA, and there are also taco places that make tacos unique to Los Angeles, the result of Mexican-American cultures coming together.
The main reason tacos tend to be inferior in the US is the lack of ingredients, inadequate sources of proteins, and most importantly the lack of skilled taqueros. Skilled taqueros don’t immigrate to the US, they are more employable in Mexico where stand owners hire these taco professionals. The taco trucks in LA( there are hardly any trucks in Mexico at all) are run by people who know how to make tacos, but usually they come from another line of work. They lack knife skills, don’t know how to select quality ingredients, don’t know cuts of meat, have only basic salsa making skills, lack creativity, and don’t have specialist skills like proper cooking on a vertical spit.They are also handcuffed by Angelinos’ demands for the $1 taco,making Costco,Smart ‘N Final, and other relatively inexpensive sources the supplier of taco ingredients.
Using the fish tacos at world famous El Fenix in Ensenada as a basline, which we all had the pleasure of trying, we raced across town one Sunday to sample fish tacos at five different locations in Los Angeles: Tacos Baja(East LA), Tacos El Nazo(), Senor Fish(Eagle Rock), Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada(Silver Lake), and newcomer, Ricky’s Fish Tacos(Silver Lake).
(Continued)
(3 tacos)
Tacos Sinaloa is as far as I know the first traditional taco truck in LA to use twitter ( http://twitter.com/tacos_sinaloa ). Hey if you can’t beat em join em. Because of their fixed location (Figueroa and Ave 55) twitter may not be as essential to their business model as it is for the more transient gourmet wagons but it’s still a great way to let the LA taco populace know where you are. And if they decide to move locations it’s a great way to keep fans in the loop.(see my previous post on Echo Park’s Tacos Arabe)
I had heard of Tacos Sinaloa before but when I was told they were on twitter I had to head out to Highland Park and try the tacos. It was worth the drive, the tacos were excellent…
Read the rest on DailyTaco.org
(7 tacos)
Last Tuesday night on Eagle Rock Blvd it was Kogi and Leo’s taco truck pulling in the crowds. Kogi the phenom and Leo the old dog, the favorite taco truck of Oxy students who simply refer to it as “taco truck”. And south of these wagons parked a lonely taco truck with not even a soul in sight, Tacos El Sabrosito. This was my truck. This is where I was going to eat. On this night I was more curious than I was hungry.
But the locals are set in their ways. If they want the more classic LA tacos of meat, chile salsa, onions and cilantro they will go to Rambo’s. If it’s the more savory, sloppy, guacamole on your fingers taco then it’s Leo’s or Sonia’s.
My truck is shiny and clean with no artwork just a small sign “Tacos El Sabrosito” Two squirt bottles of salsa sit next to the ordering window, a small color tv blares a Mexican gameshow, an eager taquero takes my order. I order Al pastor, asada, and lengua . The taquero repeats the order to the older hombre on the grill who looks me over. Yeah I’m a taco reporter from the Westside.
The asada is a classic LA taco- finely cut beef thats greasy and flavorful topped with onions, cilantro and the excellent salsa roja.
Read the rest on DailyTaco.org
(8 tacos)
