LA's best new taco wants to be the next In-N-Out

At the intersection of Sunset and Rampart, on the Silver Lake/Echo Park border, a taco stand is attempting to run an In-N-Out playbook with Sonoran asada.

This is Tacos Royale, and it may be the most ambitious taco in Los Angeles right now — a tight menu, total ingredient obsession, and cult branding, down to the red-and-yellow, lowrider-script on everything. Founder Saúl Pérez García calls it "a fine dining or steakhouse experience in a taco. For $7."

Tacos Royale sets up on Sunset Boulevard near the Silver Lake–Echo Park border, Thursday through Sunday.

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Elvis Martinez

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Courtesy Tacos Royale

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That's the bet: In-N-Out's discipline and cult devotion, but built on USDA Prime over mesquite instead of a 99-cent burger.

It's only been open since mid-June, Thursdays to Sundays, but his ambition is to create a chain that's as big as "10% of In-N-Out" — about 80 locations across America, drive-thrus and all, family-owned and never franchised.

His background 

Pérez is no newcomer to L.A. kitchens. He's a self-taught cook who likes to call himself a "creative entrepreneur." When Pérez is not slinging tacos, he runs his own furniture and interior design business. He's also worked at The Butcher's Daughter in Venice, Ceviche Project, and chef Enrique Olvera's ATLA and then launched the Sinaloa-Chinese mariscos truck La Hija del Marondo at 8th and Grand.

He says the Tacos Royale branding has been carefully crafted. "I'm trying to innovate in a retro brand," Pérez said. "Old-fashioned lettering with a modern Cali style. Traditional, modern Cali taquería."

Even the drinks get the full treatment: house-made coconut horchata, bottled in Tacos Royale's lowrider-script branding.

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Elvis Martinez

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Courtesy Tacos Royale

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He developed the name himself and hired an artist from Mexico City to hand-make the logo, landing somewhere between Southern California lowrider script and the red-and-white, neon-lit taquerías now everywhere in Mexico.

What sets the food apart

Pérez's whole operation runs on two things: "Good meat, good tortilla."

A cook grills carne asada over mesquite charcoal at Tacos Royale, a technique central to the Hermosillo style.

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Elvis Martinez

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Courtesy Tacos Royale

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The tortilla is made privately for Royale by a tortillería in Sylmar, created with his cousin — chef Eloy Aluri from Hermosillo — using an ancestral four-ingredient Sonoran recipe: wheat flour, beef tallow, salt, water. The meat is USDA Prime, cooked low over mesquite charcoal, rested and finished in the pan, never burned.

"If you do a taco with no charcoal, it's not Hermosillo style," he said. Even the salt is sourced: sun-dried Colima sea salt, from Mexico's Pacific coast, which he calls "the purest salt in the world."

USDA Prime steak, grilled over mesquite and finished with Colima sea salt — sourced from Mexico's Pacific coast, which founder Saúl Pérez García calls "the purest salt in the world."

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Elvis Martinez

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Courtesy Tacos Royale

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The OG taco's add-on is the veneno — Sonoran beef cracklings cut from the trim off each Prime chuck roll, slow-fried in beef tallow and finished over charcoal.

"It's beef chicharrón, not pork," Pérez said.

It eats savory first — heavy on salt and smoke — with a faint sweetness from the rendered fat, like beef-flavored peanut brittle seen through the lens of a traditional chicharrón.

Beneath the meat sits a thick layer of "Signature Party Beans" — made with beef tallow, California chile, Peruvian beans, and cheese. Pérez named them for the frijoles de fiesta served at Sonoran celebrations — baptisms, quinceañeras, weddings.

The price question

This isn't cheap: $7.49 a taco, $15.75 a burrito, combos at $24.75. For comparison, an In-N-Out Double-Double runs about $6 — less than a single Royale taco — and a Double-Double combo lands around $11, less than half of Royale's. Pérez makes the case on ingredients: each tortilla costs him about 60 cents, compared to a nickel for a standard one, and his Prime runs roughly three times the price of regular taqueria beef.

"How much are you spending at In-N-Out for a combo?" he said.

He frames Royale as "an affordable luxury taquería" — and points out his customers, the ones returning three and four times a week, aren't looking for the cheapest taco in town. Whether the rest of L.A. agrees is the open question.