Taco stands and trucks

The best cheap food in the city is on the sidewalk

Taco stands and trucks operate across Los Angeles: on sidewalks outside markets, in gas station lots, parked on the same corner every night for years. Many open late, and some do not start serving until the restaurants have closed. Judged on consistency alone they are the most reliable food in the region.

What visitors miss is that they are not all cooking the same thing. The styles are regional and they are specific. A stand grilling beef over charcoal is a different proposition from one doing birria, which is different again from an al pastor spit, or from the seafood carts working out of the Sonoran and Sinaloan traditions. Plenty of operations do one item extremely well and nothing else. Deciding you like or dislike tacos here after eating at a single stand is like deciding you like or dislike restaurants.

Geography follows the same pattern. East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, the inland blocks behind the South Bay, the San Fernando Valley and the corridors through Koreatown and Pico-Union each have their own density of stands and their own leanings.

How to choose one without working from a list

Ask someone who lives there. That sounds like a dodge and it is the actual method. The stands that matter turn over, move corners, and are often better known by their intersection than by any name, so a published ranking ages badly within a year. Ask at the house, ask whoever poured your coffee that morning, ask your local manager. You will get a better answer than a list gives you.

Failing that, the ordinary signals hold. A line of people who clearly live nearby is worth more than any sign. So is a stand selling three or four things rather than twenty. So is meat coming off a visible flame or a spit rather than out of a warming tray.

Bring cash. Card readers have spread but they are not universal, and the smallest and best operations tend to be the least equipped. Portions run small by design, which is the point of the format: order two, work out what you like, order again.

Hours are the adjustment most visitors fail to make. A great many stands are evening and late-night businesses that simply do not exist at lunchtime, and weekend hours differ from weekday ones. If someone gives you a corner, ask what time to be standing on it.