In a land of iconic taquerias, Tacos El Franc is legendary. The taco shop became a Tijuana institution even before opening its first brick-and-mortar in 1996, when Javier Valadez began slinging tacos from a small cart and quickly earned a cult following.

It’s been featured on Netflix’s Taco Chronicles, and the tacos have been dubbed the best in the world by TikTok and people with extremely good taste (me). Tijuana locals and hungry Americans crowd the curbside eatery from the minute it opens until closing, and if you’ve ever had the chance to taste one of the mouthwateringly tender cabeza tacos or overstuffed quesadillas con carne, you’ll understand why. 

Now you won’t need a passport to crush their carne asada. Tacos El Franc will open their first location in the US at the Westfield Plaza Bonita mall this summer, replacing Funky Fries & Burgers at 3030 Plaza Bonita Road, Suite No. 1108. Convincing the taqueria’s owners to enter the US market took 20 years, admits managing partner Roberto “Robe” Kelly.

“[Tacos El Franc] is, essentially, the highest grossing taqueria in Baja,” Kelly explains. “They didn’t really need the US market.” But the time has finally come, and he says once they open their doors, that will only be the beginning of an “aggressive expansion,” going wherever people have “an appetite for tacos.” 

“One of our primary goals is to bring the exact flavor that you can have when you cross the border,” he adds. “We’re going to make it easier and bring it to them.”

When Tacos El Franc opens in June or July of 2024, I invite brave readers to join me in a taco-eating contest. No matter what, we all win.

Beth’s Bites

More National City news! Friends of Friends is almost open on 8th Street, with promises of coffee, booze, music, and of course, friendship. 

If one more coffee shop launches in North Park, I’m going to lose my mind. Other neighborhoods need caffeine, too! Please?

Rise Biscuits is opening (eventually) near SDSU, but where are the best biscuits in San Diego in the meantime? Email me at [email protected] with your recs.

Pure Project’s eighth anniversary party is tomorrow at their Miramar Brewery & Taproom. I’ll be there, so if you see me, say hi!

The post Iconic Taqueria Tacos El Franc Coming to the US appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

City Tacos, chess

From this moment on, refer to 4896 Voltaire—the 10,000-square-foot plot of land across from the original OB Noodle House and Mike Hess Brewing—as OB Playground. Set to open July 1st, the playground will be anchored by popular local taco shop City Tacos and house a craft coffee cart, a flower shop, and all the happenings of an old-school, down-home hangout.

North Parkers know City Tacos. They’re the ones responsible for the groovy 80s jams you hear at the intersection of 30th and University. It’s been that way since owner Gerry Torres started the chain back in 2014. Torres was born in Mexico City but spent his early adulthood bouncing between home, San Diego, Miami, and Hawaii, before making his way back just north of the border. “San Diego is a bicultural community,” says Torres, who’s been in the service industry for 35 years. “We have Mexico next door, so we get the best of both worlds. I’ve raised my family here, it’s my home.”

City Tacos, exterior

Torres developed a deep appreciation for San Diego’s illustrious taco shop culture, but he found himself craving bites with a bit more character, more from-scratchness, and constantly evolving. “When we create something we seek to elevate it,” says Torres. “You have to make your own tortillas. That’s your base.” His tacos range from slow cooked carnitas topped with crispy chicharron, to May’s taco of the month: the Aztec cauliflower taco, with achiote-rubbed cauliflower sitting atop a creamy pineapple tepache guacamole spread, wrapped in a flour tortilla.

After success in North Park, they’ve expanded to the ballpark, Pacific Beach, Sorrento Valley, and as far north as the Village at USC. Since his taco repute is now solid, Torres is challenging himself with his eighth concept to reimagine the environment and space. “I realized people want something more,” he says. “Sometimes they want to bring their pets along, or maybe they want to be in a cozy, inviting environment.”

City Tacos, tarps

Torres is cueing the cozy (and nostalgia) by retrofitting OB Playground with all you’d expect to see at a family reunion held in your uncle’s backyard: cornhole, foosball, and mammoth-sized versions of Jenga, Connect Four, and chess. A draft beer list featuring a rotating, San Diego-based lineup. He outfitted it for all-weather with fire pits, space heaters, and sail shading. He’s even getting into gardening.

“I intend to have manicured gardens and flowers around the property to give the sense of tranquility and peace,” he says. “If you’re out walking with the kids and have your dog and a stroller, you can sit down for a bit and have a good time.”

City Tacos, coffee truck

Although not prepared to announce the specific vendors heading the coffee cart and flower shop, Torres alludes to both businesses being local, one of which you may already be familiar with.

Torres says craft fairs, themed food truck nights, and involvement with local OBecians are all on his radar.

“It’s always been about growing with the community and giving back,” he says.

Have breaking-news, exciting scoops, or great stories about San Diego’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].

The post Incoming: City Tacos OB appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Photo Credit: Andrew Reiner

I stumbled into my room with my head spinning and ripped off my crimson-oil-stained shirt before crawling between the white sheets, as crisp and chilled as the lettuce in a steakhouse salad. I planned this trip to Guadalajara to combat a burned-out brain on two fronts: with the cool luxury of a hotel pool and by gorging myself on flame-red bowls of birria, the regional specialty of stewed meat prepared with tomato and pepper broth.

The former brought me to Tequila, an hour from Guadalajara, where I found Casa Salles, a pristine boutique hotel with its own Tequila factory. I swiftly located the latter across town at Doña Chuy, situated on a triangle of cement pressed up against the highway.

As the trend of birria swept through the U.S. over the last few years, even the best versions left me wistfully nostalgic for some ideal of birria stuck in the back of my brain, one that bowled me over with flavor and cured even the worst of hangovers. I couldn’t pinpoint the version I remembered, but, like Justice Potter Stewart on obscenity, I knew I would recognize it when I saw it. And I knew for sure what it wasn’t: bland beef wrapped in factory-made tortillas and drowned in cheese.

A catch-all term for “French dip but tacos,” as a friend once heard it described. Soup bowls filled with the same kinds of shortcuts and blandness that, writ large, I blamed for my burnout. I doubted that a one-week vacation could completely restore my verve, but it seemed plenty of time to find the most comforting consomé.

Photo Credit: Andrew Reiner

As the belching trucks rumbling by drowned out the plasticky crinkle of the checked tablecloth, my birria de chivo arrived, brick-red and stocked with goat, the tender ropes of meat just barely clinging to each other in a sea of tomato broth. My server slid toward me a plastic Tupperware filled with a jumble of metal silverware and bowls of chopped cilantro and onion. Despite a long list of drinks on the overhead sign, they only actually stocked glass bottles of Coke.

But they more than made up for the variety in salsas: three selections on the table showed their freshness in crisp colors, each cresting the top of a deli quart container. When I went to use one, my server stopped me, handing me a plastic water bottle containing a fire-engine red glop studded with pepper seeds instead. “This one for birria,” he said.

I slurped the spicy broth with a homemade tortilla in one hand, a napkin to blot the sweat from my forehead in the other. Halfway through, I looked up, and a woman across from me asked what she should order. I grinned and recommended the birria de chivo so fervently that I knocked a significant amount onto my shirt. I blotted it a bit, mopped up the last of the soup, and strolled back to the hotel, drunk on goat broth and success.

Two days in, I had found the birria of my dreams and considered just leaning into the other half of the trip—laying on hotel beds and pool deck lounge chairs—for the next week.

Photo Credit: Andrew Reiner

But a tiny, birria-colored-devil standing on my shoulder asked, “What if there’s even better birria?” I soldiered on to Guadalajara to scour the cityscape for soup that lived up to Doña Chuy’s. The decked-out tourist-favorite Birriería Las Nueve Esquinas failed, but I got to walk below the city at the brand new El Museo de Sitio del Puente de las Damas nearby, featuring a recently uncovered 18th-century bridge.

Fueled by a stop at Cantina La Fuente, where ice-cold Victoria beer chills in open-topped coolers stacked with bricks of ice the size of microwaves, my quest resumed. I struck vermillion goat gold at La Birria de Oro. Inside the pale salmon walls, bowls came to the table brimming with meat, stacked with chopped onion, whose sharpness woke up my sleepy taste buds.

The meat, chopped small here, felt like biting into Gushers, only instead of sickly sweet ‘90s candy juice, it released flavor-packed broth. I worked my way through the bowl and the stack of freshly made tortillas, then ordered a jericalla for dessert, as if the smooth burnt custard might prolong the joy of a good birria through proximity.

Photo Credit: Andrew Reiner

The next day, a friend desperately in need of the dish’s reviving properties brought me to Birriería El Chololo, which serves birria tatemada—oven-roasted, with the consomé served on the side. The crispy charred edges of meat and drinkable bowl of broth soothed her searing hangover and showed me a totally different style of birria.

I came to Guadalajara to find the ideal birria, the one that showed me what all the versions at home failed to do, and instead, I found three very different dishes and myself confused.

I headed for the hills. Specifically, to take a class with Maru Toledo, the cooking instructor, culinary researcher, and author who spent the last two decades documenting the food of Jalisco. Over mole made from charred tortillas and pebbly sun-dried tostadas raspadas, I asked my burning question: what is the original, the ideal, the peak of birria?

Photo Credit: Andrew Reiner

Birria can be anything, Toledo explained. The Spanish utilized the lush river valley in nearby Ameca for raising cattle, hiring local men to herd the animals and paying them with a feast featuring the local “agave wine,” (now better known as Tequila) and a slaughtered calf. They rubbed the veal with chile paste, describing the method as “birriaba” meaning smeared, as one might with mud, and cooked it buried underground.

Soon, they found it worked well on the superfluous male goats from the dairy industry in nearby Zacatecas, and local small game and poultry. Any type of meat, cooked in any number of fashions, could be birria, so long as it was smeared with that adobo before cooking.

Back in the city, I embraced Toledo’s wisdom and sampled a creative clam birria at trendy seafood spot La Panga del Impostor. After, I wandered to the Hospicio Cabañas, where a free tour guide explained that perhaps the reason José Clemente Orozco could cover the walls and ceilings of the one-time orphanage with such impressive works of art with only one hand, and in just 11 months, involved cocaine.

I came away inspired. My burnout, I concluded, came not from a lack of ideas, but from a lack of the proper drugs. I’m too old to adopt a new addiction to a powerful and pricey stimulant, but that doesn’t matter. As I learned this week, birria can be anything.

The post Burnout and Birria in Guadalajara appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Camino Riviera taco

James Tran

Any taco lover worth their salt knows that completing the ritual of enjoying a plate of tacos involves three things: sprinkling them with onions and cilantro, adding a squeeze of lime, and then some flavorful salsa right before you dig in. But topping a fish taco with edible gold? Chef Brian Redzikowski did that for “The Taco” at Camino Riviera, the new Tulum-inspired restaurant in Little Italy.

Redzikowski, executive chef of Camino Riviera and all of SDCM group’s restaurants (including Kettner Exchange and Waverly), traveled throughout Tulum and the greater Yucatán in Mexico to learn about the region’s cuisine and find inspiration for the menu. When it came time to design dinner, he wasn’t interested in tacos at first (San Diego has endless options, after all). But Matt Spencer, SDCM’s owner, really wanted to serve one.

“I decided if I was going to do it, it really needed to be high end and have an exciting presentation,” Redzikowski says. So he went all-out.

This V.I.T. (very important taco) is a fillet of sea bass dipped in a tempura batter mixed with squid ink, which adds a bit of brine and turns the fish midnight black when fried. The fillet is placed on two tortillas sourced from Gabriel’s Tortilleria in Barrio Logan, then topped with frisée and edible gold leaf, making it shine. It comes with two sauces—a chipotle aioli and bitter-orange vinaigrette. At $16, it’s built to share between two people as an appetizer before you delve into dishes like Sonoma lamb shoulder barbacoa and pork chop anticucho, but you can also enjoy it on your own.

Yes, the gold is made for consumption and is safe to eat. Whether it’s a fad or fantastic, you be the judge, but numbers don’t lie: Redzikowski says it’s the best-selling item on the menu since they opened last winter—guess he has the Midas touch.

2400 India Street, Little Italy

The post This Taco at Camino Riviera Is Topped with Edible Gold appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Troy’s Pick

From Troy Johnson, food critic

Caffè Calabria

Order: Margherita D.O.C. pizza

3933 30th Street, North Park

Marie’s Pick

From Marie Tutko, editor in chief

La Reyna del Sur Mariscos

Order: Fish and shrimp tacos

4404 Texas Street, University Heights

David’s Pick

From David Martin, digital media director

Grains Café

Order: Larb tofu salad and the vegan Philly cheese sandwich

2201 Adams Avenue, University Heights

Tandoori Chicken at Curryosity

Erica’s Pick

From Erica Nichols, associate editor

Curryosity

Order: Masala curry and chicken tandoori

3023 Juniper Street, South Park

Emily’s Pick

From Emily Ferguson, production specialist

Onigiri House San Diego

Order: Spam musubi

Sundays at the Solana Beach Farmers’ Market

Creamy Beer Mac at Kindred

Brittany Wright’s Pick

From episode 191 of the Happy Half Hour podcast

Kindred

Order: Creamy beer mac

1503 30th Street, South Park

Masala Curry at Curryosity

The post San Diego Takeout This Week: Masala Curry, Shrimp Tacos, and More appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

The Order: Shredded Pork Tacos

Or any tacos, really. The key are those tortillas, made in-house and then fried right in front of you, topped with basic shredded lettuce and Cotija cheese. If red, chile-stained grease runs down your arm, you have done it right.

1857 Logan Avenue, Barrio Logan; 619-234-4460

Puesto

The Order: Filet Mignon Taco

Puesto’s signature magic is a layer of crispy, melted, griddled cheese that covers the whole tortilla. This taco adds slices of mid-rare fillet, avocado, and a spicy pistachio-serrano salsa.

1026 Wall Street, La Jolla; 5010 Mission Center Road, Mission Valley

Tacos el Gordo

The Order: Adobada Taco

Originated in Tijuana in 1972 and imported to Chula Vista in 1998, their adobada is legend and should be obeyed. Chile-marinated pork is shaved from huge trompos—vertical spits that slowly turn the meat, roasting and basting it so it cooks evenly and never dries out.

556 Broadway, Chula Vista; 689 H Street, Chula Vista; 3265 Palm Avenue, Imperial Beach

Aquí Es Texcoco

The Order: Lamb Barbacoa Taco

Pilots flying into Otay Mesa’s airport will radio to order pounds of this barbacoa, cooked in the style of Texcoco—a famed barbecue town outside of Mexico City. The meat is rubbed with chiles, covered with maguey and avocado leaves, and slow-cooked for eight hours.

520 Broadway, Chula Vista

Ed Fernandez

The Order: Quesataco Extremo

On weekends, their parking lot in Nestor becomes a congregation of locals waiting for the famed birria (long, slow-simmered beef). The Quesataco Extremo is a tortilla griddled with birria consommé and topped with melted cheese and the meat that’s been crisped and browned on the griddle.

2265 Flower Avenue, Nestor

Tuetáno Taquería

The Order: Bone Marrow Taco

This taco now has many imitators across Southern California and the US—a street taco with a slow-roasted bone lording atop. Use the stick to spoon the marrow, and sip a side cup of chef-owner Priscilla Curiel’s birria consommé.

143 West San Ysidro Boulevard, San Ysidro

Mariscos & Birria el Prieto

The Order: Birria Taco

My favorite birria from a citywide search last year. Put that tender, slow-stewed meat in a hot tortilla with the holy taco trinity (onion, cilantro, lime), plus some salsa and guacamole? A great reason to eat in the parking lot outside an auto mechanic.

3031 Main Street, Chula Vista; 619-495-524

TJ Oyster Bar

Jeff Lancaster; Styled by Penelope Olds

TJ Oyster Bar

The Order: Garlic Shrimp Taco

TJ Oyster Bar started in a cubbyhole in a Bonita strip mall and now there are two (the other’s in a bigger strip mall next door). Their garlic shrimp is the little black dress of tacos—a classic, with sautéed shrimp, crema, onions, cilantro, and lime. Also order those smoked tuna fries.

4246 Bonita Road, Bonita; 4410 Bonita Road, Bonita; 601 East Palomar Street, Chula Vista

Lola 55

The Order: Baja-Style Fish Taco

Chef Drew Bent gets calls from local fishermen as they pull into the harbor, and whatever they’ve caught goes into this taco. “It’s sushi-grade fish in a fried fish taco,” he says—beer battered, Sinaloa style, and then topped with a chorizo-tomato vinaigrette, pickled jalapeño rémoulade, pickled serranos, and opal basil.

1290 F Street, East Village

Galaxy Cantina & Grill

The Order: Mushroom Taco

“I’m allergic to mushrooms and it’s still my favorite,” says chef Christine Rivera. The meatless special has sautéed mushrooms with spicy tomato sauce, crispy Jack cheese, salsa verde, queso fresco, and hoja santa—all on their obsessively fresh, from-scratch blue corn tortilla.

2259 Avenida de la Playa, La Jolla

City Tacos

The Order: Veracruz Mahi Taco

One of the tacos that launched it all, with grilled mahi mahi under sautéed tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic, and chives in a white wine sauce, asadero cheese, and a lime aioli. Also try the chile relleno taco.

Six locations

¡Salud!

Jeff Lancaster; Styled by Penelope Olds

¡Salud!

The Order: Barrio Taco

“It’s something traditional you’d get from your grandmother on a Sunday,” says owner Ernie Becerra. It starts with tender, slow-stewed beef guisado, tossed with sautéed bell peppers and potatoes, grilled nopales, and a touch of sour cream.

2196 Logan Avenue, Barrio Logan

The Taco Stand

The Order: Al Pastor

“This is the one that made us take off,” says owner Julian Hakim—marinated pork cooked on a rotisserie, topped with onions, pineapple, and a cilantro sauce.

621 Pearl Street, La Jolla; 3000 Upas Street, North Park; 645 B Street, Downtown

The post 13 Tacos You Must Try in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Love Letter to Tacos

Olivia Hayo; Styled by City Proper

Dear Tacos,

You are the weighted blanket of comfort food. Milkshakes are nice, but you bring the marinated meats to our yard and that is preferable. You often come in threes, which is better than coming in ones. You can be mild or you can be spicy, like bedrooms.

You are a gentle on-ramp to beginner Spanish. Through you, those of us who didn’t grow up with it learn the words for lamb (borrego), shepherd style (al pastor), and “this taco gives me emotions” (este taco me da emociones). You are a geography lesson. Through tacos we find Baja California (machaca and queso fresco and lobster tacos), Sinaloa (al pastor), Oaxaca (cheese), Puebla (mole), Michoacán (carnitas), Yucatán (achiote), Veracruz (hoja santa), and Las Vegas (Roberto’s and Tacos el Gordo). You are a cultural attaché and diplomatic salve.

Look, it’s been a hell of a year.

Please pardon my brief meditational prayers to a foodstuff and the people and culture behind it. I have a thesis: Tacos are the greatest food and I finally figured out why. I’m sure of it. Though I could be wrong. Who cares. This feels nice.

I’d love to say I grew up in a home that smelled of sizzling carne asada and simmering carnitas, cave-aging Cotija cheese in my sister’s Easy-Bake Oven. But as a family of mixed and unknown white-person descent, our kitchen was more a place where hamburgers were helped and the codependent relationship between bologna and Wonder Bread was abetted.

I was six or maybe seven at the time of my first taco. Regretfully I admit it wasn’t from any of San Diego’s iconic shops. It wasn’t the steaming hot, fresh tortillas of El Indio (started by Ralph Pesqueira Sr., 1940) nor the fried-in-front-of-you shells of Las Cuatro Milpas (the Estudillo family, 1933). It wasn’t the turkey tacos at Tony’s Jacal (the Gonzalez family, 1946), nor the carnitas at Fidel’s (the Montanez family, 1961).

It was Taco Bell. The Bell was the gateway taco for many non-Latino kids of the ’80s. These days, globally inspired food is the norm. Kids of all ethnic backgrounds are crawling through cardamom-rosewater cakes on their first birthday and high schoolers drink small-batch pulque when their parents are away at “conferences.” But us kids from America’s ball-pit generation were stranded in a culinary dark age, flanked by burgers and chicken breasts. Say what you want about The Bell’s quality standards (the ground beef is pulverized into such fine granules that it looks less like meat than softened and browned Nerds candies)—and I’ll sidestep the discussion about cultural appropriation. Truth is, that whitewashed taco launched my lifelong obsession with real Mexican food and drove me into every tiny mom-and-pop taco shop I could find.

I embarked on the pathway to taco enlightenment, moving on to Roberto’s like most San Diegans. Dolores and Roberto Robledo started with a tortilleria in San Ysidro in 1964, and then apparently decided to become gods. Their three rolled tacos were a teenager’s cheat code for happiness—deep fried, crunchy meat torpedoes under so much guacamole you felt like a millionaire. They were open 24 hours, so whenever you found yourself on the crime-y side of midnight in need of a fourth meal, Roberto’s was there for you. They fed night-shifters and partiers, which made them the official food of our wildest nights and most memorable cries. To kids who grew up here, the Robledo elders exist on the same cosmic echelon as rock stars, astrophysicists, and Tony Gwynn.

As teens we drove into Tijuana and farther into Baja to pay homage and eat at the source—the legendary taco carts. A taco cart is evidence of how much beauty and productivity a single human is capable of; a man or woman standing all day and night over a sizzling plancha, a spectral figure with tongs in a cloud of meat smoke, armed with a lifetime supply of chopped onions and cilantro, that delicious taco potpourri, cranking out one satisfied customer after another with rapid speed. Tijuana is to tacos as Napa Valley is to wine. It’s Taco Vegas, with attractions like Tacos el Franc, Tacos Kokopelli, Tacos Salseados, Cafe la Especial, Taco Nazo, and Mariscos Ruben.

Through tacos you discover you enjoy eating landscaping (nopales, aka cactus). With great reservation you try lengua (tongue) and either don’t mind it or decide it is a life purpose. In Guadalajara I’ve eaten escamoles (ant egg) tacos and agave larvae tacos. And though I don’t feel the need to repeat that experience without a good deal of coercion, a corn tortilla and salsa made it taste okay, even briefly good.

That is the transformative beauty of the taco. With a corn tortilla and some cilantro and onions and lime and a decent hot sauce, you can enjoy just about anything in life.

While speaking with some of the city’s most beloved taco shop owners and chefs in recent weeks, I pestered them for the big “why.” Of all the hokey “official days” for foods, why is Taco Tuesday the only one treated as a sacred ritual? Why does it feel like the true universal language is tacos and not burgers or math?

Priscilla Curiel, chef-owner of Tuétano Taquería in San Ysidro, nailed it when she said simply, “Because you can eat them every day.” And that’s it. Yes, they’re tasty. But so are pizzas, burgers, curries, ramens, and gyros. All comfort foods are unpretentious (you can be an elitist boob while eating a taco, but it’s harder). They’re inclusive to all walks of the socioeconomic strata because they are affordable. They’re all made fast for our busy lives.

But the frequency potential is why tacos win. You can’t eat pizza or burgers multiple times a week. (You could, but there would be significant physical trauma.) Too much bread. But a thin, gluten-free corn tortilla, a moderate tuft of meat, that little topping “salad,” and fresh salsa?

Yes you can.

This explains the existence of “taco culture.” If people eat at a certain place a few times a week, lives intermingle more. Regulars become friends which leads to bonhomie and loyalty and… a culture.

At Tuétano Taquería, chef Priscilla Curiel serves up bone marrow tacos

Olivia Hayo; Styled by City Proper

The Taqueras and Taqueros

Priscilla Curiel has been featured in national food magazines, and she’s had beef bones thrown at her. Recently she received recognition from the Michelin Guide, and she watched an irate customer fling salsa at her wall.

That’s how emotional people get about tacos, especially when you’re doing something outside the norm. Curiel’s Tuétano Taquería in San Ysidro—a bright, one-room yellow box on San Ysidro Boulevard, where she often cooks with one other woman, Patty, sometimes with her young children underfoot and her husband lending a hand—is known for her bone marrow taco (tuétano translates to “marrow”). The presentation is remarkable: a sizable chunk of charred and slow-roasted bone atop a taco with a little stick you use to scoop out the molten marrow. On each table is her housemade salsa macha, a Veracruzana specialty made

of toasted chiles, peanuts, garlic, and sesame oil. It doesn’t look like the salsa most Americans are used to.

“I knew that good food would bring good people,” says Curiel, who grew up working in her parents’ restaurants, La Espadaña in Tijuana and Talavera Azul in Chula Vista. “But the first year was horrible. Sometimes I would close early. I had people throw the bones at me. I’d say, ‘You ordered the bone marrow!’ and they’d say, ‘Yeah, but you didn’t bother scooping it out, you just put a little stick in there!’ I had one person throw the salsa macha against the wall.”

Curiel’s parents never wanted her to cook, so she went to culinary school. “I was the black sheep,” she admits. “Chefs tend to have that in common.”

She applied for jobs in San Diego kitchens and was rejected by most. She briefly found a home under Pablo Becker, owner of former high-end East Village Mexican restaurant El Vitral, and spent a few weeks at Bencotto. After El Vitral closed, she worked mornings at her parents’ restaurants, then afternoons catering events. On weekends she slow-cooked birria and delivered it to breweries.

“But it was always my dream to have my own restaurant,” she says. “I always saved. I worked and worked and didn’t socialize and didn’t care.”

When space in this 100-year-old building came available, she jumped. The remodel was extensive. “After four months I was out of funds,” she says. “But since I’d already spent my life savings I was like, ‘Oh hell no, I’m not going to lose this.’” She worked five days a week, picking up whatever jobs she could to pay rent on her as-yet-unopened taquería—catering events, styling food for social media, cooking for chef Hector Casanova at Casanova’s Fish Tacos in Spring Valley. She poured it all into the build-out of her dream.

She finally opened in late 2018 and had those bones thrown at her. She stayed up until 1 a.m. answering every Instagram comment about her taquería. She was obsessed. “My daughter hates tacos because she knows how many years I struggled to make tacos better and better and better,” she says. “It was beginning to hurt my family because I wouldn’t talk about anything else. They were like, ‘Shut up, Priscilla.’”

A year later, despite the pandemic, the all-night customer service and hard work has paid off. She says she has turned the corner; people have stopped throwing bones. She just opened Mujer Divina, a coffee shop and burrito house in National City.

Tuétano Taquería’s Priscilla Curiel created a bone marrow taco that inspired imitations across Southern California and the US.

Olivia Hayo

Trading Scrubs for Salsa

Thirty minutes north of San Ysidro, on Pearl Street in La Jolla, the line is always there, snaking for half a block just west of Mitch’s Surf Shop. Has been since 2013. People wait for their turn at The Taco Stand.

“Some people think the lines are fake, but they’re not,” says owner Julian Hakim. “People wait over an hour, sometimes two hours. The expectations are so high after you wait two hours for a taco. I hate that, but what can you do? That’s why we have to be consistent.”

The Taco Stand was unexpected. In 2013, Hakim had just graduated from UNAM in Mexico City, one of the top medical schools in the world. Born in LA and raised between Tijuana and San Diego by Mexican and Persian parents, Hakim was getting ready to start his residency when his uncle called.

“He owned Pizza on Pearl and we would always discuss this idea for a taco shop,” explains Hakim. “As a kid I went to school in San Diego but crossed the border every single day. I always found it hard to eat tacos here because I went back to TJ every night and it was just so much better. I wanted to make tortillas by hand, do al pastor on the trompo [a vertical spit that slowly rotates and bastes the meat] instead of from a drawer, use better ingredients than they did in TJ.”

Be a doctor later, his uncle told him—the space next to Pizza on Pearl was available.

“It was a weird time for me—my mom and dad were not too thrilled,” Hakim says. “I wanted to get into orthopedics and surgery, and you have to wait one year anyway. So we opened in La Jolla and the lines formed and just never stopped. My uncle said, ‘I think you may have something here.’ So we opened downtown and in Encinitas to see, and they turned out to be big hits. Was I going to stop being a doctor to run a taco shop? I needed to make a decision, and that was it.”

Hakim’s not a chef. To start, he went to different taco carts and shops in Tijuana and Baja and paid them for recipes. His churro recipe is from a man with a cart in Rosarito whom they frequented as kids. They paid for quality ingredients. “I’m sure every restaurant will say they use quality ingredients,” he admits. “We pay up for certified Angus beef. It’s expensive and most people wouldn’t dare do it, because the small profit margin means you’ve got to have high volume. Luckily, we do. And when the quality is there, you don’t have to take extra steps.”

As of last year, the doctor-in-waiting had opened seven Taco Stands. TripAdvisor named them the fourth best fast-casual restaurant in the country, behind In-N-Out and ahead of Five Guys.

“Just like Americans have their favorite restaurants in town, Mexicans have their favorite taco place and we all go there and religiously and often,” he says. “It’s such a universally easy food and it seems you never get sick of it. It’s definitely lighter. I’m not saying it’s healthy. But a well-made taco with a corn tortilla has no gluten, very few calories, and no additives whatsoever. Just corn and water. Plus, there’s only one flavor of hot dog, but you can make a taco out of anything.”

Galaxy Cantina & Grill’s Christine Rivera makes everything from scratch, including the masa for the tortillas.

Olivia Hayo

Shoot for the Stars

On the other side of La Jolla, near the Shores, Galaxy Cantina & Grill is a casual, open-air showroom of what happens when a nationally acclaimed chef—Trey Foshee of George’s at the Cove—throws his skill set and team into taco creation. This whole restaurant was started from a single dinner at Tbl3, a recurring 12-to-14-course tasting menu at California Modern, the fine dining room at George’s.

“I had no desire to become a sous chef or a chef,” says Christine Rivera, now chef de cuisine of Galaxy. “I was perfectly content being a cook at California Modern. It wasn’t until Trey said, ‘Hey, we’re doing this Tbl3 taco and I don’t feel right not making our own masa and tortillas from scratch—can you research how to do it?’ I was like, ‘Sure, I guess.’ In my Mexican American culture it’s just something you buy. You don’t go source your ingredients and grind everything.”

Skeptical but dedicated, Rivera and Foshee started researching different corn and playing with water-to-corn ratios. They found a non-GMO heirloom corn they liked best, and they nixtamalized it—a process of soaking and cooking raw corn to prepare it for grinding into flour.

“So we launched it at Tbl3 and Trey goes, ‘How about if we opened a taco place that revolved around this masa?’” Rivera says. “Tacos all start with the tortilla. If you’re using really good ingredients, you want to make sure you put those ingredients onto something that’s also high quality. I remember Trey said, ‘You’re not going to put shitty sushi rice under high-quality fish.’”

She drove up to Costa Mesa’s famed Mexican restaurant Taco Maria to share masa recipes and trade notes. She flew to New York, observing and trading masa recipes with famed Mexican American chef Daniela Soto-Innes. When you see restaurants making their own tortillas on-site, most of them have bought premade masa. Galaxy is one of the only (if not the only)restaurants in San Diego doing every step from scratch, and the difference in their blue-corn tortillas is stark.

“Like bread, there are so many variables to a good masa—altitude and humidity and this and that,” explains Rivera. She and Foshee opened Galaxy Taco in 2015, based around this masa obsession, with George’s-caliber cooks using produce from the most respected local farms and sustainable meats and seafood.

“So,” she continues, laughing, “we make everything from scratch from these great ingredients and occasionally people get upset when we charge two dollars for the salsa.”

Tacos 2.0

This new wave of taco zeal—which most chefs and owners agree started in San Diego about 2013–2014—stems in part from these better ingredients, and moreso the caliber and creativity of their chefs. San Diego–based taco success story Puesto recently hired former Eleven Madison Park sous chef Ian Tenzer to be R&D chef for all of their restaurants, including the newly opened 10,000-square-foot Puesto Mission Valley. When Frank Vizcarra opened Lola 55 in the East Village, he partnered with San Diego native Drew Bent, a former executive chef at Tender Greens who’d done stints as a cook at Chez Panisse and the Mexican pop-up of the world-renowned restaurant Noma.

“I grew up in Linda Vista and there was a taco shop called Super Bronco Taco,” explains Bent. “That place had a bean tostada that changed my five-year-old life and I couldn’t get enough. My whole life has been trying to chase that bean. In restaurants, most ‘family meals’ are Mexican inspired.”

Lola55 has received national press in Forbes and other outlets, for a few reasons. First, the sheer quality of the ingredients and creativity of Bent’s staff. Second, the logistic prowess of Vizcarra, a Tijuana native who, after a career playing for the San Diego Sockers, became one of the most respected operational minds in the food-and-beverage space, overseeing large portions of McDonald’s global expansion. Their combined talents are why customers are able to pay just $4.25 for a taco with pork shoulder confit, crisped maciza, shaved tomatillo, avocado mousse, pickled red onion, and cilantro.

“A lot of our regulars eat three, four, or five times a week,” Bent says. “One of the core missions has been ‘bold flavor but light on the belly.’ It feels like you’re eating rib-sticking food but you’re not. We realized over time we’d end up in a lot of trade areas that had lunch. Last thing we wanted was to feed you something and you’d go back to the office and feel lethargic. You’re not breaking the bank, and you’re ready to go back to work.”

In North Park, City Tacos owner Gerry Torres says he realized he had a deep instinct for restaurant work while he was in the hospital. “I had a car accident—27 fractures,” he explains. “My buddy came to see me while I was in a coma and said, ‘Hey, table 43 needs bread!’ and I guess it was the first time I moved. Even in a coma you hear something like that and you move. I can’t tell you whether or not it’s the truth, but that’s what he said and it sounds right.’”

Torres has spent 28 years in the food industry, starting at Port of Subs in Oceanside, then nightclubs in San Diego and Tijuana. He was a busser and waiter at old Gaslamp restaurants like Garlic’s and Trattoria la Strada. He opened Tiramisu in La Mesa with that buddy from the hospital—former La Strada owner David Chiodo—and ran it for ten years. Then he tried to leave.

“I went into logistics for about a year,” he says. “The family was happy because I had weekends off. And it was the worst job of my life. I couldn’t handle it. My wife knew I loved the restaurant business. She knew the sacrifices she’d have to make with my time. So I rolled the dice in North Park with City Tacos.”

He tapped chef Tony Guan (Underbelly) to oversee his idea of a pared-down menu of four original tacos and none of the classics.

“We weren’t going to have any carne asada or adobada, but instead chile relleno tacos, mahi adobo, the borrego, and chorizo asado,” explains Torres, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Tijuana, Miami, Hawai‘i, and San Diego. “I thought it would work because the perception of Mexican food in San Diego was so far off what Mexican food really is. You went to taco shops here and they would have 40-item menus, but it was just the same ingredients presented in different ways. I felt it could be modernized and bring the quality up with nicer ingredients.”

He credits City Tacos’ success to timing and plain old luck, as well as having options for vegetarians and vegans, who were still largely ignored in the taco space when they opened in 2014. “I was trying to name it a taquería, but that term didn’t exist at the time,” he explains. “People said, ‘Just call it a Mexican restaurant,’ but it wasn’t a Mexican restaurant. Then the taco craze began. We boomed, and were booming right up until COVID. Now my dream is to bring back my employees and promote from within as we grow. I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

Ernie Becerra’s family has lived in the Barrio Logan area since around 1900. He opened ¡Salud! in the neighborhood in 2015.

Olivia Hayo

Barrio Logan has been a hub of Chicano culture since the first decades of the 20th century. The immigrant population rose dramatically thanks to refugees fleeing the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), but Ernie Becerra’s family preceded even them: “My dad is fourth-generation San Diegan,” he explains. “Our family moved to the Barrio Logan area around 1900 when it was called Logan Heights. I grew up in the South Bay, but we’d come back to Logan constantly.”

Along with Las Cuatro Milpas, one of the marquee restaurants in Barrio Logan was Porkyland, located on the corner of Logan Avenue and Sampson Street—where Becerra’s ¡Salud! restaurant is now.

“I was constantly in this building as a kid,” he remembers, “coming here for Chicano Park and Las Cuatro Milpas.”

Out of high school, Becerra went into mortgages and banking, while cooking tacos as a hobby. He had young kids to support. “Then I got laid off and I told myself I didn’t want to work for anybody anymore,” he says. “I had a scrapbook full of recipes and notes. I didn’t have a dime, maybe $1,500. I told my wife I was going to buy a taco cart. She didn’t like it. My parents didn’t think I was going to make it. I put my head down and got to work.”

For a year and a half, he catered events by himself under the name San Diego Taco Company. Each day, he’d drop his kids off at High Tech High in Point Loma, then drive down Logan Avenue and dream. “It was dead, run-down, not the same,” he remembers.

One day he saw a sign on the door of Porkyland, and he called that number over and over until he got the owner. “It was a pretty gnarly building when I moved in about eight years ago,” he says. “The back was full of trash and syringes. The owner gave me cheap rent and I fixed it up little by little.”

Originally it was just meant to be a tasting room for his catering business. “But we opened the doors and it went gangbusters,” Becerra explains.

He renamed it ¡Salud! and turned it into a living museum of Southern California culture, with skateboard decks, graffiti art, and lowrider iconography. In 2017, the New York Times included a blurb about ¡Salud! and in 2018, Andrew Zimmern pulled down Sampson Street in a convertible blue rider surrounded by a film crew. Becerra couldn’t be there because he had family commitments, but he watched months later as ¡Salud! appeared on an episode of Zimmern’s Travel Channel show, The Zimmern List.

“That’s when I knew,” he says, “look at this little taco shop from the Barrio getting international headlines.”

The post A Love Letter to Tacos appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

In “A Love Letter to Tacos,” we present 13 restaurants around the county, from landmarks like Las Cuatro Milpas in Barrio Logan (which opened in 1933) to barbacoa specialist Aqui Es Texcoco in Chula Vista, and newcomers like The Taco Stand. This list of VITs (Very Important Tacos) gives you a different one to try every month, plus an extra—following the sound life principle to always order one more taco than you think you’ll need. Troy even composed a poem to the object of our collective affections (he does have a degree in poetry, after all). The cover story is not just an ode to the humble comfort food; more importantly, it’s also a celebration of the chefs and restaurant owners who make them—they’re the reason San Diego has some of the best Mexican cuisine in the country. We hope it inspires you to try a new taqueria or revisit an old flame.

Speaking of love, it’s fair to say that the pandemic has tested our relationships, unraveled wedding plans, and put the dating scene on hold. Writers Sarah Pfledderer and Ian Anderson—who each got married last year—dove into these topics for “Love in the Time of COVID.”. Sarah talked to couples who redid their wedding plans from scratch, while Ian asked local divorce lawyers how people have navigated the closure and delays of the court system. Though we learned that divorce filings increased last year, we did find two couples who met online at the beginning of the pandemic and are still together, despite having to quarantine early in their relationship. Their stories are a ray of hope, and remind us that love always wins.

No one wants to relive 2020, but looking back on last year made us want to share how our city is moving forward, so we compiled “10 Reasons to Love San Diego.” It includes stories that don’t often make headlines, such as restaurant owners collaborating to help one another, and the fact that San Diegans donated more money to charities last year than they did in 2019. It also covers historic events, such as the election of the city’s first openly LGBTQ mayor and the city’s participation in the national call for social justice. The stories illustrate that there’s so much more happening in this city beyond the postcard-perfect beachscapes and sunsets. Closer to home, we have gift ideas for Valentine’s Day, how to preserve a flower bouquet, and inspiration for making your favorite room a place you’ll love being in.

From our hearts to yours!

Our favorite tacos from Tuétano Taquería

Olivia Hayo

The post Letter from the Editor: Taco Bout Love appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Very Important Taco: Stingray Taco at TJ Oyster Bar

The South Bay mariscos institution is known for its fresh raw bar, octopus, and smoked and fried fish tacos, but they also cook up a marine delicacy that you don’t commonly see around town: stingray.

It’s not as bizarre as it may seem. Although we shuffle our feet to avoid them in the water, seafood lovers have no reason to fear them in a tortilla.

A close relative to sharks, rays are consumed around the world in a variety of preparations: fermented in Iceland, grilled in Southeast Asian countries, cooked in a stew called cahuamanta in Baja, and at TJ Oyster Bar, finely shredded (it could easily be mistaken for pork at first glance) and slow-cooked in a light broth with onions and peppers. The flavor is surprisingly not fishy or gamey at all—it’s clean and nicely soaks up all the broth, leaving a mild aftertaste reminiscent of squid or cuttlefish.

Order it in a taco topped with cilantro, raw onions, and crema, or atop a crunchy tostada or even in a burrito, and wash it down with a spicy michelada.

Three locations in San Diego 

tjoysterbar

The post Very Important Taco: Stingray Taco at TJ Oyster Bar appeared first on San Diego Magazine.

Fiesta Old Town Cinco de Mayo

Where: Old Town

When: May 4-6

Every year, thousands of visitors flock to Old Town for the biggest Cinco de Mayo celebration in San Diego. Bring your friends and family to this free weekend-long fiesta featuring live music, lucha libre wrestling, and lowrider car shows. Keep an eye out for food and drink specials at local restaurants. Danz Arts will provide Mexican and Spanish dance performances. Enjoy the sounds of traditional mariachi, salsa, and flamenco music as you sip margaritas and indulge in endless bites.

Cinco de Mayo Trail Run

Where: Lake Poway Trail

When: May 4

Looking to earn those tacos and burritos? Look no further than the 5K and 10K Cinco de Mayo Trail Run on the Lake Poway Trail. Compete or bring the whole family just to enjoy a beautiful morning in nature. Additionally, The Kathy Crafts Young Memorial Kids Race is a great fit for kids ages 7 and under who want to burn off some excess energy. Ticket prices range from $10-$40. Registration opens at 6:30 a.m. All participants will receive a race shirt and virtual swag.

Cinco de Mayo: San Diego’s Premier Yacht Party

Where: Grape Street Pier

When: May 5

Party aboard the Hornblower Inspiration yacht’s three levels of music from hip-hop to Latin hits. DJ Esco will spin the tunes, so grab your pals and head over to the harbor. Ticket prices range from $45-$70. Event is from 4-8 p.m.

FOCUS Cinco de Mayo Fiesta

Where: Coronado Community Center

When: May 5

Support this local nonprofit organization while you dine, dance and participate in silent and live auctions. FOCUS Cinco de Mayo Fiesta takes place at the Coronado Community Center from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. and include appetizers and a buffet dinner as well as dancing. Proceeds go toward Friends of Children United Society (FOCUS), a nonprofit that supports battered, abused homeless, disadvantaged, and foster children in San Diego County. Tickets are $100 per person.

Where to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo 2019 in San Diego

Photo: Fiesta Old Town

The post Where to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo 2019 in San Diego appeared first on San Diego Magazine.