Cars crawled through a crowded intersection, inches from me, on a recent Wednesday night in Pico Union as I struggled to hold down a bite of a mushy tripas taco. It was so bad that I just sat there on a bus bench wondering how wrong I went with all my life choices. Still, it was the kind of experience that gave me a kind of disastrous joy I can only feel in a city in constant flux, like Los Angeles.
You know that feeling: when everything is against you, but nothing is going to stop you. That’s LA, baby.
Maybe that’s a lot to put on a bad beef-gut taco. But I was reminded recently that seeking truly great tripas tacos in Los Angeles is all about chasing something high-risk, high-reward.
I did something I rarely do that night: I threw away the rest of that gag-inducing taco. Then I shook it off and walked a few feet to another nearby taco stand where I ordered another cow-intestine concoction. This one was even worse than the first. Still, I kept going from place to place all night until I found one that hit that impeccable balance of crunchy and chewy, like high-quality caramelized bacon, with the kind of smoky flavor and rich seasoning that reminded me of family carne asada celebrations in Southeast LA.
I talked with the owners of Sonoratown about my new obsession. Teodoro Diaz-Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s lauded taqueria regularly achieves that balance, and L.A. Taco Editor-in-Chief Javier Cabral has repeatedly named their tripas his favorite.
To my surprise, Diaz-Rodriguez, who is from San Luis Río Colorado in the Mexican state of Sonora, told me he disliked tripas most of his life.
“I like them now,” he explained, adding that even today he doesn’t order it too often at taco shops. “Different people make them different ways. Some people like it more like chewy and underdone, in my opinion. But once we decided to do it here, we did it the way that we like it, which is really crispy.”
Feltham, who grew up in Torrance, also disliked tripas growing up but fell in love with them at Asadero Campas, Diaz-Rodriguez’s family taco shop in San Luis Río Colorado that inspired Sonoratown.
“I came around on it and now,” she said. “I think I really love the way that ours are, where they’re all crispy, almost crackling.”
There is a reason the best tripas are usually the crispiest. Beef small intestine is an extraordinarily fatty cut — and that fat, properly rendered, is what transforms it from something Diaz-Rodriguez called “a funky cut” into something that’s akin to bacon burnt ends.
Diaz-Rodriguez broke it down plainly: the tripas lose roughly 70 percent of their weight by the time Sonoratown is done with them, that mass departing as rendered grease. Most places, he said, undercook theirs to avoid that loss.
“We make the least amount of profit on it,” Feltham added. “It reduces so much. But it’s so important for us to have.”
Feltham talked about how Diaz-Rodriguez’s dad — her father-in-law — grew up eating all the offal cuts like guts, head, tongue, lips and even cheeks. Those were the cheapest cuts — the ones the market didn’t want.
Offal has always been the food of necessity before it became a staple. In Mexico, tripas, lengua and cabeza were the cuts left behind after the upper-middle-class customers took what they wanted — the scraps that working-class families turned into something worth eating, then worth craving, then worth driving across the city for.
“It’s a beautiful part of Mexican culture to make something beautiful out of something that a lot of people don’t see much value in,” she said. “Like, you cook it so many times and make it beautiful. Make it something coveted, something from nothing.”
I spent the past three months chasing that transformation trying more than 30 tacos, including some truly bad tripas that made me want to vomit (again) with just one bite. But also finding some that made me feel like I was eating at a Michelin restaurant with a six-month-long reservation list, even when I was just leaning against my car at a gas station in South LA.
There are great tripas tacos all over LA County. But these 13 taquerias are the best I’ve had.
No. 13 Taquería Frontera
Northeast LA
700 Cypress Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065
Silverlake
2590 Unit D, Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039
For my money, Taquería Frontera is the only taco shop brazen enough to get away with serving ultra soft tripas. That’s because the addictive salsa roja they come drenched in does all the heavy lifting that crispiness usually handles. The heat wakes everything up and binds the tacos flavors and textures. Suddenly the soft, yielding mushiness isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. You’re not chasing crunch anymore. You’re chasing that next bite.
No. 12 Tacos El Vampiro
San Fernando Valley
12737 Glenoaks Blvd., Ste. 27, Sylmar, CA 91342
The name is everything. Tacos El Vampiro started on a sidewalk in Sylmar, wedged between a nail salon and a laundromat off Glenoaks, and graduated to a brick-and-mortar spot without losing any of its street-corner soul. They’re known for the vampiro — a Sinaloan street snack that is essentially a grilled tortilla crisped to a cracker, melted cheese underneath, meat on top, the whole thing finished with asiento, a savory unrefined pork fat left over from making carnitas. Their extra crispy tripas are also the best in the San Fernando Valley. You can get them in a taco but the vampiro is definitely the move.
No. 11 Brothers Cousins Tacos
Palms
3118 S Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034
Brothers Cousins Tacos is the Westside’s least kept secret at this point and probably its best taqueria. So you’ll have to wait in a long line for this one. But it goes fast and is worth it. The pop-up operates out of a parking lot on Sepulveda. It does not accept credit cards, does not have a dining room and does not care. Tacos are meant to be eaten over the hood of your car anyway. Their tripas are cooked so crispy that they develop a burnt-end gristle quality — salty, fatty, with a little char at the edges, stacked into double tortillas with grilled onions and whatever you can grab from the condiment setup. It’s a late-night operation, which means this is the place to end a long Friday rather than start a Sunday. If you’re the kind of person who drives across town for tacos, you’ve probably already been. If not, become that person.
No. 10 El Sauz
Long Beach
1616 E Anaheim St, Long Beach, CA 90813
LAist’s award-winning food writer Gab Chabran, whose friends call him the “Wolf of Long Beach,” said El Sauz remains a staple in the LBC after all these years. Writing for L.A. Taco in 2020, Chabran said El Sauz “serves up the crispiest tripas found on this side of the 405. The super-thin, ribbon-like-cuts of meat are deep-fried into a crisp. The final tripa product is akin to the wonton strips you’d find in Chinese chicken salad.” I can confirm that six years later, that’s still very much the case.
No. 9 Tacos Tamix
Pico Union
1998-1982 S Hoover St, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Inglewood
4801 Lennox Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90304
Tacos Tamix made its name on al pastor. James Beard-winning author Bill Esparza has consistently ranked them among the best in the city. But their tripas are also worth the late-night crawl to find them on any given night, parked on the lot of a Mobil gas station on South Hoover in Pico Union or outside a corner store on the Inglewood Lennox border. The tripas here come with a musky, mineral edge that will really remind you that you are eating intestine. And I say that as a huge compliment. But make sure you order them extra crispy or you will taste that a little more than you may be able to handle.
No. 8 Tacos El Chivo
Downtown Los Angeles
1238 E Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90021
Tacos El Chivo is a Tijuana-style taco shop that sits in the Piñata District stretch of East Olympic, tucked off the street in a way that feels like its spinning trompo is the light at the end of a long tunnel. The tripas here are served in a mix of shapes, color, sizes and textures that remind me more of ordering mixed carnitas. Each bite feels different which feels intentional. They are unified by a smoky flavor that is undoubtedly mixed with the carbon monoxide of downtown LA, which is one of my favorite essential seasonings. Take advantage of the robust toppings bar and throw some refried beans and guacamole salsa on them for the full El Chivo experience.
No. 7 Tacos EL TIO
Boyle Heights
918 N Soto St., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Tacos EL TIO — yes, in all caps — is open until 3 in the morning, parked on Soto, operating next to a gas station as the kind of late-night taco truck that Boyle Heights has always been built around. The tacos are tiny, the tripas are mighty, the price is unbeatable. I’m talking $2 per taco. The tripas are toasted to an almost pink hue resembling chopped chunks of fried calamari. It’s gone in two bites but the umami stays with you.
No. 6 Taqueria Mi Castia
South LA
418 E Vernon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90011
Taqueria Mi Castia is a sit-down taqueria in South LA with almost no social media presence or media attention. That means it’s survived the post-pandemic economy all on word-of-mouth and thin handmade corn tortillas that crisp up when they’re cooked. Mi Castia’s tripas are also crispy and flavorful with just a hint of sweetness that comes from well-cleaned tripas. The vibe is neighborhood institution, the kind of place where people eat menudo every weekend, which they probably do.
No. 5 Los 5 Puntos
Boyle Heights
3300 E Cesar E Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90063
This is not just a taco shop. Los 5 Puntos is a carnicería and dried goods market that has stood at the five-point intersection of Cesar Chavez, Lorena, and Indiana since 1967 — the same corner where the first Chicano Moratorium march against the Vietnam War began. It is, in other words, a piece of living Chicano history that also happens to make some of the best handmade corn tortillas in Los Angeles. The tortillas are thick and pillow-soft, pressed to order in front of you on a flat grill, and they are the reason everything else at Los 5 Puntos tastes the way it does. The tripas are chewy and not quite crispy, but not soft either. Los 5 Puntos is all about how that texture works with their iconic tortillas and incredible guacamole — proof that they’ve taken a lot of time and effort to make this cheap cut of meat work.
No. 4 Tacos Don Goyo
Southeast LA
8502 Telegraph Rd., Downey, CA 90240
San Gabriel Valley
17200 Railroad St., City of Industry, CA 91748
Owner Ricardo Jasso named the restaurant after his father, Don Goyo, and opened the first Downey location in early 2018, just one month after his father’s death in Mexico City, a place where Jasso had spent 18 years dreaming of opening it. Today, Tacos Don Goyo is a tiny Mexico City-style chain that specializes in flames. By which I mean, they love to have the meat touch the fire. It could explain why their tripas are deep red and shatteringly crunchy. They are slightly over seasoned, which is intentional because they are topped with a glob of guacamole to balance it out.
No. 3 Santa Cecilia Restaurant
Boyle Heights
Mariachi Plz De Los, 1707 Pleasant Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
At first glance, Santa Cecilia looks like an old sign over an old school dungeon window at the north end of the iconic Mariachi Plaza. But it’s actually one of the best Mexican restaurants in LA. You just have to know what’s up.
The main entrance is in the back — and they have parking! — where you can find some small wire-framed tables that remind me of cenadurias in Mexico that are equal parts patio and living room. The meals here also feel like you’re eating at an abuela’s home kitchen restaurant. Their Taco Grande de Tripa is cow intestines shredded into lean ribbons fried on a griddle and served on an oversized handmade corn tortilla. It’s topped with a green salsa, chopped onions and cilantro which sounds simple but looks like a small work of art. Each bite is a Picasso, too, just salt and fat and pepper and crunch.
No. 2 Tacos La Carreta
Southeast LA
11402 Washington Blvd., Whittier, CA 90606
Long Beach
3480 E 69th St., Long Beach, CA 90805
Tacos La Carreta hails from my parents’ home state of Sinaloa. So everything they serve reminds me of family cookouts which means the meats are cooked over charcoal and the tortillas and salsas are made from scratch. They cook their tripas twice: boiled first, then on the griddle. And uniquely, they’re served crispy with some softer pieces of tripas mixed in. It adds a kind of texture that feels a bit like you’re biting into chunks of pork belly.
No. 1 Sonoratown
Downtown Los Angeles
208 E 8th St., Los Angeles CA 90014
Mid-City
5610 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90019
Long Beach
244 E 3rd Street, Long Beach, CA 90802
Sonoratown’s tripas tacos are the best for a variety of reasons. But it all starts with the process of cleaning them thoroughly and seasoning them with lots of salt — fat needs a lot of salt, Feltham told me, think about bacon — then boiled. The boiling process removes a lot of the fat, which is saved for later. First, the tripas are transferred to the mesquite grill to pick up smoke. Finally, they are finished in a wok over the open flame, bubbling in a brick of their own rendered fat until they’re done, crackling like pork rinds.
When you combine that with Sonoratown’s homemade flour tortillas cooked in lard, a bit of crispy cabbage, a touch of their chile de arbol salsa and a dab of their liquid avocado sauce, you get a taco that I’d argue can compete with any bite at any five-star establishment. But if you want to go one level up, get a tripas “Caramelo” — which is twice as big, and includes Jack cheese and pinto beans — and add a smoked poblano pepper to it.
