Los Ángeles is a city of tacos, with new taquerías popping up on street corners around the county weekly. To help us get through them all, L.A. TACO presents our Taco of the Week” column, where we celebrate the latest taco we’ve eaten that blew our minds.
Takuma Fumoto is a superhero on Centinela.
Not only because the native of Japan and longtime L.A. street food presence stepped out of his truck in March to defend a mother and her baby from a random attack on the Mar Vista avenue where he operates. But also because he puts yakisoba in his burritos and pork tonkatsu in his quesadillas and manages to make it all work.
Takuma has been constructing U.S. fast food favorites with a Japanese lilt on the L.A. asphalt since first opening a stand in Silver Lake in 2013. There he offered soused revelers fleeing Los Globos the fresh burgers, takoyaki, shaggily battered and audibly crisp waffle fries, and other affordable eats they required in times of great metabolic demand. After getting his truck in 2017, he was driven off the streets by 2020’s plague before making a short-lived reemergence in the old hood.