Tacos, Los Angeles and Me: Spilled Milk #381
The taco is more than flavor: It’s history wrapped in a tortilla. Here are five taco spots in L.A. you've got to visit.
Today’s newsletter includes:
A short history of the taco, which dates back centuries, to a time long before the arrival of the Spanish in Mesoamerica.
A discussion of the taco scene in Los Angeles, plus some of the places where you can find great food writing about the city’s best taco spots.
A list of five great L.A. taco shops you should consider visiting.
Let’s cut through the mythologies and talk tacos, those humble, tortilla-hugged parcels you pick up at the street corner, which carry centuries of cultural sediment. The story of the taco is not just the story of one of Mexico’s culinary triumphs, but also of migration, labor, colonial transformations and globalization.
Tortillas from maize (nixtamalized corn) were already the foundation of Mesoamerican diets long before the arrival of the Spanish. Indigenous peoples, including the Aztecs, made tortillas (tlaxcalli in Náhuatl) to cradle ingredients: beans, chillies, squash and various stewed meats. These warm tortillas served effectively as edible spoons. The basic mold was set: a pliable disc of corn, a savory filling, wrapped and ready for consumption. I am one of those people who believed that the taco was invented the day tortillas made from maize were invented, and anyone hungry would’ve grabbed one of those tortillas and used it like a pair of tongs in their hand, pulling meat, fish or vegetables out of a pot or pan and eating it as wrapped food.
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The word “taco” and the shape we now expect, a soft corn or flour tortilla folded around meat, salsa and garnishes, are a more recent consideration. One compelling theory traces the term to the silver mines of 18th-century Mexico, where “taco” referred to a small bundle of paper used to pack gunpowder for blasting ore. The idea: Miners called their lunch tortillas “tacos de minero,” perhaps by metaphor. Linguistically, there’s another angle: from the Náhuatl “tlaco,” meaning “half” or “in the middle,” or “itacatl,” meaning “provision” or snack.
By the late 19th century, the word appears in dictionaries as food. The taco became a feature of urban street-food life in Mexico City, consumed by workers, students and the mobile urban masses. The arrival of Spanish ingredients — cattle, pork, wheat flour, and new cooking methods — added a further vector. Post-conquest, new meats (beef, pork), new fats (lard), new flours and a new layering of flavors entered the mix. You can see where this is going.
Regional variation blossomed: In Northern Mexico, you might find flour-tortilla tacos; in the Bajío and Mexico City, you find the famous al pastor, descended from Lebanese shawarma via vertical spits (trompos); and in the coastal zones, you find fish tacos.
When tacos crossed the border into the United States, particularly into California and the American Southwest, they changed again: flour tortillas, “hard shell” interpretations, fusion with Americana and the ever-innovating burrito sibling. But despite all the reinventions, the taco remains the original portable meal: one hand, a tortilla, a bite. It’s literally culture in motion.
Next time you bite into a taco, remember you’re part of a chain of thousands of years of maize agriculture, colonial trade, immigrant adaptation, street-food hustle and, yes, maybe the odd blast from a miner’s black-powder charge. The taco is more than flavor: It’s history wrapped in a tortilla.
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