Every Friday, guests line up for Poncho’s Tlayudas in Historic South Central, a puesto from Alfonso “Poncho” Martínez that offers folded tlayudas made in the style he grew up with in Oaxaca’s Central Valleys.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
13 excellent Latin American restaurants from the 101 Best Restaurants guide
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Latin American cuisines are embedded in the DNA of L.A.’s culinary landscape. Drive down the Boyle Heights stretch of Olympic Boulevard, and you’ll see loncheras offering regional Mexican specialties such as crispy, Jalisco-style seafood tacos and spit-roasted tacos arabes that trace back to Puebla from morning until late night. In Koreatown, the El Salvador Community Corridor is a dense collection of street stands that run along Vermont Avenue from West 11th Street down to West Adams Boulevard, where vendors sell everything from Salvadoran pantry staples to pupusas, tortas and frescos.
Beyond those enclaves, there are countless chefs and restaurants proudly touting the vast culinary traditions of Latin America, from a Friday pop-up serving up massive Oaxacan tlayudas to a colorful Colombian spot in Long Beach that weaves in California influence. Here are 13 terrific restaurants from the 2023 101 Best Restaurants Guide that celebrate Latin flavors. — Danielle Dorsey
Showing Places
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Bar Amá
Downtown L.A. Tex-Mex $$
Josef Centeno’s cooking has always been about intersections — about considering ingredients shared between cuisines from disparate parts of the world, grafting unexpected flavors (the melting rightness of scallops in his tacos dorados, for example) and, increasingly, defining ways that indulgence and sustainability might coexist on the plate. At his downtown cantina, Centeno entwines notions of home: the place he came from, and the city he chose. The San Antonio native stays faithful to the joys of Tex-Mex, one of the country’s great regional cuisines. His queso is molten gold. His tangy, cheesy green chicken enchiladas, based on his mother’s recipe, are one of the city’s elemental comfort foods. But his romance with Golden State vegetables shares equal billing. Elotes pop with cherry tomatoes in summer, sweet potatoes shine with coconut butter and pomegranate molasses come winter. The selection never stays still. Centeno’s influences meet in his saucy, billowing take on puffy tacos, a San Antonio specialty (and a secret menu item here; just ask for them) with origins linked to Arturo’s Puffy Taco in Whittier. Eat them fast before they collapse in a cloud of masa, and chase every second or third bite with sips of the bar’s pitch-perfect, tart-sweet margarita.
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(SHELBY MOORE)
Damian
Downtown L.A. Mexican $$$
It began as Mexico City-based chef Enrique Olvera’s grandly announced entrance to the L.A. market, but Damian has settled into a restaurant that feels intentionally engaged with the city. In a region so rich in Mexican food culture, Damian’s leadership team, led by Jesús “Chuy” Cervantes, seems to ask through its cooking: What can we bring to the conversation? Answers come in such forms as salmon tostada spread with Sungold tomatoes and smoky, shatteringly crisp Chicatana ants (a luxury ingredient in Oaxaca and other regions of Mexico), and a masterpiece centered around a meaty bulb of celery root that has been nixtamalized, baked, then braised in garlic, lemon and butter. Brunch is a sleeper weekend destination: Go for the comforts of lamb birria and Korean-inspired fried chicken sheathed in a batter of rice and white corn flours. Day or night equally flatters the space. Housed in a former Arts District warehouse, the interior is mod and moody, and the lush terrace set among dilapidation is part art installation, part urban haven.
It’s important to mention Damian’s adjacent taqueria, Ditroit, hidden around back with an entrance down an alley, and the primacy of its extra-long fish flauta with a mulchy, piquant filling that evokes Baja’s smoked marlin tacos.
Read the full review of Damian.
It’s important to mention Damian’s adjacent taqueria, Ditroit, hidden around back with an entrance down an alley, and the primacy of its extra-long fish flauta with a mulchy, piquant filling that evokes Baja’s smoked marlin tacos.
Read the full review of Damian.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Holbox
Historic South-Central Mexican $$
In a city prolific in mariscos, no one in Los Angeles approaches citrus-doused, chile-ignited seafood with quite the same merging of soul and finesse as Gilberto Cetina. He opened his colorful, stylishly angled marisqueria in 2017 near the entrance of the Mercado La Paloma in Historic South-Central. Holbox is named for an island off the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula, about a four-hour drive from where Cetina grew up with his family in the city of Mérida, and he initially imagined the food would hew to these roots. Cetina had helped his father launch Chichén Itzá, one of the Mercado’s founding food stalls that remains a beacon of Yucatecan cooking, 16 years earlier.
He quickly began dreaming bigger, though, wishing to articulate a sum expression of the coastal flavors he loved across Mexico — and his own imaginings. Some of his menu’s early scene-stealers grew out of relationships he developed with top-tier seafood suppliers. They include limey kanpachi ceviche, garnished with avocado puree and tongues of Santa Barbara sea urchin, and the pata de mula (Baja blood clams) with more citrus and a sauce of morita chiles blended with balsamic vinegar that reaches a thrilling intersection of smoke, brine and acidity. Then there’s the smoked kanpachi taco buzzing with peanut salsa macha and a stretchy knot of queso Oaxaca, the fried octopus taco anchored by mulchy sofrito stained black from squid ink, and the bisque-like stew showcasing delicate seafood sausage.
Even though he can’t serve alcohol at the Mercado and considered relocating, Cetina decided to stay put and invested in a recent renovation. He gained four counter seats, but critically he expanded the kitchen, allowing him to hire additional staff. Doing so has created more room for community and creativity, and for possibility. Holbox is The Times’ 2023 Restaurant of the Year.
He quickly began dreaming bigger, though, wishing to articulate a sum expression of the coastal flavors he loved across Mexico — and his own imaginings. Some of his menu’s early scene-stealers grew out of relationships he developed with top-tier seafood suppliers. They include limey kanpachi ceviche, garnished with avocado puree and tongues of Santa Barbara sea urchin, and the pata de mula (Baja blood clams) with more citrus and a sauce of morita chiles blended with balsamic vinegar that reaches a thrilling intersection of smoke, brine and acidity. Then there’s the smoked kanpachi taco buzzing with peanut salsa macha and a stretchy knot of queso Oaxaca, the fried octopus taco anchored by mulchy sofrito stained black from squid ink, and the bisque-like stew showcasing delicate seafood sausage.
Even though he can’t serve alcohol at the Mercado and considered relocating, Cetina decided to stay put and invested in a recent renovation. He gained four counter seats, but critically he expanded the kitchen, allowing him to hire additional staff. Doing so has created more room for community and creativity, and for possibility. Holbox is The Times’ 2023 Restaurant of the Year.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
La Diosa de los Moles
Bell Gardens Mexican $
Rocío Camacho earned her nickname as “la diosa de los moles” working in local kitchens and partnering on projects in Sun Valley and Paramount over the last 20 years, but the restaurant she opened in Bell Gardens in 2015, which until this year she called Rocío’s Mexican Kitchen, is currently her sole professional home. The handwritten menu above the kitchen window lists the dozen moles she assembles daily with the detailed precision of a watchmaker. Her earthy, spicy-sweet mole Oaxaqueño is the Rolex among them, a shiny feat of elegance. The menu presents seven meats and seafoods to pair with moles: Try chicken with the smooth, almost fluffy pistachio and mint mole, or pork as a canvas for smoky manchamanteles with notes of pineapple and chipotle. Eggs and chilaquiles prove equally ideal foils for Camacho’s masterworks, as I’ve learned from savoring them during the restaurant’s quiet breakfast service.
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(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
La Pupusa Urban Eatery
Pico-Union Salvadoran $
Los Angeles County is home to more than 400,000 people of Salvadoran descent; multitudes of restaurants and street vendors sell their distinct versions of plush, griddled pupusas. You can debate the one be-all-end-all pick of the bunch while I settle into a table at Stephanie Figueroa and Juan Saravia’s Pico-Union restaurant, content that theirs is an excellent starting point from which opinions may fly. They balance density and crisp-soft ratios; fillings span traditional blends of cheese and refried beans to more elaborate additions of shrimp or chorizo. The requisite curtido (pickled cabbage relish) twangs and crunches appropriately. Pupusas comprise the heart of Figueroa and Saravia’s menu, but the couple also affectionately rework some other fundamentals of Salvadoran cooking. Breakfast dishes are particularly strong, including La Mañanera, a cheese-filled pupusa mounded with eggs, salsa ranchera and curtido, and a burrito anchored by plantains and casamiento, a pilaf-like merger of rice and beans.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Mariscos Jalisco
Boyle Heights Mexican Seafood $
Sometimes I worry that it’s redundant to declare a visit to Raul Ortega’s white lonchera in Boyle Heights to be a worthy first meal in Los Angeles. It’s been asserted, by me and other critics, for years. But then I am surprised time and again by the number of people who’ve never heard of Mariscos Jalisco. So I will repeat the magic words: tacos dorados de camarón. Picture corn tortillas that grip a mixture of spiced, minced shrimp. Ortega and his team don’t quite seal the tortilla, so in the fryer the filling sizzles around its edges while the interior becomes improbably creamy. The first bite will be lava-hot, but garnishes of sliced avocado and thin red salsa bring a flood of cooling relief. It’s the textural equivalent of your life flashing before your eyes: It’s every possible experience all at once.
Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the pinnacles of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track entry into the city’s culinary culture.
Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the pinnacles of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track entry into the city’s culinary culture.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Panelas Brazilian Cuisine
Redondo Beach Brazilian $$
Grief over the loss of Natalia Pereira’s downtown restaurant Woodspoon in May sent me on a quest for Brazilian cuisine in Greater Los Angeles, and eventually to the rewards of Marcia Delima and Adriano Bertachini’s cooking in Redondo Beach. Follow the examples of customers ordering at the counter in Portuguese and go heavy on salgadinhos (fried street snacks): wonderfully stretchy pao de queijo, coxinha de frango (croquettes rolled with shredded chicken), flaky beef empanadas and bolinho de bacalhau (cod croquettes) that liven up with a squeeze of lime. Delima and Bertachini excel at Brazil’s iconic meaty stews. Feijoada, beautifully murky with black beans and several cuts of beef and pork, arrives with sides of farofa (toasted, seasoned cassava flour) and finely cut collard greens; stir them directly into the bowl to add dimension and bulk. Carne de panela, slow-cooked to the texture of ropy, melty pot roast, stands complete on its own. For dessert, the bolo de laranja (frosted orange Bundt cake) zings with citrus without sliding into creamsicle territory.
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(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
Poncho’s Tlayudas
Historic South-Central Mexican $
Home to the largest Oaxacan population outside Mexico, Los Angeles knows tlayudas: Our restaurants usually serve them as open-faced discs, their foot-wide tortillas showered with quesillo and crumbled chorizo, and often sliced avocado and nopales arranged in spirals like nautilus shells. Alfonso “Poncho” Martínez grew up eating tlayudas grilled and folded by cooks in Oaxaca’s Central Valleys, where he was raised, so that’s how he and his cooks prepare his version at his Friday night pop-up in South L.A. He begins by painting his masa canvas with asiento, a toasted lard he renders himself, before spreading over frijoles refritos, cheese pulled into short strings and shredded cabbage. Choose among three meats, which can be combined: chorizo; tasajo, a thin cut of flank steak salt-cured for a few hours before grilling; and moronga, a billowy, herb-laced blood sausage made from a recipe that was a wedding gift to Martinez from the father of his wife and business partner, Odilia Romero. (She co-founded the organization Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, which hosts the pop-up on its front lawn.) Warmed over mesquite, Martínez’s tlayuda is astounding with its density of tastes and textures — and one of our city’s defining dishes.
Read the full review of Poncho’s Tlayudas.
Read the full review of Poncho’s Tlayudas.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Sabores Oaxaqueños
Koreatown Oaxacan $
The pink-and-orange sign emblazoned with Sabores Oaxaqueños’ name stretches half of a Koreatown block. It sets an uplifting mood for the saturation of colors that await on walls and plates inside. Brothers Germán Granja and Valentín Granja run their business in the space that formerly housed the original Guelaguetza, where their chef Dominga Rodriguez also previously worked. She oversees an extensive menu; I concentrate on her exemplary Oaxacan classics. Moles bear her unique fingerprints. Try her amarillo, a soupy rendition with chicken and vegetables that leaves an aura of cumin and cloves around the palate. Satisfying versions of goat and lamb barbacoa, both swaddled in avocado leaves as they cook, arrive in chile-stained broths that warm with spice without inflicting heart-pounding chile heat. Crackery tlayudas and plush, oval memelas show off masa’s sustaining goodness in contrasting textures. The restaurant opens at 8 a.m. daily for eggs that are scrambled with chorizo or made into an omelet and submerged in salsa verde.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Selva
Long Beach Colombian $$
Carlos Jurado, a veteran chef of Los Angeles restaurants including stints at Vespertine and Border Grill, returns to the foods and the town he knew growing up: His parents relocated from Colombia to Long Beach when he was 3, and he started making regular trips to see family in South America when he was a teenager. His dinner menu revolves around smoky meats and soulful sides like grilled arepas filled with corn and queso, braised greens flecked with pork belly, and first-rate smashed and fried plantains served with hogao, an ubiquitous Colombian tomato-onion condiment. Sunday brunch is my favorite meal at Selva for two keystone dishes. Bandeja paisa is a one-platter feast synonymous with Colombia that arrays steak, grilled chorizo or morcilla, extra-crisp hunks of pork belly, plantains, smoky beans, white rice, an arepa, a fried egg and sliced avocado on one monumental platter. As if that isn’t plenty, brunch is also when Jurado makes his joy-ride version of a Colombian hot dog. A link of paprika-stained Colombian chorizo peeks out from beneath charred onions and peppers, crumbled cotija, green chile jam, aioli mixed with ají (mulchy, punchy Colombian salsa verde) and smashed potato chips dusted with chile powder. This is a two-handed, face-planting commitment to polish off, and I never tire of its layered pleasures.
Read the full review of Selva.
Read the full review of Selva.
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(Silvia Razgova/Silvia Razgova)
Sonoratown
Mid-Wilshire Mexican $
The magnificence of Teodoro Díaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s taqueria rests first on the flour tortillas cranked out by their master tortilla maker, Julia Guerrero. Their thinness belies their durability, and like the best pie crusts they manage to be at once flaky and buttery. Nearly translucent and handsomely pocked from the griddle, it is the flour tortilla against which to judge all others in Los Angeles. I am quick to recommend Sonoratown’s famous Burrito 2.0, swollen with pinto beans, mashed guacamole, Monterey Jack and sharply spicy chiltepin salsa; among meat options that include grilled chicken, tripe and chorizo, the standout choice is costilla, a mix of boneless short rib and chuck robed in mesquite smoke. Lately my order also has included at least one chivichanga, mini-bundles swaddling shredded chicken or beef cooked down in a thick guisado of tomatoes, Anaheim chiles, cheddar and Monterey Jack. They are deeply comforting, and they’re equally excellent at the couple’s second, larger store in Mid-City.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Tacos La Carreta
Whittier Mexican $
The partner of a food critic, as you might imagine, eats scores of meals out a year. I don’t expect mine to keep track of details, which naturally go fuzzy; it isn’t his job. But his reaction was striking when we drove to the Tacos La Carreta food truck in Long Beach this fall. We ordered a torito — sirloin carne asada grilled over mesquite, roasted Anaheim chile, minced cabbage, thin tomato salsa and melting cheese lightly binding a flour tortilla — and after the first bite he exclaimed, “Oh, this taco!” We’d first tried it in May at L.A. Taco’s annual Taco Madness event and, no surprise, its meaty, balanced brilliance snared an award. Since 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal has been forging a distinct, umami-blaring taco style from his family’s Sinaloan recipes. The 10-item menu dips into straightforward tacos and quesadillas, but most customers rightly gravitate to the torito and also the chorreada: two corn tortillas buckled and crisped over heat and spread with a bit of rendered fat to amplify the carne asada’s beefiness. Bernal also serves tripe, which melds equally with his glossy avocado and chunky tomato salsas. The steak, though, is unforgettable.
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(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Villa’s Tacos
Highland Park Mexican $
“Tacos estilo Los Angeles” is the motto Victor Villa adopted for his Highland Park business. At the pop-ups he ran starting in 2018, the words blazed across banners hung from tented stands; they beam now from a neon sign in the back of his first taqueria, which opened in February. Villa’s style epitomizes the L.A. dreamer, the go-getter. His queso taco — large and lavish with griddled cheese, layers of cotija, squiggled-on crema and dolloped guacamole — is deftly engineered chaos that practically takes two hands to wield. It’s a taco built on charisma. One has no choice but to be all in. Among choices of meat, I savor the nubbly beef and chorizo but take particular pleasure in the rich, hashed chicken leg that absorbs mesquite smoke. Villa is thoughtful about vegan options too, leaning into satisfying texture contrasts such as half-pureed black beans scattered with cactus salad. The tacos’ generous construction invites a more-is-more approach with salsas. While peering at the variety — all shades of green and red, save for the pop of cubed mango paired with habanero — don’t overlook the fire starter labeled “jiquilpan.” Based on a recipe that Villa’s father learned in Michoacán, it’s riddled with smoked chiles that echo the flavors of the grill.
Read the full review of Villa’s Tacos.
Read the full review of Villa’s Tacos.
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