Midtown Lunch

On Saturday afternoon thousands of people gathered in Grand Park downtown for the second year in a row to celebrate L.A.’s diverse taco scene, hear who won L.A. Taco’s Taco Madness bracket, listen to music,  stuff their faces with delicious delicious tacos.  The day was beautiful and many tacos were consumed, but only some made a real impression.  Here are 5 things I came away with after a few hours of sampling everything LA Taco’s Taco Madness 2014 had to offer. 

1. Mariscos Jalisco has still go it.  At this point there should just be a taco hall of fame, right?  Is Mariscos Jalisco’s shrimp dorado taco any worse now than it was when it won Taco Madness in 2012?  Of course not. People are just sick of sounding like a broken mariachi record.  Can we retire these guys and move on, rather than force them to compete year after year only to have people say “Well, it is my favorite taco of all time but shouldn’t we give somebody else a chance?”

Carnitas, Coraloense and corn, after the jump…

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When I put together my Perfect 2 hour taco crawl of L.A. last year that started at Ricky’s Fish Tacos (RIP) and ended at Mariscos Jalisco, I included Mexicali Taco & Co. even though their tacos aren’t the best thing on the menu.  After all, why let semantics deprive you of delicious vampiros and egg topped cachetadas?  But recently Mexicali started serving up two new taco specials that are both making me re-consider the carne asada vampiro as my go to order.

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Left: Starting Line. Right: Finish Line.

Back in February, to celebrate the two year anniversary of Midtown Lunch: Los Angeles, I put together a list of the 21 best lunches in L.A. In addition to being a milestone celebrator and a shameful traffic builder it also meant that I now have a link I can send any friends from out of town when they visit and want to be taken to lunch. Naturally Mexican food dominates the list (6 of the 21 places), but I realized something interesting when a couple of friends from Boston visited last week. Why eat at one place, when you can eat at 5. In other words, there is a pretty spectacular lunchtime taco crawl to be had between Los Feliz and Boyle Heights. And the best part is, you not only get to try 5 completely different styles of taco, but it can all be done in two hours if you don’t dilly dally.

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Last year Mexicali Taco & Co. shocked the world by defeating Mariscos Jalisco in the finals of LA Taco’s Taco Madness 2011.  Ok, maybe “shock the world” is a bit of an overstatement.  But the shrimp taco dorado from the Mariscos Jalisco truck is one of the single greatest tacos I have ever eaten. And the whole thing is deep fried.  Could a simple carne asada taco (even one covered in garlic and cheese that’s been melted quesadilla style) compete with a taco that was good enough to dispatch Ricky’s Fish Tacos in the semi finals!? Sadly, Mexicali Taco wasn’t open for lunch. And tracking down their makeshift, late night, outdoor set up on 1st & Beaudry was just not realistic for those of us who do our DTLA food exploring during the day.

So when I heard that they were finally opening a brick and mortar location, and that location would have regular business hours (aka open for lunch!) I got pretty excited. In fact, for fans of lunch, yesterday’s grand opening could be the biggest of 2012.

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