Tacos La Güera Pico

Ricos

Located in Harvard Heights and specializing in tacos de fritanga, or "fried tacos," Tacos La Güera is one of Los Angeles' finest food stands. The fillings for their tacos de fritanga consist of meats slow-fried in lard in a steel disc with a well that runs along the perimeter and a convex center called a comal de acero or "charola."

The "Buche Taco" here falls into this "fritanga" category: lard-simmered pig gut is chopped into cubes resulting in smoothly-textured meat that does not have the taste and flavors of normal buche. Instead, when expertly-prepared as it is here, it has a pleasant, mild taste and delectably soft chew to it, with crispy browned edges.

The "Suadero Taco" is prepared similarly, but with beef brisket instead of buche. That's right, they are not using actual suadero, they're using a superior cut of beef as evidenced by the graininess and tenderness of the meat. I recommend topping with the salsa roja, a lip-scorching red sauce with intense chili flavors. Blistered jalapeño toreados along with grilled onions are available if you desire even greater levels of heartburn later.

Interestingly enough, despite this taco stand's focus on tacos de fritanga, their chow line begins with an al pastor specialist next to a spinning trompo of sticky marinated pork shoulder ready to carve some of it into tortillas for your delight. The taquero here makes a solid al pastor taco, leveraging a pro carving technique resulting in very thin slices of adobo-glazed pork with lots of flavored surface area, capped with a slice of grilled pineapple. The salsa verde here is a "must" and uniquely fantastic with the al pastor pork. Don't visit Tacos La Güera without leaving with at least a few "Al Pastor Tacos" smothered in salsa verde in your belly.

As you would at a taco stand in Mexico, you order your tacos first and then pay. This leads to my only nitpick with this operation: it is very difficult to pay if you're rolling solo, as you're holding plates full of tacos and perhaps an agua fresca while trying to reach for cash in your wallet, and there's no place to temporarily sit the plates down. Tip: Best to have your money in hand when you order, before you start receiving your plates of tacos.