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Jonathan Gold on Carne Asada 'Crime'
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It's a taco stand, get it? | Photo by Karen Apricot New Orleans via Flickr
This is why Jonathan Gold won a Pulitzer Prize. He makes taco truck food sound like it should be eaten three times daily (and never anything else) while truly capturing Los Angeles:
The best thing I had to eat last week was a massive carnitas huarache, from the Gorditas Lupita’s truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard near Avenue 34. I ate it while leaning against a warehouse wall in Glassell Park, washed it down with a bottle of Mexican Coke and perfumed with the exhaust of a thousand diesel trucks. The second-best thing may have been a Puebla-style cemita overstuffed with fried beef milanesa, ripe avocado and shreds of the Pueblan string cheese called quesillo — that one I ate sitting on a plastic folding chair right on Indiana Street, where it runs into César Chávez at Five Points in East L.A. The third, who knows? A bean-smeared clayuda devoured while sitting curbside at the La Oaxaqueña truck on Lincoln at Rose in Venice? A tostada of fiercely hot aguachile, chopped marinated shrimp, eaten on a milk crate perched next to a Whittier Boulevard medical clinic? A spicy tongue taco eaten at El Pique, in the parking lot of a Highland Park car wash on York at Avenue 53? The carne asada taco at the El Chato truck on Olympic near La Brea, the tooth-staining red sauce at El Taquito Mexicana in Pasadena, the al pastor at El Taurino on Hoover at 11th near Macarthur Park? They all came from trucks; they all made me feel glad to be alive, glad to be in Los Angeles.
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At the end of Gold's LA Weekly column yesterday, he lists out his favorite taco trucks (and you best take his advice). From Pasadena to Venice, there's something for everyone.
Previousl Carne Asada Coverage
-- Thousands Agree: Carne Asada is, in fact, Not a Crime
-- East LA Taco Trucks are Staying Put
-- There is a Taco Union
-- 'A Cultural Disaster,' the Loss of Taco Truck Culture
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