Taquería Frontera’s second location in Silver Lake was supposed to open on Cinco de Mayo.
It would’ve been a perfect, poetic L.A. moment: Our #1 taquería in the city expanding into one of its most visible neighborhoods, just in time for Dodger baseball and late-spring patio nights.
Instead, it launched this past Friday afternoon, with about a dozen people standing in the rain waiting for the official grand opening and owner Juan Carlos Guerra—who everyone calls J.C.—rushing across the parking lot under a giant sign that read “More tacos, less borders.”
“Party walking through,” he yells, carrying several bottles of tequila to his car. “These are left over from our friends and family night.”
Before I spoke to J.C., I sauntered over to talk to some of the customers, including a local resident named Wendy, who said she was so eager for Frontera to open these past six months, that she made sure she was first in line even in the rain.
“I’ve been hearing it’s going to open for so long,” Wendy explains. “The other location has too long of a line, so when I saw it was finally opening here, I wanted to make sure I was here early enough to be first.”
Most of the time, a restaurant opening is delayed by logistics like a broken water pipe, health and safety inspections, or because they don’t have enough employees. But when I asked J.C. why he postponed his much awaited sequel to this taco oasis, his answer cut straight through any hype or PR polish.
“It didn’t feel right,” he told me. “ICE was out. Street vendors were hiding. Taco trucks weren’t working. The energy was off.”
And he meant that. While other businesses might have powered ahead, J.C. did something almost unthinkable in the restaurant industry: he kept paying two full crews—a Cypress Park team and the team he had ready to go for the Silver Lake location—for four months while he waited for the community to feel safe again.
No soft opening, no celebrity night, no ribbon-cutting. Just training, prepping, and holding space.
“How could I celebrate when people who feed our city couldn’t even work?” he said.
This is who J.C. is. If you’ve followed Frontera’s rise, you already know the headlines: second-generation taquero from Tijuana, real-estate-agent-turned-trompo-wizard, a #1 spot on L.A. TACO's 69 Best Tacos list, and a runaway hit of an al pastor operation that went from pop-up to must-visit in months. But the real story, the one I found standing in front of me across the taco counter, as I savored a bowl of their stunning lengua birria, is quieter. More rooted. Spiritual, even.
J.C. grew up in TJ around his father’s legendary taco chain, Tijuanazo, absorbing the ritual of taco-making without even realizing it. It wasn’t until years later—after a “just for fun” pop-up at Rancho Market, after nights spent perfecting salsa temperatures and days spent marinating meats by hand—that he realized how deeply it was in his blood.
“My dad told me to do this 15 years ago,” he said. “Imagine if I’d listened.”
He laughs now, but only because he knows timing is fate. Timing gave him Cypress Park. Timing gave him Silver Lake. And timing, in this case, told him to wait.
The irony is that during the ICE raids, Frontera actually got busier. With many street vendors forced into hiding, people came to his brick-and-mortar in Cypress Park for their tacos. To the point that the lines seemingly never stopped. It was great for business but it also kept J.C. up at night.
“It was bittersweet,” he said. “We were slammed. But every day, I was thinking about the people who couldn’t sell. People who asked me for work. People who lost a whole day’s income.”
More proof that the economics of tacos in L.A. isn’t just about hunger—it’s about community.
It’s why J.C. still gets up every morning to make sure Frontera is living up to the standards of that community.
“I still make all the salsas,” he said. “I marinate all the meats. The adobo, everything.”
You can feel the commitment in this new Silver Lake location just as much as in the original.
And to be honest, what struck me wasn’t the shiny new space or the Dodger-friendly proximity. It was the taste.
J.C.’s lengua birria hit me like a memory. One bite and I was back in the Altamira neighborhood of Tijuana, early in the morning eating lengua birria tacos with my high school buddies before going to bed after a long night on La Revolucion.
That’s what Frontera is bringing to Silver Lake: a piece of the border in taco form.
J.C. says people who haven’t been able to return to Mexico because of their legal status cry when they eat his tacos. They tell him it’s the closest thing to home. J.C. cries with them.
“Something so simple,” he told me, “can make someone feel like they’re back in Tijuana again.”
And in a moment when the community is still navigating raids, fear, and the politics of belonging, maybe that’s the exact thing L.A. needs: a place where a taco can bring people together and truly live J.C.’s motto of “More tacos, less borders.”
Taquería Frontera ~ 2590 Glendale Blvd. Silver Lake, CA 90039
