Tinga - Los Angeles, CA

Sometimes a place gets me on a personal level. The style and delivery at Tinga on La Brea in LA fits right into my aesthetic. From the taco and burrito inspired art of Brett Westfall plastered over the walls, including some great murals in the bathrooms, to the southeast Asian meets southwest American inspired cuisine. If I were to tell someone how I want a restaurant to look, this would probably be it.

I ordered the chicken tinga burrito and short rib tacos to split with D. Of course, I threw in a few cold lagers to wash everything down. The shredded chicken swims in a chipotle sauce which reminds me of a peanut curry with black beans, gaucamole, lettuce, chipotle salsa, montery jack, and crema creating a wonderfully rich bite all piled into what appears to be a scratch-made tortilla. Every bite made me wonder why there isn't more Mexican/Indian fusion in the world. Channa samosa chimichangas for days.

 The braised short rib tacos were less than stellar with the beef slightly under-seasoned although fall apart tender, and the fluffy rustic handmade tortilla ripping underneath the weight of all the fixings. I may not have minded so much if the taco tortilla added flavor or texture, but it was spongy in the wrong ways and overall bland. Kind of surprising due to the emphasis on tacos in the Tinga menu. The ingredients were a bit tryhard here with ginger and shitake marinade, pickled red cabbage, salsa verde, papas bravas (rough-cut roasted potatoes), queso fresco, and crema. Interesting flavor combinations to be sure, but they lack cohesiveness. It felt like culinary shock and awe leaving my pallet with PTSD. 

Great service, a nice selection of seasonal light beers, and a window painting of a taco cowboy riding a unicorn elevated the entire experience to a whole new level. A lot can be said for the relaxed atmosphere and sense of humor at Tinga. I hope to explore more of their menu with the conchita pibil and lamb adobo at the top of my hit list. 

I know you wanted to see it. 

King Taco, Los Angeles

Let's get one thing clear before I divulge my experiences with King Taco. They make a good taco for a good price, and I could eat 10 of them. They pile on the asada, there's good spicy red salsa, and the onions and cilantro deliver as one would expect from a quality Taqueria.

Now, if I really wanted 10 tacos, would I be willing to put up with the overall experience of ordering at King Taco? Hmm...

I guess that's a long line...

When I arrived there was a bit of a line. Maybe 15 people were ahead of me, not Pink's level, but enough to assume the place is doing something right. The tables all seemed to be filled with patrons not eating but waiting to receive their orders while only two of the three registers available were taking orders.

All told D and I were in line for close to 30 minutes until we were allowed to order some tacos, a nacho, and an al pastor burrito because their huge pork spit was seducing me with its slow turns. Another 15 minutes before our food is called out, and I am able to survey this chronophagic assemblage.

The first thing I notice is how small this burrito I just paid $6 for is, and I'm cautiously optimistic in hoping they aren't skimping on ingredients so -- blah blah balh big things in small packages blah blah -- nope, none of that.

I thought it may have been overly-cooked onions mixed with the raw or possibly heavy use of cilantro, but something was definitely off in the al pastor flavor department. Nothing blends in the burrito, so every bite is an unpleasant hodgepodge of mediocre ingredients.

The nachos took me back to high school lunch lines with the chips being poured out of a 5 pound bag into a bin with Chernobyl yellow cheese sauce pumped out on top. Hardly the stuff of kings, but one may be fooled by the $5 chips and cheese price tag.

I'm almost certain my high school wasn't staffed with above-average, volunteer, teenage food service workers, so I can't imagine why it took them so long to assemble this meal. Perhaps what is even more vexing is why anyone would wait around for this quality of food when Los Angeles hosts more Mexican food restaurants and taco trucks than any other place in the US.

Over-priced food, under-whelming flavors, and thoroughly disappointing wait times leaves me shaking rather than bowing my head to King Taco.

Doctor Strangebreakfast: or how I learned to stop worrying and love poverty (Part 2)

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"Write Now Wednesdays" is the day I take time to explain facets of Burrito Life or expand opinions touched upon in previous articles. This week we present the conclusion to last week's story by guest contributor, Devon Ashby.

These tortilla-wrapped masterpieces typically contained cheese – Havarti was a favorite when affordable, but shredded cheddar was my fallback. If it was really a hard-up week, different wet ingredients were substituted for the cheese (or added, just for the hell of it). Chorizo was my standby meat ingredient — beef, pork, cured and uncured – but bacon, diced ham, sausage in its many glorious forms, and even soyrizo all made appearances. The Beverly Discount Market at the end of our block routinely stocked 6-count bags of fresh tortillas, delivered from a bakery just a few streets up, so all I had to do when I ran out of wrappers was put on my shoes and walk to the corner. Other rotating guest stars included black beans, red beans, garlic cloves, fresh cilantro, avocado, rice of many colors and textures, grilled peppers, fresh and stewed tomatoes, and an impressive array of hot sauces and salsas.
 
To this day, breakfast burritos are an important signifier for me, and they’re special for a couple different reasons. I didn’t have a car and there was never enough money for gas anyway, so the frequent need to replenish my stash of ingredients forced me to actually leave my house and explore my own neighborhood. I was living right outside Koreatown in Los Angeles, an area dominated by Guatemalan and Salvadorean small businesses. By going out on foot so many times looking for shredded cheddar or chorizo, I realized that my neighborhood was a fucking goldmine – not just of fresh tortillas, chicharonnes and Guatemalan pastries, but of huge, gorgeous painted mural art. I spent whole afternoons just hoofing up and down the street, gawking at DIY signage for various toy stores, religious icon emporiums, electronic repair shops, and carnicerias, and occasionally wandering inside to examine stacks of 30 year old video game cartridges or mirrored, glass-protected displays of false teeth.

A tortilla stuffed with cheese, meat, and vegetables isn’t the healthiest food on the planet, or the most technically sophisticated. But the cheapness, availability, and raw creative potential of my ingredients usually added up to a pretty happy medium between flavor, nutrition, and affordability. This was the first time in my life I had to make choices about how to manage my resources and take care of myself, and coming home to a meal cooked in 10 minutes that flooded my tastebuds with ecstasy, contained fresh vegetables, and could be held with one hand while watching Jeopardy was one of the few recurring experiences in my life that made me feel I might actually be capable of someday getting my shit together.
 
Most importantly, without fully realizing what was happening, I had the chance to get really good at something, just by doing it over and over again, while still leaving myself some room to play around and experiment. This is probably the most important skill set I’ve ever learned, and the rest of my life’s formative experiences have pretty much just been variations on that same theme over and over again. Breakfast burritos taught me how to be an artist, and how to be an adult. I salute them.

Doctor Strangebreakfast: or how I learned to stop worrying and love poverty

¡Escribe Ahora!

"Write Now Wednesdays" is the day I take time to explain facets of Burrito Life or expand opinions touched upon in previous articles. This week we begin a series by guest writer Devon Ashby.

So in my early twenties, like most people, I went through a financial trial-by-fire period of not really being able to feed myself properly.

In my particular case, this was due to the trifecta of being unemployed, not wanting to live at home anymore, and not having very good sense about how to manage my money. My roommate and I were mentally and financially coordinated enough never to lack for toilet paper, Diet Coke, cigarettes, or cheap, gut-poisoning liquor products, but a majority of the hot meals we consumed came from the $5 pizza restaurant next to our Laundromat, or out of a box with a big orange 99 cent sticker on it.

Aside from the perennial stand-bys of ramen noodles and pasta, three ingredients were always present in our otherwise threadbare kitchen, and those three staples transformed what could have been a purgatory of darkness, self-doubt, and chronic stomachaches into a magical period of gustatory self-discovery. Those three ingredients were: fresh tortillas, chorizo, and eggs.

Prior to moving out of my parents’ house, I’m pretty sure I was at least introduced to the concept of breakfast burritos. Tragically, however, I have no specific early memories of my experiences with this fateful staple of my transitional adulthood. With aforementioned budgetary constraints mapping out an entirely new grocery template, though, I knew I would have to start getting creative, or resign myself indefinitely to a menu of empty carbohydrates, tinfoil seasoning packets, and processed cheeses. Tortillas and eggs seemed like a no-brainer since they’re two of the cheapest foods you can buy, and with the bulk of the work established, the rest of my grocery list fell rapidly into step. Breakfast burritos became a three-or-four-nights-a-week tradition.

To be continued...

Oki-Dog on Pico Blvd.

What happens when the people of Okinawa create their own hot dog recipe? Well, they put two inside a tortilla along with some pastrami and fill the damn thing with chili, of course. 

The heart-attack inducing monstrosity known as the Oki-Dog is a very filling, very polarizing food thing.

There are two Oki-Dog’s in LA. The one under review today is the Pico location which some say is less authentic or at least less shady. Fairfax will get its day in the sun, soon. 

This particular spot has a main island where all cash is paid and food is made servicing both the small inside seating area and the outside walk-up. 

I took a bite and felt like I’d spun the chamber of the gastrointestinal gun loaded with a single diarrhea bullet, but the taste was actually not bad. Think Wienerschnitzel with better ingredients. The chili is of the Cincinnati ilk, and I was surprised by how much I liked the tortilla flavor and dry, almost crispy, texture. 

It didn’t feel healthy. It didn’t look nice, but for around $6 I was happy. No intestinal disturbances, only smiles and a full stomach. 

Fairfax, here I come.