Cemitas Tepeaca - East LA

Now that I’ve been back in LA I’ve had the itch to get back on the taco beat. But there is the matter of blogging about all the tacos I had prior to going out of town. Ideally my preference is to write about the tacos I eat either that day or the day after. The experience is fresher in my mind. Did I like the tacos? If I didn’t like the tacos maybe something happened at the truck I could write about. It’s LA where all walks of life go to taco trucks: low life degenerates, weirdos, hipsters, preppies, the criminally insane, food bloggers, laborers, immigrants, day-trippers, white collar, blue collar, no collar. If you pay attention you could blog just about what happens at taco trucks.



I went to the Cemitas Tepeaca truck two blocks south of Atlantic Blvd on Beverly in East LA a couple months ago. There are a few trucks under this name. I’ve reviewed the one in Boyle Heights. There’s also one that parks across from Los Cinco Puntos on Cesar Chavez. I’ll try that one soon too.

I haven’t found that many taco trucks in this area of East LA. The area around Atlantic and Beverly has become more modernized with strip malls and chain stores. Strip malls have no imagination. They suck out the soul of a city. You can see the city losing its romance. You can feel it viscerally. Sometimes though all it takes is a drive through the winding streets of somewhere like City Terrace and you can feel the romance again. Not of a lover, but of a real city. Yeah, maybe the walls have graffiti and the buildings are run down but at least it is the people's template.



My plate came loaded up with all kinds of goodies: a grilled jalapeno, limes, radishes, pickled onions and carrots. The meat was packed into small tortillas. The chorizo was greasy with little crisp bits of tasty sausage. Each taco came with a dollop of a great spicy salsa roja (they ask if you want green or red). Any faults the meats had were masked by everything else going on. For one of the beef tacos, I went what a friend of mine coined “the full bandini” and just rolled everything inside: some pickled onions, a jalapeno, and a slice of carrot. It was delicious.

They serve tacos arabes and of course the cemita poblana but you’re better off just letting them load your plate up with $1 tacos and if you’re lucky a nice blistering orange jalapeno.

3.5/5

Cemitas Tepeaca
S. Atlantic and E. Beverly
East Los Angeles
90022
Tacos $1