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The taco scene in Los Angeles is more electric than ever thanks to a new crop of Instagram-ready street vendor stars and a collection of dedicated and classic taquero operations sprinkled throughout the city. That might include birria stands with thousands of followers and hidden South LA carne asada destinations frequented by those in the know. Los Angeles is rife with amazing vendors doing what they love and serving their communities precisely where they’re at. Here are the 38 essential taco spots to try in greater Los Angeles.

Note: Many points in this map reflect street vendor operations or temporary setups, so check hours and locations on social media before visiting.

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Eater maps are curated by editors and aim to reflect a diversity of neighborhoods, cuisines, and prices. Learn more about our editorial process.

For barbacoyero Gonzalo Ramírez, there’s only one way to make barbacoa, the recipe he learned from his grandfather in Atotonilco El Grande, Hidalgo. Ramírez raises his own lambs, butchers them, roasts large cuts in a cylindrical pit wrapped in maguey spines, and then serves smoky, tender lamb barbacoa tacos across from the DMV in Arleta on Sunday mornings only. Order a mix of barbacoa; herbaceous stewed moronga (blood sausage); pancita (offal stuffed stomach), and Ramírez’s earthy consomé, a stock made from the lamb drippings that taste like the smoldering essence of the pit.

It’s well worth the drive to the semi-rural town of Muscoy for the only Northern Mexican spit-roasted young goat in the state of California, prepared by Francisco Salinas and his wife Vanessa Sánchez. In front of a tire shop each Sunday morning, the couple serves spit-roasted cabrito that’s cooked in the tradition of Torreón, Coahuila, in the Lagunero region of Mexico. There’s also machitos, an intricate macrame of innards twisted around a metal rod and slowly cooked over fire, then chopped into bits for tacos. The spicy consomé, a rich broth dripping with smoky, gamey juices from the goat meat, is a must.

Northern Mexican burritos (a regional style of taco) filled with savory stews were as much an innovation when the Bañuelos family opened Burritos La Palma in Jerez, Zacatecas in 1980 as they were when the first U.S. branch opened in El Monte in 2012. The beef birria burrito drips with simply seasoned meat juices and a light smear of refried beans, whose fragrant flavors permeate the fresh flour tortilla, staining it a reddish-brown. Try the chile verde-topped burritos for something special.

Taquero Juan Carlos Guerra has opened a stylish taquería on a busy corner in Cypress Park distinguished by a mustard yellow marquee. He’s using recipes that he developed with his father, Antonio Esquivel, founder of Tijuanazo, a Tijuana-based chain that opened in East LA in 2024. The stars of the menu are tacos de carne asada, and tacos de adobada made from a 20-spice adobo. There are also birria, chorizo, lengua, and vegetarian options on a variety of vessels that include tacos, mulitas, burritos, and quesadillas.

One of the latest contemporary Mexican seafood trucks to draw a crowd comes from Oaxacan chef Francisco Aguilar’s bright blue lonchera, which offers sharp ceviches, refreshing seafood cocktails, and an impressive lineup of modern Mexican seafood tacos. Start with fish al pastor, marinated then grilled, and placed on a corn tortilla with grilled pineapple, fried and grilled onions, and guacamole. A pair of tacos is not a bad start, but follow them up with a crispy soft shell crab taco dotted with smoky chintexle aioli, a stinging, delicious Oaxacan chile paste. Dip into the colorful array of homemade salsas like a blistering hot habanero-garlic salsa called “no mames” (which roughly translates to “you’re fucking kidding”) to spice up Aguilar’s inventive tacos that evoke the multilayered flavors of Oaxaca.

Steven Orozco Torres’s flautas (deep-fried tacos) are as colorful as his ice cream truck, splashed in a kaleidoscope of purples and blues. With golden crunchy pipettes filled with smoky chicken tinga, potato and chorizo, or potato, the tacos are dressed in thick avocado sauce, cream, and a thin line of red salsa, coated in finely-crumbled cotija cheese. The lamb barbacoa is on a whole other level. Opt for the dark, silky salsa, a secret blend of dried chiles that sticks to the flauta like a truck wrap. Antojitos don’t get better than this.

What does Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta’s taco pop-up and thrash metal have in common? Take a listen to Slayer’s Repentless and it all makes sense. Alex Garcia is a former restaurant chef turned counterculture taquero whose only compromise in life is that he will keep popular menu items around for his loyal fans, even if he doesn’t like them. Alongside partner Huerta, Garcia’s Evil Cooks pop-ups promise unconventional tacos like octopus al pastor in a smoky recaudo negro (charred chiles marinade) that’s sliced from a forebodingly dark trompo. The flan dessert taco on a flour tortilla, called La Bruja (witch), is a tribute to Huerta, while the family’s homemade herbed green chorizo tacos take their customers on a tasty journey between heaven and hell.

The best way to have carnitas at Romulo “Momo” Acosta’s shrine to Mexican confit-style pork cuts is to skip the onions and cilantro, and squeeze in some juices from a pickled jalapeño, chasing each bite of moist pork with some chile — that’s the way it’s done in Salamanca, Guanajuato. For more than half a century, Momo has been making artisanal carnitas, a trade he’s passed onto his children, ensuring the best carnitas in the U.S. are here to stay.

Oaxacan owner, Rolando Martinez, employs the same strategy as Leo’s, using a badass marinade and recruiting veteran al pastor taqueros from Mexico’s street food institutions to make his al pastor. The alambres, a hash of sauteed al pastor, peppers, onions, bacon, and Oaxacan cheese, are a DIY taco party.

Al pastor’s second wave was ushered in by the Oaxacan brothers behind a Mexico City-style food truck strategically placed on Venice and La Brea, within striking distance of a crossover audience. Food blogs were soon filled with tales of mercenary taqueros and massive crimson mounds of sweet marinated pork, symmetrically trimmed off of vertical spits finished with the spectacle of flying chunks of pineapple snagged with Ozzie Smith-like precision onto a tortilla. Leo’s now has a fleet of trucks spreading the gospel of traditional al pastor to all Angelenos.

Has there ever been a time when chef Jonathan Pérez and his sister, Ana, weren’t running to their next pop-up location, hyping a constantly evolving menu of modern Mexican American tacos? Currently, they have a steady gig at Milpa Grille in Boyle Heights, where devoted fans can bite into umami-rich mushroom al pastor tacos, chicken in a sweet white mole, and fried chicken tacos with hibiscus slaw, brought back by popular demand. The most talked about item is a hefty pork belly breakfast burrito, swelled by crispy hash browns, and spicy melted cheese.

Los Angeles doesn’t have many restaurants representing the Yucatán peninsula, but the Burgos family has been delivering the (baked) goods since 1971. Order a taco de relleno negro, where shredded turkey is cooked in a black achiote paste contrasted with pickled red onions and creamy guacamole. Chasing each bite with a whole raw habanero is conventional, but for humanity’s sake, it’s optional.

There’s much to love about Jennifer Feltham and Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez’s warm storefront taquería — its menu of regional Sonoran tacos, the lorenza, caramelo, carne asada tucked into Sonoran wheat flour tortillas, and the chivichanga. The proposition of well-seasoned chicken, melted cheese, roasted Anaheim peppers, and tomatoes wrapped in a flour tortilla, which is then lightly fried, is a simple pleasure worth repeating.

Maria Ramos is a third-generation Oaxacan barbacoa master with deep roots in the Mercado de Tlacolula in Oaxaca. Her barbacoa enchilada, or pit-roasted lamb in a chile-based marinade, is a smoky, spicy taste of pre-Hispanic tacos de barbacoa. In a city full of Oaxacan restaurants, Gish Bac is esteemed for its barbacoa and traditional Oaxacan cooking.

Jalisco is the gold standard when it comes to goat birria, followed by respected traditions in Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, especially Nochistlán de Mejia, Zacatecas, just three miles from the Jalisco state line, where the Moreno family originates. Their Boyle Heights outpost serves an austere rendition of braised goat in stock made from the drippings with only a hot chile de árbol salsa, chopped onions, and cilantro as condiments.

Chef Enrique Olvera’s industrial-hip back patio taquería operates under the direction of chef de cuisine Chuy Cervantes. The destination taquería serves a concise menu of upscale traditional tacos on phenomenal handmade corn tortillas. The star attraction is the in-house nixtamal program that makes corn tortillas for Ditroit and Damian, using corn sourced from Masienda. Grab a margarita or michelada and order as many tacos as you can eat. A thin-cut taco de suadero (beef cut from the belly) comes with a chunky salsa roja and guacachile (a spicy avocado salsa). Tender carnitas are topped with crumbled chicharrón. The vegetarian taco of the day could be a papas al pastor with chunks of pineapple, or beer-battered tempura eggplant covered in fine-shredded cabbage, cream, and salsa verde. Whatever the case, every taco here comes on thin, pliable, delicious corn tortillas that are among the best in town.

In the ebb and flow of carnitas stands along the Mercado Olympic (which occupies parts of the street in a Downtown area known as the Piñata District), one woman has found success over decades. A line of diverse customers comes to the bustling street food hub just for Guadalupe Baez’s pork confit tacos. Baez makes supple, caramel-colored cuts like nana (uterus), trompa (snout), orejas (pig ears), buche (hog maw), and racks of ribs. Baez, whose charm is part of her taquería’s popularity, began her carnitas business during the pandemic, and three booming stands later, she’s planning to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Chilango chef Alex Carrasco opened Bee Taquería in 2019 serving Los Angeles’s only taco omakase with a Michelin Bib Gourmand designation. Tacos can include a savory beet tinga, chicken in a floral mole with bougainvillea blossoms, or grilled A5 wagyu taco topped with a fried quail egg and chapulines. All the tacos at the restaurant are inspired by Carrasco’s childhood in Mexico City.

From the Esquivel family comes a prominent taquería franchise boasting seven locations in Tijuana with its newest location here in East LA. Operated by Aria Esquivel, the taquería offers the same menu using the chain’s proprietary recipes created by founder Antonio Esquivel. Tacos de carne asada come dressed with chopped onions and cilantro, salsa de asada, and an abundance of fluffy guacamole. The exceptional adobada has a unique touch of crema de adobada, cilantro, avocado, and Mexican cream sauce seasoned with chives. The East LA outlet offers a family-friendly, sit-down dining room.

From backyard barbacoa in Boyle Heights to Baldwin Park and even a residency in Santa Monica, veteran barbacoa master Petra Zavaleta offers one of the most unique barbacoa styles in Los Angeles from her hometown of Tepeaca, Puebla. Though the Santa Monica and Baldwin Park locations have ceased operations, Barba Kush is back with an ongoing engagement in Boyle Heights (check Instagram for the location). In addition to tender flavorful lamb, and barbecued lamb skulls with eyes, tongue, and cheeks attached for making tacos along with warming lamb consommé, Barba Kush offers a rich, iron-flavored lamb menudo called mole de panza enchilada.

Originally part of a second wave of Baja California-themed carne asada trucks, the Pérez family has added tacos made with northern Mexican guisados: steak and potatoes, scrambled eggs with ham, or chicharrónes in a red salsa. Get the guisados sampler, grab a stack of handmade flour tortillas made by Melva Pérez, and start eating. Asadero Chikali opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Inglewood just a few blocks from Intuit Dome.

With Poblano roots from Huehuetlan el Grande Puebla and Coatzingo, Puebla — the land where Tijuana taqueros are forged — father-and-son team Don Cuco and Jonathan Rios have crafted one of Los Angeles’s best taco spots. Along with family friend Manuel Mendez, this group excels at making tacos, mulitas, and tostadas topped with tender chunks of well-chopped shoulder-clod steaks. Carved from the trompo outside the canopy is a spiral of tangerine-colored adobada — sweet, lightly marinated pork kissed by the flavors of cinnamon and dried fruit. The tacos come dressed with diced onions, cilantro, mild tomato salsa, and a heaping spoonful of creamy guacamole on a warmed corn tortilla. The family restaurant has three branches and a pair of street stands in East LA and Boyle Heights.

Taquero Yasmany Mendoza’s popular food truck is one of the big winners in Los Angeles’s birria wars, always commanding a long line of taco devotees that show up for goat and beef birria. Mendoza serves the most requested Tijuana-style taco dishes Angelenos crave: tacos, dorados (crispy tortilla), mulitas (taco sandwiched in between two tortillas), quesatacos (tacos with melted-fried cheese), vampiros (taco on a toasted corn tortilla), and quesadillas dripping with birria juices. With birria trucks on practically every corner of LA, it’s the rich, herbal stew with streaks of animal fat at Tacos Y Birria La Unica’s birria that keeps crowds coming back for more.

Could a recipe define a city? At Mariscos Jalisco, the secrets of flavorful shrimp are tucked into a corn tortilla and accentuated by the frenetic blistering of hot fat, a cooler touch of frothy tomato salsa, and a slice of avocado. Los Angeles hides its treasures in plain sight, under the fleeting shade doled out by rows of iconic fan palms, but on East Olympic Boulevard it’s the taco dorado de camarón from San Juan de Los Lagos that is an indelible image.

Tacos Baja is one of the original fish taco stands in Southern California opened in 1998 by co-founders Lourdes Toscano and Martin Vásquez. On the menu is a highly guarded, secret tempura batter recipe for Ensenada-style fish and shrimp tacos. Toscano, now the sole owner, runs three busy locations alongside her daughters on the strength of the taquería’s golden, crispy fish and shrimp tacos, cooled by pico de gallo, crema, and cabbage. Don’t forget to grab the flavorful chiles güeros dressed with lime and chile powder, and for a taste of the restaurant’s Sonoran roots, order the weekends-only caguamanta, served as stingray soup, stingray tacos, and vichis, an umami-rich stock.

Tacos árabes aren’t possible without the special tortillas, called pan árabe, that are made exclusively in Puebla. Most vendors will place the roasted pork — cooked on a vertical spit just like al pastor but with a different marinade — on a corn tortilla, which is called tacos orientales in Puebla. The Villegas family brings in traditional products from Puebla and prepares its tacos with tender pork and a tangy chipotle salsa.

There’s nothing more welcoming on a Sunday morning than the sight of Héctor Ramírez’s modified pizza oven, as he removes baking sheets full of blistered slabs of birria tatemada de chivo, or oven-roasted goat birria. Ramírez’s recipe comes from the northwestern highlands of Jalisco. Tender, charred goat birria comes in tangy consomé, or separately to make your own tacos with corn tortillas. Slurp the meat stock separately, and for a dollar more, get the maciza, the connoisseur's choice — a meaty, juicy boneless cut from the leg.

Mercado La Paloma’s Holbox, one of Los Angeles’s most celebrated contemporary Mexican seafood stands, comes from chef Gilberto Cetina Jr., whose family also runs the next-door Yucatán-cuisine institution Chichen Itza. It’s a real destination for seafood tacos, like delicately smoked kanpachi tacos; grilled Maine scallop tacos with bright, spicy chile x’catic; or grilled octopus in a briny bed of squid ink sofrito.

It would be easy for a customer from one of Los Angeles’s Mexican communities to see wayfaring taquero Walter Soto, a Tijuana native with culichi roots who has worked in Sinaloa, Sonora, and LA, and his wife Julia Silva’s truck as curators of LA taco hits, but there’s more than meets the eye. El Ruso is the most meta taquería in town, with a menu of tacos about LA taco and tortilla trends. Here Mazatlán-style chorreadas, Tijuanense birria de res, Sonora-influenced carne asada with Sinaloan condiments, and Sonoran burritos wrapped in sobaqueras — made by Silva from Baja Californian wheat filled with chile colorado — reflect a menu that could only happen in LA.

The couple behind Los Angeles’s best chilaquiles, Anyelo Farfan and Monica Quinto, are the only game in town when it comes to Mexico City-style tacos a la plancha, or steel flat-top grilled tacos. Set inside a Pico Rivera bakery, Farfan and Quinto grill thin cuts of beef, bone-in pork chops, and campechanos (combos), like a rib and chorizo taco. The meats are expanded over a pair of warm corn tortillas. The key to these formidable tacos are complex salsas such as salsa siete chiles, a blend of seven different chiles, and salsa de pepino, cucumber with dried chiles, that take these tacos to the next level.

Founded in 1992 by primos (cousins) Eduardo Fernandez and Mariano Zenteno, one of LA’s original tire shop taquerías slices off LA’s best tacos al pastor onto warm corn tortillas beneath the flutter and roar of the 110 Harbor Freeway. A pair of seasoned taqueros work their magic, carving delicate rows of white pork outlined by brick-red lines of cooked adobo that accent the lean meat. The tacos are dressed with chopped cilantro, onions, and salsa roja (no pineapple here). Step up to the podium placed in front of a glossy black food trailer and order a plate of Mexico City-style tacos al pastor that has been bearing the standard here in LA for over three decades.

Teddy Vasquez is making good on his dream to put a delicious quesabirria taco into as many hands in Los Angeles as possible. His taco shop in Venice sits by the beach in a prime location and serves up the same delicious birria de res, or simmered beef, tacos with signature bright red consomé as his original Slauson truck.

Roast suckling pig tacos, called puerquito echado in Acaponeta, Nayarit — where taquero David Delfin grew up — are the only thing on the menu at his street cart, located in a dirt lot across from an industrial park in Cudahy. Fill the paper plate with tender, pork pulled from the carcass onto corn tortillas with a piece of golden, crispy skin. The dish is not complete with the traditional salsa de mostaza (mustard salsa), moistening the tacos with sweet, spicy chile guero for a light, tangy finish.

Connie Cossio’s Nayarit-style seafood mecca is known for tacos de marlin, yet the pescado zarandeado tacos have always been the showstopper at its two locations, where grilled snook imported from Mexico are always cooked to perfection. Grab a corn tortilla, tear slippery chunks of fatty, marinated flesh from the whole, butterflied fish, then add the house dressing of purple onions pickled in lime and Worcestershire sauce. The result is a blackened fish taco that melts in your mouth. Paired with an icy michelada, you’re transported to a balmy beach in San Blas, Mexcaltitán, or Playa Novillero.

Carlos Pardo’s backyard beef head taco destination is back in action at a new location after a few years away. Pardo has been slowly building his business back with a handful of picnic benches and a steady stream of to-go orders out of his Compton home. Show up early for well-seasoned, steamed Sinaloan beef head cuts. Here, tongue, head, cheeks, and palate arrive on corn tortillas, dressed with chopped cilantro, diced white onions, and a tangy salsa verde. Ask for beef head cuts in consomé, dressed with the same condiments and served alongside corn tortillas.

Over 40 years ago, taquero Javier Morales began his career at Tacos El Memo in the Juan Carrasco neighborhood of Mazatlán. In 2005, he opened Los Angeles’s first Mazatlán-style carne asada stand in Compton, and today he continues to turn out satisfying tacos, chorreadas, and vampiros filled with mesquite-grilled chuck steak, covered in a flurry of finely cut cabbage and red onion, plus mild tomato and avocado salsa. Go for the spicy torito, a carne asada taco augmented by roasted chile Anaheim and melted cheese in a large flour tortilla, a meal of complex northern Mexican flavors.

In January 2024, Carolina Valenzuela started selling caguamanta (stingray soup) and tacos de caguamanta. The taco de caguamanta is a meal unto itself, heaped with plump shrimp and tender stingray soaked in bichi (soup stock). It’s finished with chopped celery, carrots, cabbage, and thin red onion slices, then sauced with mayonnaise, spicy salsa roja, and even ketchup (a popular topping back home). The recipe comes from her mother, Erica Valenzuela, who has run a successful cart in Ciudad Obregón in southern Sonora for 15 years. In April, Valenzuela moved to a sidewalk stand to the East Rancho Dominguez, an unincorporated area east of Compton (and also called East Compton). Open Thursday to Monday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

Regional carne asada has disseminated in recent years with provincial styles representing Mexicali, Tijuana, Sonora, and now Mazatlán, where mesquite-grilled steaks for chorreadas and vampiros fill the tangy beach resort air with the balm of roasted meats. Now serving out of a taco truck, Jose Morales Jr. grills quality steak, greases a thick tortilla with asiento (unrefined pork lard) and melted cheese, then piles on the meat, creamy avocado salsa, pico de gallo, and slices of cucumber to snack on the side. The truck now has a brick-and-mortar store in Whittier that draws lines daily.

For barbacoyero Gonzalo Ramírez, there’s only one way to make barbacoa, the recipe he learned from his grandfather in Atotonilco El Grande, Hidalgo. Ramírez raises his own lambs, butchers them, roasts large cuts in a cylindrical pit wrapped in maguey spines, and then serves smoky, tender lamb barbacoa tacos across from the DMV in Arleta on Sunday mornings only. Order a mix of barbacoa; herbaceous stewed moronga (blood sausage); pancita (offal stuffed stomach), and Ramírez’s earthy consomé, a stock made from the lamb drippings that taste like the smoldering essence of the pit.

It’s well worth the drive to the semi-rural town of Muscoy for the only Northern Mexican spit-roasted young goat in the state of California, prepared by Francisco Salinas and his wife Vanessa Sánchez. In front of a tire shop each Sunday morning, the couple serves spit-roasted cabrito that’s cooked in the tradition of Torreón, Coahuila, in the Lagunero region of Mexico. There’s also machitos, an intricate macrame of innards twisted around a metal rod and slowly cooked over fire, then chopped into bits for tacos. The spicy consomé, a rich broth dripping with smoky, gamey juices from the goat meat, is a must.

Northern Mexican burritos (a regional style of taco) filled with savory stews were as much an innovation when the Bañuelos family opened Burritos La Palma in Jerez, Zacatecas in 1980 as they were when the first U.S. branch opened in El Monte in 2012. The beef birria burrito drips with simply seasoned meat juices and a light smear of refried beans, whose fragrant flavors permeate the fresh flour tortilla, staining it a reddish-brown. Try the chile verde-topped burritos for something special.

Taquero Juan Carlos Guerra has opened a stylish taquería on a busy corner in Cypress Park distinguished by a mustard yellow marquee. He’s using recipes that he developed with his father, Antonio Esquivel, founder of Tijuanazo, a Tijuana-based chain that opened in East LA in 2024. The stars of the menu are tacos de carne asada, and tacos de adobada made from a 20-spice adobo. There are also birria, chorizo, lengua, and vegetarian options on a variety of vessels that include tacos, mulitas, burritos, and quesadillas.

One of the latest contemporary Mexican seafood trucks to draw a crowd comes from Oaxacan chef Francisco Aguilar’s bright blue lonchera, which offers sharp ceviches, refreshing seafood cocktails, and an impressive lineup of modern Mexican seafood tacos. Start with fish al pastor, marinated then grilled, and placed on a corn tortilla with grilled pineapple, fried and grilled onions, and guacamole. A pair of tacos is not a bad start, but follow them up with a crispy soft shell crab taco dotted with smoky chintexle aioli, a stinging, delicious Oaxacan chile paste. Dip into the colorful array of homemade salsas like a blistering hot habanero-garlic salsa called “no mames” (which roughly translates to “you’re fucking kidding”) to spice up Aguilar’s inventive tacos that evoke the multilayered flavors of Oaxaca.

Steven Orozco Torres’s flautas (deep-fried tacos) are as colorful as his ice cream truck, splashed in a kaleidoscope of purples and blues. With golden crunchy pipettes filled with smoky chicken tinga, potato and chorizo, or potato, the tacos are dressed in thick avocado sauce, cream, and a thin line of red salsa, coated in finely-crumbled cotija cheese. The lamb barbacoa is on a whole other level. Opt for the dark, silky salsa, a secret blend of dried chiles that sticks to the flauta like a truck wrap. Antojitos don’t get better than this.

What does Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta’s taco pop-up and thrash metal have in common? Take a listen to Slayer’s Repentless and it all makes sense. Alex Garcia is a former restaurant chef turned counterculture taquero whose only compromise in life is that he will keep popular menu items around for his loyal fans, even if he doesn’t like them. Alongside partner Huerta, Garcia’s Evil Cooks pop-ups promise unconventional tacos like octopus al pastor in a smoky recaudo negro (charred chiles marinade) that’s sliced from a forebodingly dark trompo. The flan dessert taco on a flour tortilla, called La Bruja (witch), is a tribute to Huerta, while the family’s homemade herbed green chorizo tacos take their customers on a tasty journey between heaven and hell.

The best way to have carnitas at Romulo “Momo” Acosta’s shrine to Mexican confit-style pork cuts is to skip the onions and cilantro, and squeeze in some juices from a pickled jalapeño, chasing each bite of moist pork with some chile — that’s the way it’s done in Salamanca, Guanajuato. For more than half a century, Momo has been making artisanal carnitas, a trade he’s passed onto his children, ensuring the best carnitas in the U.S. are here to stay.

Oaxacan owner, Rolando Martinez, employs the same strategy as Leo’s, using a badass marinade and recruiting veteran al pastor taqueros from Mexico’s street food institutions to make his al pastor. The alambres, a hash of sauteed al pastor, peppers, onions, bacon, and Oaxacan cheese, are a DIY taco party.

Al pastor’s second wave was ushered in by the Oaxacan brothers behind a Mexico City-style food truck strategically placed on Venice and La Brea, within striking distance of a crossover audience. Food blogs were soon filled with tales of mercenary taqueros and massive crimson mounds of sweet marinated pork, symmetrically trimmed off of vertical spits finished with the spectacle of flying chunks of pineapple snagged with Ozzie Smith-like precision onto a tortilla. Leo’s now has a fleet of trucks spreading the gospel of traditional al pastor to all Angelenos.

Has there ever been a time when chef Jonathan Pérez and his sister, Ana, weren’t running to their next pop-up location, hyping a constantly evolving menu of modern Mexican American tacos? Currently, they have a steady gig at Milpa Grille in Boyle Heights, where devoted fans can bite into umami-rich mushroom al pastor tacos, chicken in a sweet white mole, and fried chicken tacos with hibiscus slaw, brought back by popular demand. The most talked about item is a hefty pork belly breakfast burrito, swelled by crispy hash browns, and spicy melted cheese.

Los Angeles doesn’t have many restaurants representing the Yucatán peninsula, but the Burgos family has been delivering the (baked) goods since 1971. Order a taco de relleno negro, where shredded turkey is cooked in a black achiote paste contrasted with pickled red onions and creamy guacamole. Chasing each bite with a whole raw habanero is conventional, but for humanity’s sake, it’s optional.

There’s much to love about Jennifer Feltham and Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez’s warm storefront taquería — its menu of regional Sonoran tacos, the lorenza, caramelo, carne asada tucked into Sonoran wheat flour tortillas, and the chivichanga. The proposition of well-seasoned chicken, melted cheese, roasted Anaheim peppers, and tomatoes wrapped in a flour tortilla, which is then lightly fried, is a simple pleasure worth repeating.

Maria Ramos is a third-generation Oaxacan barbacoa master with deep roots in the Mercado de Tlacolula in Oaxaca. Her barbacoa enchilada, or pit-roasted lamb in a chile-based marinade, is a smoky, spicy taste of pre-Hispanic tacos de barbacoa. In a city full of Oaxacan restaurants, Gish Bac is esteemed for its barbacoa and traditional Oaxacan cooking.

Jalisco is the gold standard when it comes to goat birria, followed by respected traditions in Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, especially Nochistlán de Mejia, Zacatecas, just three miles from the Jalisco state line, where the Moreno family originates. Their Boyle Heights outpost serves an austere rendition of braised goat in stock made from the drippings with only a hot chile de árbol salsa, chopped onions, and cilantro as condiments.

Chef Enrique Olvera’s industrial-hip back patio taquería operates under the direction of chef de cuisine Chuy Cervantes. The destination taquería serves a concise menu of upscale traditional tacos on phenomenal handmade corn tortillas. The star attraction is the in-house nixtamal program that makes corn tortillas for Ditroit and Damian, using corn sourced from Masienda. Grab a margarita or michelada and order as many tacos as you can eat. A thin-cut taco de suadero (beef cut from the belly) comes with a chunky salsa roja and guacachile (a spicy avocado salsa). Tender carnitas are topped with crumbled chicharrón. The vegetarian taco of the day could be a papas al pastor with chunks of pineapple, or beer-battered tempura eggplant covered in fine-shredded cabbage, cream, and salsa verde. Whatever the case, every taco here comes on thin, pliable, delicious corn tortillas that are among the best in town.

In the ebb and flow of carnitas stands along the Mercado Olympic (which occupies parts of the street in a Downtown area known as the Piñata District), one woman has found success over decades. A line of diverse customers comes to the bustling street food hub just for Guadalupe Baez’s pork confit tacos. Baez makes supple, caramel-colored cuts like nana (uterus), trompa (snout), orejas (pig ears), buche (hog maw), and racks of ribs. Baez, whose charm is part of her taquería’s popularity, began her carnitas business during the pandemic, and three booming stands later, she’s planning to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

From backyard barbacoa in Boyle Heights to Baldwin Park and even a residency in Santa Monica, veteran barbacoa master Petra Zavaleta offers one of the most unique barbacoa styles in Los Angeles from her hometown of Tepeaca, Puebla. Though the Santa Monica and Baldwin Park locations have ceased operations, Barba Kush is back with an ongoing engagement in Boyle Heights (check Instagram for the location). In addition to tender flavorful lamb, and barbecued lamb skulls with eyes, tongue, and cheeks attached for making tacos along with warming lamb consommé, Barba Kush offers a rich, iron-flavored lamb menudo called mole de panza enchilada.

Originally part of a second wave of Baja California-themed carne asada trucks, the Pérez family has added tacos made with northern Mexican guisados: steak and potatoes, scrambled eggs with ham, or chicharrónes in a red salsa. Get the guisados sampler, grab a stack of handmade flour tortillas made by Melva Pérez, and start eating. Asadero Chikali opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Inglewood just a few blocks from Intuit Dome.

With Poblano roots from Huehuetlan el Grande Puebla and Coatzingo, Puebla — the land where Tijuana taqueros are forged — father-and-son team Don Cuco and Jonathan Rios have crafted one of Los Angeles’s best taco spots. Along with family friend Manuel Mendez, this group excels at making tacos, mulitas, and tostadas topped with tender chunks of well-chopped shoulder-clod steaks. Carved from the trompo outside the canopy is a spiral of tangerine-colored adobada — sweet, lightly marinated pork kissed by the flavors of cinnamon and dried fruit. The tacos come dressed with diced onions, cilantro, mild tomato salsa, and a heaping spoonful of creamy guacamole on a warmed corn tortilla. The family restaurant has three branches and a pair of street stands in East LA and Boyle Heights.

Taquero Yasmany Mendoza’s popular food truck is one of the big winners in Los Angeles’s birria wars, always commanding a long line of taco devotees that show up for goat and beef birria. Mendoza serves the most requested Tijuana-style taco dishes Angelenos crave: tacos, dorados (crispy tortilla), mulitas (taco sandwiched in between two tortillas), quesatacos (tacos with melted-fried cheese), vampiros (taco on a toasted corn tortilla), and quesadillas dripping with birria juices. With birria trucks on practically every corner of LA, it’s the rich, herbal stew with streaks of animal fat at Tacos Y Birria La Unica’s birria that keeps crowds coming back for more.

Could a recipe define a city? At Mariscos Jalisco, the secrets of flavorful shrimp are tucked into a corn tortilla and accentuated by the frenetic blistering of hot fat, a cooler touch of frothy tomato salsa, and a slice of avocado. Los Angeles hides its treasures in plain sight, under the fleeting shade doled out by rows of iconic fan palms, but on East Olympic Boulevard it’s the taco dorado de camarón from San Juan de Los Lagos that is an indelible image.

Tacos Baja is one of the original fish taco stands in Southern California opened in 1998 by co-founders Lourdes Toscano and Martin Vásquez. On the menu is a highly guarded, secret tempura batter recipe for Ensenada-style fish and shrimp tacos. Toscano, now the sole owner, runs three busy locations alongside her daughters on the strength of the taquería’s golden, crispy fish and shrimp tacos, cooled by pico de gallo, crema, and cabbage. Don’t forget to grab the flavorful chiles güeros dressed with lime and chile powder, and for a taste of the restaurant’s Sonoran roots, order the weekends-only caguamanta, served as stingray soup, stingray tacos, and vichis, an umami-rich stock.

Tacos árabes aren’t possible without the special tortillas, called pan árabe, that are made exclusively in Puebla. Most vendors will place the roasted pork — cooked on a vertical spit just like al pastor but with a different marinade — on a corn tortilla, which is called tacos orientales in Puebla. The Villegas family brings in traditional products from Puebla and prepares its tacos with tender pork and a tangy chipotle salsa.

There’s nothing more welcoming on a Sunday morning than the sight of Héctor Ramírez’s modified pizza oven, as he removes baking sheets full of blistered slabs of birria tatemada de chivo, or oven-roasted goat birria. Ramírez’s recipe comes from the northwestern highlands of Jalisco. Tender, charred goat birria comes in tangy consomé, or separately to make your own tacos with corn tortillas. Slurp the meat stock separately, and for a dollar more, get the maciza, the connoisseur's choice — a meaty, juicy boneless cut from the leg.

Mercado La Paloma’s Holbox, one of Los Angeles’s most celebrated contemporary Mexican seafood stands, comes from chef Gilberto Cetina Jr., whose family also runs the next-door Yucatán-cuisine institution Chichen Itza. It’s a real destination for seafood tacos, like delicately smoked kanpachi tacos; grilled Maine scallop tacos with bright, spicy chile x’catic; or grilled octopus in a briny bed of squid ink sofrito.

It would be easy for a customer from one of Los Angeles’s Mexican communities to see wayfaring taquero Walter Soto, a Tijuana native with culichi roots who has worked in Sinaloa, Sonora, and LA, and his wife Julia Silva’s truck as curators of LA taco hits, but there’s more than meets the eye. El Ruso is the most meta taquería in town, with a menu of tacos about LA taco and tortilla trends. Here Mazatlán-style chorreadas, Tijuanense birria de res, Sonora-influenced carne asada with Sinaloan condiments, and Sonoran burritos wrapped in sobaqueras — made by Silva from Baja Californian wheat filled with chile colorado — reflect a menu that could only happen in LA.

The couple behind Los Angeles’s best chilaquiles, Anyelo Farfan and Monica Quinto, are the only game in town when it comes to Mexico City-style tacos a la plancha, or steel flat-top grilled tacos. Set inside a Pico Rivera bakery, Farfan and Quinto grill thin cuts of beef, bone-in pork chops, and campechanos (combos), like a rib and chorizo taco. The meats are expanded over a pair of warm corn tortillas. The key to these formidable tacos are complex salsas such as salsa siete chiles, a blend of seven different chiles, and salsa de pepino, cucumber with dried chiles, that take these tacos to the next level.

Founded in 1992 by primos (cousins) Eduardo Fernandez and Mariano Zenteno, one of LA’s original tire shop taquerías slices off LA’s best tacos al pastor onto warm corn tortillas beneath the flutter and roar of the 110 Harbor Freeway. A pair of seasoned taqueros work their magic, carving delicate rows of white pork outlined by brick-red lines of cooked adobo that accent the lean meat. The tacos are dressed with chopped cilantro, onions, and salsa roja (no pineapple here). Step up to the podium placed in front of a glossy black food trailer and order a plate of Mexico City-style tacos al pastor that has been bearing the standard here in LA for over three decades.

Teddy Vasquez is making good on his dream to put a delicious quesabirria taco into as many hands in Los Angeles as possible. His taco shop in Venice sits by the beach in a prime location and serves up the same delicious birria de res, or simmered beef, tacos with signature bright red consomé as his original Slauson truck.

Roast suckling pig tacos, called puerquito echado in Acaponeta, Nayarit — where taquero David Delfin grew up — are the only thing on the menu at his street cart, located in a dirt lot across from an industrial park in Cudahy. Fill the paper plate with tender, pork pulled from the carcass onto corn tortillas with a piece of golden, crispy skin. The dish is not complete with the traditional salsa de mostaza (mustard salsa), moistening the tacos with sweet, spicy chile guero for a light, tangy finish.

Connie Cossio’s Nayarit-style seafood mecca is known for tacos de marlin, yet the pescado zarandeado tacos have always been the showstopper at its two locations, where grilled snook imported from Mexico are always cooked to perfection. Grab a corn tortilla, tear slippery chunks of fatty, marinated flesh from the whole, butterflied fish, then add the house dressing of purple onions pickled in lime and Worcestershire sauce. The result is a blackened fish taco that melts in your mouth. Paired with an icy michelada, you’re transported to a balmy beach in San Blas, Mexcaltitán, or Playa Novillero.

Carlos Pardo’s backyard beef head taco destination is back in action at a new location after a few years away. Pardo has been slowly building his business back with a handful of picnic benches and a steady stream of to-go orders out of his Compton home. Show up early for well-seasoned, steamed Sinaloan beef head cuts. Here, tongue, head, cheeks, and palate arrive on corn tortillas, dressed with chopped cilantro, diced white onions, and a tangy salsa verde. Ask for beef head cuts in consomé, dressed with the same condiments and served alongside corn tortillas.

Over 40 years ago, taquero Javier Morales began his career at Tacos El Memo in the Juan Carrasco neighborhood of Mazatlán. In 2005, he opened Los Angeles’s first Mazatlán-style carne asada stand in Compton, and today he continues to turn out satisfying tacos, chorreadas, and vampiros filled with mesquite-grilled chuck steak, covered in a flurry of finely cut cabbage and red onion, plus mild tomato and avocado salsa. Go for the spicy torito, a carne asada taco augmented by roasted chile Anaheim and melted cheese in a large flour tortilla, a meal of complex northern Mexican flavors.

In January 2024, Carolina Valenzuela started selling caguamanta (stingray soup) and tacos de caguamanta. The taco de caguamanta is a meal unto itself, heaped with plump shrimp and tender stingray soaked in bichi (soup stock). It’s finished with chopped celery, carrots, cabbage, and thin red onion slices, then sauced with mayonnaise, spicy salsa roja, and even ketchup (a popular topping back home). The recipe comes from her mother, Erica Valenzuela, who has run a successful cart in Ciudad Obregón in southern Sonora for 15 years. In April, Valenzuela moved to a sidewalk stand to the East Rancho Dominguez, an unincorporated area east of Compton (and also called East Compton). Open Thursday to Monday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

Regional carne asada has disseminated in recent years with provincial styles representing Mexicali, Tijuana, Sonora, and now Mazatlán, where mesquite-grilled steaks for chorreadas and vampiros fill the tangy beach resort air with the balm of roasted meats. Now serving out of a taco truck, Jose Morales Jr. grills quality steak, greases a thick tortilla with asiento (unrefined pork lard) and melted cheese, then piles on the meat, creamy avocado salsa, pico de gallo, and slices of cucumber to snack on the side. The truck now has a brick-and-mortar store in Whittier that draws lines daily.