Issue 02
Tacos Sabrosos
By Brendan MullenPhotos By Teri Memolo
It’s 7:10 on a breezy Echo Park evening, and Wilson Alvarez is tossing out the first pitch as the Dodgers host the Astros at Chavez Ravine. On the other side of the hill from the stadium, the daylight dances, its final golden beams for this summer day tapping atop sun-bleached adobes spiked with elegant palms that kiss the southern California sky. Cars once again free to park on the street after rush hour begin to dot the perimeter of Alvarado Street just north of Sunset Boulevard, but it’s a specific vehicle I seek. A taco truck outside the Vons grocery store parking lot is my destination, three of the tastiest carne asada tacos my prize. As I park my car in the grocery store lot, a Chevy Blazer pulls up behind Taquizas a Domicilio, the taco truck run by Isilda Rangel and her daughter Veronica Rodriguez. A jovial Hispanic man in a cowboy hat jumps out of the Blazer and runs up behind Veronica, who is taking advantage of the temporary lull by mopping up salsa spills just outside the window of the truck. The buckaroo embraces Veronica from behind for about eight seconds, then darts back to his Blazer and pulls away. When I order my tacos, I ask Veronica if the cowboy was her boyfriend. She blushes modestly, her eyes cast downward, and with a huge smile politely declines to answer. If the way to a man’s heart is indeed through his stomach, I can imagine Veronica and Isilda must have innumerable suitors. This taco truck is one of the most popular I’ve seen around Los Angeles, and although I credit the delicious tacos, velvety guacamole, fresh salsa, and tasty nuggets of carne asada first, it may be nocoincidence that these foxy taco truck mujeres arrive perfectly made up, looking fabulous every evening.
Street eating is a common facet of life in Mexico, and has become a fixture in the Hispanic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Mexican puestos, semi-permanent street stands, not only sell food, but also provide a sense of community and culture, a backdrop for celebrations, affairs, or drunken brawls. The taco trucks in Los Angeles have their own share of culture, provided by the figures that surround them, like the done-up ladies and their cowboys, or the scragglyhaired broke hipster rockers able to afford the low price of a buck per taco. Elderly Hispanic men with deep lines of character etched into their faces linger about, commenting in Spanish how the neighborhood has changed. When the taco trucks come out at night, they have the power to transform parking lots or sidewalks into bustling social scenes. Almost every Angeleno I ask has a favorite taco truck and a reason why it’s the best. Friends meet for tacos, or just to hang out and watch people. A softball team orders after a single mother and her three children, then some college students, and finally two vatos. The community, usually segregated by differing ways of life and separate interests, comes together for the common goal of eating tacos. While tacos have become about as popular as the sandwich in the U.S., their origin is authentically Mexican. The Aztec Empire was at its height around 1520, when Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes led a march on Mexico City and made Montezuma his bitch.
Thus was born New Spain, along with a new kind of food that was a fusion between Spanish and Aztec palates. Much of the Aztec diet, native foods like maize (corn), tomatoes, pumpkins, green beans, and vanilla, was heretofore alien to Europeans. A corn tortilla smeared with bean paste was the most common Aztec staple, and they couldn’t have known intellectually at the time that the combination of corn and beans contains complementary amino acids. Together the corn and beans synthesize to produce a protein the body needs that can’t be produced by corn or beans alone, nor the combination of corn and any other food. Necessary amino acids are abundant in meat and dairy products, but until the Spaniards took over, the region was devoid of animals to eat, with the exception of fish and some wild game.
As Spain colonized the region, the Spaniards introduced pork, beef, lamb, garlic, cheese, milk, wheat, vinegar, wine, and citrus fruits to the cuisine. The taco as we know it was born: cornmeal, meat, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro (the Mexican veggies), sometimes with lettuce, topped with lime or lemon. Cortes is credited with throwing the first ever taco bash, a banquet he hosted for his captains with fresh pigs brought over from Cuba. However, before he arrived, natives of the lake region of the Valley of Mexico had been eating taco-esque tortillas filled with fish. Where fish wasn’t an option, natives in Morelos and Guerrero creatively thought to stuff tortillas with ants and other small insects; in Puebla and Oaxaca, they opted for snails and locusts.
Fortunately, bugs and snails are not presently available at taco trucks—at least, none to order from the menu. The health department visits often and judges strictly. The trucks’ menus usually consist simply of a list of taco fillings, and you will find these fairly universal …
* Carne Asada: steak, usually marinated in a limebased marinade, salted and then grilled well done. It seems to be the most popular order, and it’s definitely my favorite.
* Al Pastor: barbecued pork in a spicy marinade. Pastor comes from pastoral, or country-style, cooking. Often the pork is placed on a vertical rotating spit with a pineapple and an onion on top.
* Carnitas: fatty pork, simmered for a few hours to make it tender and then braised in the oven to make it crispy.
* Pollo: chicken, sometimes grilled, but usually stewed.
* Cabeza: literally, “head,” this meat is the tender flesh of the cow’s cheek.
* Sesos: beef brains.
* Lengua: beef tongue.
* Cueritas: pig skin.
* Tripas: oft-mistakenly translated by gringos as tripe, which comes from the cow’s stomach lining. Tripas is the lower intestine of a cow, usually deep-fried in chunks.
In addition to sounding less-than-appetizing, brains and intestines from all older cows have actually been banned recently in the U.S. They are where the proteins exist that become affected by mad cow disease, a powerful concept. It’s Mother Nature’s revenge for farmers forcing cattle to eat their own kind, and now it has formed an entirely new disease that so far confounds science. Still, I found that brains and intestines are still available at quite a lot of taco trucks, but my fear kept me far away.
In East L.A. at nearly two a.m. on a Friday night, the taco truck on Olympic near Herbert is slammed with drunk, stoned, hungry young adults talking, dancing, making out, and dying for a few greasy tacos. I witness what appears to be a drunken dare: one girl tells her friend she’ll buy her and her boyfriend’s order if she eats a taco de sesos. Although I wouldn’t say she looks at all excited to be eating brains, the girl doesn’t hesitate for a second before accepting the challenge. Starting off giggling, the girl nearly gags as she shoves almost the entire taco in her mouth. I quietly masticate my meat and keep to myself about the mad cow.