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“How do the tacos help gumbo?” Hold the tacos, New Orleans says. In yet another pig-ignorant move in Post-Katrina New Orleans, local politicians have decided to destroy the booming taco-truck business that is feeding the workers (and plenty of the locals) who are rebuilding the city. Blame racism, blame taxes, blame immigration politics: A hundred years ago this line of reasoning would have banned the muffulettas and poor-boys that those invading hordes of Sicilians were using to corrupt our youth.“

Hola taco mijos y mijias! It’s been too long! Been crunching at work and finishing finals! But we’re back with some major taco updates and a summer chock full of taco eating!
Pink Taco Party Recap- 6th and Imperial

The Pink Taco party, hosted by yours truly and our taco buddy W.Dot was a major success! Over 500 taco loving Angelenos found their way east of downtown to a wherehouse on 6th and Imperial. Hot mijos y mijas got loaded and tore up the dance floor to sets by our homies NO MSG, Them Jeans, and Royal Rumble. And despite a last minute taco replacement by Poquito Mas (Echo Park’s Taco Zone couldn’t make the party)- the carne asada, pollo and veggie tacos (damn veggie hipsters) sold like mad. Fellow Taco Blogger Hadley from from LATACO showed up too- which was definately an evening high-lite. Get down to the pics page and find yoself!
Official Pink Taco Party Flickr Stream.

Tacos Villa Corona- Atwater Village

Located on Glendale Boulvard between Larga and Atwater Avenue is Tacos Villa Corona- a family owned and operated Atwater staple. It’s literally a hole-in-the-wall joint where you can watch with pleasure as the owners cook your food to order. Famously known for their amazing breakfast burritos (eating a Spinach-Bacon-Egg-Salsa Roja Burrito every friday morning on the way to work is a ritual for me), Tacos Villa Corona, as the name implies, serve tacos. Except, they aren’t your normal taco variety.

Tacos Villa Corona serve up Potato Tacos which is pretty rare in this taco town. Stranger yet is that Tacos Villa Corona have Carne Asada on the menu within their tostadas, nachos and burritos. When I asked the owner’s son about this- he said he had no idea as to why the family decided to change their taco content policy. Strange strange strange.

I ordered up three Potato tacos- because I figured carb on carb action was going to be filling. Inside the corn tortillas, were TVC’s homefriend potates. Delicious in the burritos, the potatoes didn’t do much to save the tacos from being meatless. The queso was tasty enough but overall- a potato taco isn’t much of a taco to an Al Pastor lover like myself. The salsa roja had a good piping edge to it.

Disappointed by the lack of meat in my tacos- I ordered the best next thing: a carne asada tostada.

Now we were talking my language! The carne asada was savory, juicy, and soft as all hell. Coupled with black beans, some shredded lettuce, tomatoes, a hard shell and some cheese- this made my taco-less afternoon worthwhile. I folded up this bad boy- and pretended it was a taco. It invoked a King Taco carne asada sope- which isn’t a bad comparison at all.

No horchata was available which was poops mcgee- but over all- the tostada was a worth venture. The folks at Tacos Villa Corona are friendly as all hell and will be happy to chat up Atwater history with you. Its rare to find such an authentic vegetarian friendly Mexican food joint that even your hippie vegan friends can enjoy.

Taco Rating: B-

Tostada Rating: A

Breakfast Burrito Rating: A+++

Horchata Rating: N/A

Salsa Roja: Hot!

Tacos Villa Corona
3185 Glendale Blvd

Open Early-4pm (Or When Food runs out)

Be there or be square! I’m working to get a new taco lady- the one I had wanted to over charge me.

…at least for pushcart vendors in Gardena. Matt Korba tips us to the possible end of street vendors in Gardena .

There’s an article about it here, and one from the Daily Breeze. Where a person states

“..But, I don’t want them here. It’s not healthy. I’m pretty sure if they sell tamales on the street corner, they can’t be too clean.”

Well, I’m all for sanitary food, but street food, at least in every other country, is some of the tastiest food and I’d hate to see the end of tasty food.

Today: Dia del Taco

Building the Taco Dream

Anthony and I are both 2nd year MFA students at USC’s School of Cinematic Art’s Interactive Media Program. We bonded over a love of weird and historical places in Los Angeles and food- in particular-tacos. And thats pretty much how goodgoings.com came to be.

In one of our interactive design classes we were issued a challenge. Take a 30×12 inch Ikea Cabinet and create something interactive out of it in one week. I toyed around with building a re-creation of the World 1 in Super Mario Bros and a puppet theatre, but decided I needed to inject some taco loving into the project. Thus I decided to make a taco machine.

The concept is simple. Place your taco on the conveyor belt, turn on the machine, dispense your taco ingredients, and eat away. I sat down with my pops (a mechanical engineer) and talked feasiblity- and we decided it was do-able. I called up a family friend- Frank the Carpenter- and pitched him the idea. We immediately came up with a list of the ingredients and hit up Lowe’s for the parts. This past sunny Sunday- we set out to the build the mofo in my parent’s backyard.

The first task was getting the crank-shaft conveyor belt running. Which wasn’t that hard.

Then we decided to power the belt with a motor. However, we couldn’t get enough torque out of the motor Frank had handy. So we decided to strap on a powerdrill and control it with a light dimmer switch. Worked like a charm.

That baby can pull a cadre of hippopottami. The drill sounds like a jet liner passing overheard- giving the machine a sense of power that no 30 by 12 inch box should have. One’s taco will fire out of the machine like a bat out of hell if you don’t just kiss the dimmer. For a second, I felt like Tim Allen in Home Improvement- giving out a grunt of manliness. Thats the first time in my life that I had ever done that.
I brought the contraption to my department’s weekly seminar, where we had to present our creations. And present I did:

People were feeling the asada my ma and I whipped up. However, it was near impossilbe for the user to get the meat to dispense from the plastic squeeze bottles I designed the machine around. One had to resort to quickly scooping their ingredients onto their tortilla and saving the squeezing for the salsa verde and salsa roja I had stocked at the end of the treadmill. We soon found out, that the power on the treadmill made for great tortilla launching. Still, the tacos were in hot demand.

Overall, the concept was solid, I but failed to take into account the dispensers. The meat simply got plugged up in the tubes. I should figured out the meat dispensary problem out before designing the holding mechanism. A lesson learned, indeed.

The next iteration will be fully automated: where the food will dispense according to the position of the taco. The blue sky idea is to have a custom taco machine- where you can input your taco desire and have it neatly served directly into your mouth. They got automatic sushi machines in Japan.

Its just a matter of time till we get an automatic taco machine. I’m on it.

Me and my Taco Machine.

Occidental Showdown

Rambo’s Tacos is a staple for the kids over at Occidental. Open late and decently priced, it keeps the good people of Eagle Rock satiated. I lived in Eagle Rock, for a good while, but never gave much thought to the taco Rambo’s offered- they simply offered a late night snack.

I returned to Rambo’s with Anthony- a bit older, wiser, and with a discerning taco tongue. So we put the tacos to the test.

I ordered a batch of carnitas and carne asada tacos. After smothering one of each kind with both salsa verde y roja I took a bite.

The carnitas were a bit on the bland side- crispy, as I tend to prefer, but not very savory. Even with salsa roja- the carnitas were a definite: “m’yeh”.

The carne asada on the other hand, was quite delicious. The pieces were sliced evenly and had a tinge of chardness- which gave them an almost smoky like quality. Biting in yielded
some juicy bites and I was quite impressed.

Unfortunately, Rambo no tiene Horchata- which deeply saddened my poor Panamanian heart. I ran down the street to the veggie taco joint: Leo’s but they offered no refreshment either. Sadly, I ended up dousing my burning tongue with Diet Coke. No bueno.

Still, when your at All Star Lanes getting hammered on cheap whiskey on Saturday Nights- Rambo offers your late night carne fix. Not the best, but not too bad over all.
Rambo’s Tacos
Location: On the Corner of Eagle Rock and York Boulevards in La Ciudad de Eagle Rock
Positives: Price (1.05), Full Variety of Tacos (Lingua to Pollo), Asada is delish
Negatives: “M’yeh” carnitas, NO HORCHATA
Salsa Roja: HOT
Rating: B
Open Daily: 7pm- 2am