This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Los Angeles
Olympic Boulevard’s “Taco Row” in Boyle Heights is one of the greatest strips in the world to eat tacos, even by Mexico’s standards. Within a four-block radius lined with drought-stricken trees, dense government housing and the city’s best Latino-owned liquor warehouse, you can easily achieve food euphoria. Every truck and restaurant window has its own regional speciality, and every taco hits those intangible qualities on first bite, over and over and over. The “flavour memory” of these tacos is still fresh, not too far removed from their counterparts in Mexico: the fiery yet tamed heat of a salsa, the tenderness of the meat or freshness of the seafood, and the quality of the tortilla.
Head to Taquería Frontera in LA’s Cypress Park district for tastes of Tijuana . . .
. . . or Komal in Historic South Central for Mexico City
This thrill of the hunt is what keeps me going as the editor-in-chief of L.A. Taco, a hyperlocal taco, food culture and investigative news site. I have spent the better part of the past two decades chasing the best taco and writing about it for a living (I’ve co-authored two cookbooks on food eaten with tortillas, and was the scout and associate producer for Netflix’s Taco Chronicles). Tacos are the most direct way to experience Los Angeles and its vast, sometimes overwhelmingly sprawling communities, like a local. It’s the street food that unifies everybody in this city. Los Angeles is home to 30 per cent of Mexican restaurants in the US, and no matter where you’re from, how much this city changes or how much money you make, the one constant will always be our tacos — and the desire to know where to find the best ones.
