Taco Tuesday: Taco Tour Downtown

Tue, Aug 21, 2007

For today’s Taco Tuesday we head downtown for our first official Taco Tour. Our Taco Tour takes us on the Metro to Grand Central Market and Olvera St. We get off on the Pershing Square exit and we cross the street to Grand Central Market. For those of you who haven’t been, Grand Central Market is LA’s oldest open air market. Occupied by stalls of fresh fruits and vegetables, food vendors and meat butchers, the market is one of downtown LA’s hidden gems. They hold some of the best taco stands in the city. We decide to hit up Roast to Go.

I’ve eaten here before, but wanted to take my fellow taco lovers to this tasty place. The tacos are massive, filled with meat, cilantro, onions and a spicy hot sauce. They are only two dollars each and with a whole day of tacos ahead of me, I should have only ordered one. But I wanted to try both the carne asada and carnitas. Both were juicy and full of wonderful flavor.

We rest our stomachs for a bit and hop back on the metro to Union Station. We walk across the street to LA’s oldest street, Olveras St. We start at the north end and stop in at Rodolfo’s for some crunchy tacos and taquitos. After the massive meat tacos at Roast to Go, these were slightly disappointing. They didn’t have much meat and were kind of dry. The taquitos here are much better. They come drenched in a flavorful avocado sauce, although it’s hardly guacamole as they call it.

We walk around for a bit to browse the aisles of leather goods, Mexican wrestling masks and panderia goodies. The hot sun is beating down, so we decide to throw some margaritas into the mix. We make our last taco stop El Paseo Inn. The thought of fresh hand made tortillas to go with our margaritas is irresistible. We order two of each, carnitas, carne asada and chicken. All three are made with over sized fresh corn tortillas. All three varieties were very good and I highly recommend this place for drinks and tacos.

We were filled to the brim with tacos, but that wasn’t enough to keep us from stopping in at Mr Churro for some cream filled homemade churros. These aren’t your amusement park churros, these things are fresh, doughy, cream filled goodness.

We dub the first ever taco tour a success and head home on the metro with our full bellies and taco smiles. Who knows where our next taco tour will take us.