Five years ago, husband-and-wife Carmen and Omar Zavala (she originally from Sylmar, he from Lima, Peru) took a chance and bought a restaurant, which had been owned by Carmen’s aunt for much of its existence. They moved down to L.A. from the Bay Area with their two kids and became taqueros.
Taquería Juanito’s has ruled its corner of a strip mall at Victory and Balboa Boulevards for the last 30 years. A snug L-shaped diner, its windows are hung with flags; trippy, taco-themed simulacrums of black light posters by the artist Amos Basilo, recalling the days when half of the Valley was head shops. Here a sombrero-ed dinosaur clutching a fat taco on a Mesozoic mesa; there a forest fairy hovering over a fat burrito between purple, spotted ‘shrooms.