After a very long two-year hiatus, L.A. TACO is excited to announce the return of our live Taco Madness event. Our all-ages and in-person taco event brings L.A.'s best taquerías to one place and makes a party out of it to celebrate the champion of our fierce online taco tournament. All in the name of supporting the original daily street-level journalism that you see every day on lataco.com. For this year, our taco event will take place at Santa Anita Racetrack overlooking the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains. There will be free parking! There will be ice-cold draft beer for sale! And most importantly, there will be tacos of all crispy and soft textures and juicy fillings.
This will be L.A. TACO's eighth taco event. Fun fact: Taco Madness was the very first taco event in Los Angeles, going a dozen years back to 2010. Since then, we have thrown the best damn taco event we could. Why? The reality is that it's not easy to make our little news trompo sustainable and live food events like Taco Madness help us keep going. All ticket sales go towards funding our newsroom and making more breaking and investigative stories happen.
Now, without further delay, presenting our 2022 taquería participants.
Our first-ever back-to-back online Taco Madness champions behind Highland Park's seven-layer taco of your dreams, specializing in al carbon-grilled carne asada—made from carne ranchera (flap meat) and handmade chorizo on handmade blue corn tortillas proudly made from American-grown organic corn in Boyle Heights via Kernel of Truth Organics.
Community-building and slowly building up the flavor of their carnitas the old-fashioned way via confit is at the heart of this up-and-coming carnitas specialist out of Hawthorne. Their carnitas is so good that they quickly grew out of their home-based operation into a bonafide brick and mortar location in Inglewood.
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In L.A.’s cutthroat taquero wars, Jonathan Perez of Macheen has fought his way to stand out from the rest. His creative vision for tacos knows no bounds and earned him the Taco Madness championship two years ago.
The incredibly juicy and savory flavor bombs known as Teddy's Red Tacos quesabirrias almost need no introduction. They are pioneers in L.A.'s birria wars and fresh from winning our first-ever BirriaManía live taco event last month. They will be bringing it to Arcadia this Saturday!
L.A.'s undisputed flauta specialist taquero is set to rock your crispy taco expectations this Saturday with his arsenal of rolled taquitos including fillings such as fluffy papa, maguey-roasted lamb barbacoa, chipotle-stewed chicken, and more. All on his elongated delicious corn tortillas that he gets especially made for maximum tubular biting circumference, and of course, a salsa roja inspired by his pioneering father-in-law taquero.
Tacos y Que came out swinging two years ago when they first participated in Taco Madness! They exceeded everyone's expectations and made it far! Their loyal base of fans out in Whittier—where the tacos are cuter—backed them up for their juicy Korean-style galbi tacos on Sonoran flour tortillas, and you can bet they will be bringing it this Saturday at the racetrack.
In the world of tacos, Tijuana-style tacos de asada just hit differently. Tacos Don Cuco are the OGs from Tijuana who has earned the respect of the streets of East L.A. for their handmade tortillas and unwatered-down guacamole. They will be displaying their art of carne asada on full display this Saturday.
Tickets for Taco Madness 2022 happening this Saturday, May 21st from 2 to 7 PM are available here. Every single dollar from our ticket sales goes towards supporting our independent newsroom. (Tickets are $15, which includes free parking, live music, and other non-food vendors selling merch soon to be announced.)
