Even beyond the assumed pleasures of eating along Olympic Taco Row, Boyle Heights continues to be a contender for the best taco neighborhood in all of Los Angeles. You don’t really ever need to venture out of Olympic Boulevard since it hosts more than enough regional styles to geek out about. However, there are plenty of other spots worth venturing out and appreciating in the historic neighborhood east of the L.A. River, including more mariscos and, yes, more tacos.
Whenever you grow out of Taco Row or are feeling taco curious, here is the perfect afternoon taco crawl to break you out of your Boyle Heights shell.
X’Tiousu Kitchen
This paisa-owned Oaxacan-Lebanese concept in the outskirts where Boyle Heights meets City Terrace is one of the neighborhood’s most delicious and important restaurants. In Los Angeles, no matter the type of food or price range in a restaurant, you can count on the back-of-house staff (line cooks, runners, bussers, dishwashers) being made up of mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America. This restaurant marrying two of the boldest tasting cuisines in the world is a direct result: two Indigenous brothers from Oaxaca who worked in a Lebanese restaurant in West L.A. who decided to do their own thing in this part of town. What you get is a menu that fully lives up to that powerful “only in L.A.” saying, including black bean falafel with a “salsa arabesca,” which is one of the most exciting salsas—made of tahini and tomatillo—that I’ve had in years.