L.A. Taco Crawl: Part Dos

My Homeric quest for the perfect taco continued this week, this time leading me into the true belly of the taco truck beast—East L.A. More precisely, an area called Wellington Heights, where the I-5 meets the 710 and angry drivers shout “pendejo!” out the window at you when you’re merely trying to turn left.

But I digress. If Highland Park is esteemed for its abundance of trucks, this neighborhood deserves an Olympic gold medal in the sport of masa-flipping and al pastor-scraping. The sheer frequency of these restaurants on wheels blew my mind. The area also boasts the addition of a new meat category—chorizo!

First up, La Chapis, an establishment that foregoes the question of toppings by placing a veritable salad bar on the truck ledge. Unfortunately, limes, radishes, grilled onions and three enormous tubs of guacamole, salsa roja and salsa verde were necessary to give flavor to their light grey asada, fatty al pastor and greasy chorizo. Moving on.

El Korita is a big purple truck, surrounded by a friendly crowd of Dodgers fans and old men munching burritos in the backs of truck beds during my visit. El Korita is known throughout L.A. for making their tortillas by hand in the truck, a possible justification for how long the wait was here. Their chorizo tasted too much like brown sugar and seemed more like a paste than chunks of sausage, and the hugely oversized carnitas chunks were almost too dry to eat. The deep-brown asada, however, offered reprieve from La Chapis silvery chunks. The flavor was smokey, though, not indicative of the classic asada marinade, and the famed tortillas were nothing memorable.

The famed Taquieria La Que Si Llena was next, talked up by food bloggers city-wide. Since that’s rarely a surefire indicator of good food, I went into it skeptically, but it ended up blowing me away. The al pastor was drippingly juicy—some people might call it greasy, but some people might need to be quiet and focus on the intense flavor burst it packs instead. Here, the carne asada finally tasted how carne asada is supposed to taste, and their only pitfall was a carnitas taco with a few too many fatty chunks.

The streak of delicious continued at Taco Jeesy’s, a professional truck with business cards, where an adolescent chef-in-training took my order very politely. I saw a condiment bar and flashbacks to La Chapis had me worried these might be gross, but thank Jeesy, they were amazing. The texture and flavor of the al pastor was incredible, despite appearing too fatty. The asada also tasted spectacular, not too greasy and not grey at all. This was the best chorizo I’ve found in L.A. so far, perfectly chunky with that special cumin-oregano-sugar combo sitting thickly sweet on my tongue, like a chile dipped in molasses.

My excitement over the chorizo overshadowed the disappointing carnitas at Taco Jeesy’s, but I couldn’t help but wonder why none of these places could get carnitas right. I had one more stop, a truck called Jalisco that was out of everything but asada and carnitas. With one more chance to prove itself, Wellington Heights pulled through here with a carnitas taco that I actually enjoyed eating. It was moist, and certainly the best of the five stops, but alas, still somewhat lacking.

I’ve learned from this journey that no one truck gets it all right—I may be able to find the best chorizo or the best al pastor, but there is really no such thing as the best taco truck in L.A., and good luck finding decent carnitas. For what it’s worth, there’s a little hole in the wall in San Diego called Las Cuatro Milpas, serving up other-wordly carnitas to rival even Mexico’s. If that’s too much of an odyssey for you, though, you can always drown your sorrows in Jeesy’s chorizo.

La Chapis is located on E. Olympic Blvd, a few blocks east of Herbert Ave.
El Korita is located at the corner of E. Olympic Blvd. & Herbert Ave.
Taquieria La Que Si Lllena is located at 3600 E. Cesar Chavez Blvd.
Taco Jeesy’s is located at E. Cesar Chavez Blvd. & S. Carmelita Ave.
Tacos Jalisco is located at 3889 E. Cesar Chavez Blvd.
Las Cuatro Milpas is located at 1875 Logan Ave. in San Diego, CA