These are the 101 best tacos in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is a city of tacos. They’re how we commune with each other — probably over our favorite al pastor tacos, eating on the sidewalk as traffic whizzes by. Maybe we trek up the hill with them at sunset to find a grassy spot and look at the palm trees and downtown skyline. We drive across town to our favorite birria truck and sit at folding tables under a tent in a parking lot, sharing plates of roasted chivo with warm tortillas.
Get to know Los Angeles through the tacos that bring it to life. From restaurants to trucks to carts and more, here’s 101 of the city’s best.
The L.A. Times Food team canvassed L.A. to eat hundreds of tacos and find the 101 best in our greater metropolitan area — in the tradition of the 101 Best Restaurants that The Times has published every year for a decade. Named after the 101 Freeway, it connects us to our neighborhoods and the way we eat and live.
Use this guide to find the greatest of nearly every kind of taco in the city, reflecting history, regional cooking styles and some adaptations that have become part of L.A. food culture, from street stands to trucks to restaurants, whether it’s asada or al vapor, barbacoa or birria, carnitas or costilla or cachete.
Here are the 101 best tacos in Los Angeles. We’ve listed them geographically, in areas from north to south.
Is your favorite taco on the list? Is it not? Do you have taco questions? Tell us by dropping a line in the comments; at a live Q&A on Thursday at 11 a.m., this is where we’ll be talking all things tacos.
Asada queso taco at Tacos El Llano
Al pastor queso taco at Angel's Tijuana Tacos
Angel’s manages to perfectly crisp the marinated pork almost to the point of singed, the flames licking the side of the eye-catching meat obelisk. The result is layers of spice-rubbed pork oscillating between fattiness and crunchiness, and when paired with cheese, that gooey addition pushes the al pastor toward decadent. The handmade corn tortillas get smashed almost paper-thin on a wooden press, then thrown on the comal until they bubble. Don’t let that thinness deceive you; somehow, these fresh tortillas always manage to withstand the onslaught of meat, salsa and as many grilled onions as you can heap on with tongs. Look for Angel’s across L.A. and the Inland Empire, including in Tujunga, Long Beach, Echo Park, Van Nuys, Eagle Rock, Chino and Woodland Hills.
Lamb barbacoa taco at Barbacoa Ramirez
"Carne" guisada taco at El Cocinero
Vargas makes “carne asada” and “al pastor” with soy-based meat alternatives that are pretty much ringers for the pork and beef versions fresh from the grill or trompo (complete with bits of juicy pineapple). A lot of regulars are also fans of his fried chicharrón soy curls and the crispy “quesabirria” tacos made with jackfruit and served with vegetarian consomé. A recent addition to the El Cocinero menu is carne guisada: smoky sautéed soy-based meat that combines satisfying and savory beefy-ness with sweet, charred-edge onions and peppers.
Cabeza vampiro at Tacos El Vampiro
Carne asada taco at Taqueria Mi Ranchito
Lengua taco at Arturo’s Taco Truck
Migajas taco at Carnitas El Momo
Birria queso taco at Saucy Chick Goat Mafia
Suadero taco at King Taco
Fried fish taco at Playa Del Carmen
“Seafood is easy to cook,” he says, “I just have to know the timing. But it’s a lot of work, it’s 24/7. I buy seafood every day, it has to be fresh. Plus I don’t have a lot of storage space anyway.” He tells me he seasons his tempura batter with paprika and cumin among other spices and the fish fillets are battered and fried to order. “The temperature has to be right to make it really good,” he says. “If it’s too high the fish won’t cook, too low and it’s not going to be crispy.” His fish comes out of the fryer hot and crispy and light and airy — simultaneously puffy and crackly-crunchy — piled with shredded cabbage and topped with crema and pico de gallo that’s extra lime-y.
World-famous shrimp taco at Taco Nazo
Pork costilla taco at Avenue 26 Tacos
Potato taco at El Atacor No. 1
Of course, if you are a longtime Los Angeles taco aficionado you know that there was another El Atacor down the street — El Atacor No. 11 — that was even more famous for its potato tacos (not to mention its so-called porno burrito). I used to eat there with the late Jonathan Gold, whose description of No. 11’s potato taco helped him win his 2007 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. But in 2016, El Atacor No. 11 suddenly shut its doors. No one we talked with at El Atacor No. 1 has anything to say about El Atacor No. 11, and though there are other taquerias around Southern California with the El Atacor name, most seem to be independently operated — and not all of them serve potato tacos. Until the mystery is solved, we will stick with the potato tacos at No. 1, which in our most recent tastings around town for potato tacos emerged as our favorite.
Don’t Mess With Texas taco at HomeState
Fish taco at Mariscos El Faro
Pierna de pollo queso taco at Villa's Tacos
Shredded beef and refried beans taco at Asadero Chikali
Lamb barbacoa at Barba Kush
Taco plato at Birria El Jaliciense
Poseidon taco at Evil Cooks
Maciza carnitas taco at Los Chingones
Lamb barbacoa flauta at Los Dorados L.A.
Lamb barbacoa taco at Los Garduños Barbacoa
Brisket taco at Macheen
Marlin taco at Mariscos El Camaron Pelado
Tacos dorados de camarón at Mariscos Jalisco
Poseido at Mariscos 4 Vientos
Chicken neck taco at Tacos Santa Rita Jalisco
At Tacos Santa Rita Jalisco, longtime specialists in pescuezos de pollo, some regulars unabashedly chomp through the tortilla draped over the fried chicken necks, maneuvering around the bones and nonchalantly pulling any stray bits from their mouths. Others are almost surgical in their approach. Using their hands to carefully pluck the meat from the six necks that come in every order, they arrange everything in neat piles and then assemble tidy tacos with a pleasing ratio of tender chicken meat and crisp skin plus a dollop of the stand’s warm red or green salsa, spooned still steaming from Santa Rita’s salsa station on the freshly scrubbed covered patio where a goofy larger-than-life plaster rabbit watches over the terrazzo tables beside the permanently parked taco truck.
Most of us fall somewhere between the carefree and the deliberate, using snatches of tortilla to pull the chicken off the bone and adding a splash of salsa. But no matter which style you use, the first thing to do after you get your order of pescuezos is lift the tortilla and find the neck with the biggest puff of chicken skin. Pull it off the bone and pop it in your mouth. It’s one of the best bites of food you’ll ever eat in this city.
I first tried pescuezos de pollo in 2014 with Jonathan Gold when he featured Santa Rita as a Taco Tuesday pick in this paper: “The skin is pushed up the neck before frying, which gives the effect of a tanned, meaty cylinder surmounted by an Elizabethan collar of pure crunch.” Ten years later, the crunch hasn’t diminished.
Carnitas taco at Sergio’s Tacos
Cachete taco at Tacos Al Vapor El Canelo
Tacos árabes especiales at Los Originales Tacos Árabes De Puebla
Staffers at the Boyle Heights truck owned by Merced Villegas and her husband, Alfredo, will happily recount a version of this history, while urging you to try tacos árabes especiales: cumin-scented pork carved from the trompo, enfolded in the hybrid tortilla, squiggled with chipotle salsa and dressed with sliced avocado and lacy strings of quesillo. It tastes, in the best sense, pretty much as you might imagine: a dish of two cultures merged by circumstance and acumen.
Fried fish taco at Tacos Baja
Papa con chorizo at Tacos De Canasta El Abuelo
Adobada at Tacos Don Cuco
Lengua taco at Tacos El Toro
Through a haze of steam, you can see tortillas on top of the mounds of meat, like patches of snow on a hillside. Padilla grabs the warm, vapor-infused tortillas — pale but with charred edges and slightly thicker than most, sourced from Tijuana — and fills them quickly. He throws the tacos onto a plate in a circular pattern, sprinkling them with onions and cilantro as he goes, and dousing them with salsa verde, with the final taco always placed on top in the center.
An al vapor maestro, Padilla says his uncles in Jalisco taught him to cook the specialty cuts of tongue, cachete, labio and cabeza, all from the head of the cow, all boiled with aromatics and steamed (except for the asada, which is grilled first) to ultimate tenderness. Each cut of meat is a study in different mixtures of fattiness and texture — cabeza chopped so fine it’s almost a chunky paste, cachete nearly shredded and labio with pockets of gelatinous gobs. Eat them from a bench on the sidewalk, and watch Padilla at work in a steam cloud dream.
Taco campechano at Taquearte California
Early customers will remember the overlapping two-tortilla construction of the open-faced Taquearte taco. It’s since evolved into a single plate-size homemade tortilla as its base, put to its best use in the taco campechano, which here means crumbles of crisped chorizo added to the meat you’ve chosen – bistec, costilla, pechuga or chuleta grilled and then seared on the plancha. I like the all-pork chuleta and chorizo. Then come grilled onions and, surprising to many who have not seen this Mexico City taco style, a layer of fluffy mashed potatoes ready to absorb your choice of Taquearte’s killer salsas (don’t miss the salsa macha).
Owners Anyelo Farfán and Monica Quinto will let you get even more elaborate with cheese, avocado and, yes, bacon. But then you might need a fork.
Chicken shawarma taco at X’tiosu Kitchen
Puffy taco at Bar Amá
Costilla taco at Carnitas Los Gabrieles
Idol potato taco with chorizo beans at Chuy’s Tacos Dorados
Beef taquito at Cielito Lindo
Lobster taco at Del Mar Ostioneria
Fish flauta at Ditroit
Goat birria tacos at El Parian Restaurant
The restaurant opened in 1968, and its signature dish is still Jalisco-style goat birria, available by the pound. It comes bobbing in a bowl of ruddy consomé with handmade tortillas, chopped white onion and cilantro sprigs on the side. The goat is earthy, only slightly gamey and so tender that it practically dissolves in your mouth. The tortillas are thick and chewy enough to stand up to a generous serving of the birria. The consomé packs enough flavor to drink on its own. I preferred topping my tacos with the chunky red salsa served with complimentary tortilla chips over the bottled option that arrived with my plate.
Chile colorado taco at El Ruso
Beef and pickle taco at Escuela Taqueria
Sweet potato taco at Guerrilla Tacos
Several of the OG tacos that earned Guerrilla Tacos a Bib Gourmand nod from the Michelin Guide in 2019 are still on the menu. The hard-shelled Pocho with ground chuck is a tribute to the “gringo”-style tacos that Avila ate as a kid, but the best option on the permanent taco menu is the sweet potato that veers into Peruvian and Mediterranean flavors with rounds of buttery, skin-on sweet potato, crispy corn, slightly sour feta cheese, chopped scallions and a thick, nutty almond-cashew chile sauce. It’s a symphony of textures composed with a Gustavo Dudamel-level of culinary prowess.
If I’m being honest, I love the lomo saltado taco just as much as the sweet potato. It bulks with juicy strips of marinated steak, roasted potatoes, sauteed red onions and tomatoes, aji verde and finely chopped cilantro on a fatty, char-spotted flour tortilla. It’s available only seasonally, so don’t skip one if you see it on the menu.