[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]f you’re eating a blue corn tortilla in Los Angeles and you’re not at a fancy Mexican restaurant, chances are that it is just a regular white corn tortilla dyed blue with artificial food coloring.
This is one of the sad realities that you find out while visiting Kernel of Truth Organics and hanging out with co-founder Ricardo “Rick” Ortega. The Echo Park native and his new Boyle Heights tortilleria want to change that reality.
Kernel of Truth Organics is the first and only full tortilleria in L.A. making tortillas from certified organic American corn. For the first time since Ortega and his business partner Omar Ahmed started in 2014, they are offering their tortillas — including those blue ones — at retail to the public. They sell the chewy disks of corn gold at $3.99 a dozen on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It's $2.99 for their yellow corn ones.
Until January of this year, their business focused mostly on restaurants; they were operating at a tiny space in El Mercado de East Los Angeles and couldn’t handle more production. But since the future of that historic building is in turmoil — as it attempts to become something that “hipsters are into” — it had long been time for KOTO’S operation to find a new home.