When Daniel Hernandez, Food Editor for the Los Angeles Times, set out to compile a list of the city's best tacos, he feared there might not be enough material. Those concerns were quickly squashed when his team of eaters took an unofficial tally of the tacos they consumed.
Hernandez says the history of tacos in Los Angeles is a bit amorphous. While most of the country was familiar with combo plates at Mexican restaurants, the taco emerged in the post-World War II prosperity boom. It was Glen Bell, who gave America what they wanted, founding Taco Bell in the early 1960s in Downey, California. In 1974, when Raul Martinez of King Taco revamped an ice cream truck and sold $70 worth of tacos outside a bar, the taco truck was born.
LA Times restaurant critic Bill Addison singles out his favorite tacos in a Top Ten list featuring Sonoratown, Mariscos Jalisco, and Tacos La Carreta, known for their northwest asada-style tacos. For fish tacos, he cites Bee Taqueria, where chef Alex Carrasco makes a crisp shrimp and scallop taco that he calls a media luna. Fernandez and Addison say finding good al pastor sliced fresh off a trompo can be hard but both agree the best is found at Tacos Los Güichos on Slauson.