Coming to grips with Tacos San Pedro’s two-handed delights

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Eight years ago, my brother made a strange request: help him stuff a dozen of Tacos San Pedro’s carne asada burritos into a cooler and bury them under a pile of dry ice. His plan was to smuggle the thing onto a plane back to San Francisco, using the cooler as his carry-on and leaving his suitcases for baggage claim—the burritos were precious cargo, after all. But even as he explained how the dry ice would preserve the burritos, I thought his scheme was insane, that he’d open up the cooler in a day or so and get slammed in the face by a rancid fog of carbon dioxide and carne asada. And as I sat watching him stack the aluminum-clad burritos, that was all I could imagine. I couldn’t make sense of why my brother was going to such gluttonous lengths for these souvenirs from a Hawaiian Gardens eatery when there had to be a place in San Francisco that was just as good.

Today, as I wrap my hands around one of Tacos San Pedro’s football-sized tortas, I finally realize it wasn’t about that at all.

Before Tacos San Pedro expanded, it was a hole-in-the-wall in the most exact terms, packed with the city’s few locals and picked over by the not-so-high rollers shuffling out of the casino across the street. And though the restaurant has undergone a remodel or two—colored tiles now climb up the walls, paintings of rural Mexico hang between sconces—the place is still a pit stop, its curved wooden booths just accommodating enough to get you in, get you full and get you out.

Getting your fill isn’t a problem at Tacos San Pedro—almost everything on the menu requires two hands. Tacos come two tortillas thick, meat piled in neat mounds with onions and cilantro perched on top. The al pastor tacos—pork marinated in a blend of spices and turned a deep red—are especially good. The flautas, topped with guacamole and the usual accompaniments, are almost twice as big as any of their cigar-sized competitors. And the burritos—what many consider the restaurant’s specialty—are deliciously utilitarian, filled with nothing but your choice of meats (there are plenty), cilantro and a thin layer of beans.

My favorite item, though, is Tacos San Pedro’s torta. The first time I ate one, I was floored, convinced that I had just tried the best-kept secret in Mexican cuisine. So it’s good that their tortas haven’t changed much. All the flavors and ingredients—meat, lettuce, tomato, avocado, jalapeños, beans, cheese—remain cohesive but distinct. The bolillos are perfectly toasted, too, charred just enough to give the rolls those splotchy black marks, in which you can find the face of god.

My brother’s scheme finally makes sense now: Tacos San Pedro is good, yes. Some of the best Mexican food I’ve had, even. But my brother didn’t freeze a dozen burritos for that reason alone; he did it because of devotion. Good Mexican food has long inspired a sense of pride in my family—my dad has used East LA’s El Tepeyac as a rite of passage for over 30 years—and with that in mind, I realize I shouldn’t have been surprised that my brother was so eager to take those burritos back up to school with him. I should be even less surprised, then, that my brother still eats at Tacos San Pedro whenever he’s in the area. It is his place, after all. And it’s mine, too—it just took me a little while to realize it.

TACOS SAN PEDRO 11962 CARSON ST | HAWAIIAN GARDENS 90716 | 562.496.2709 | OPEN DAILY, 10AM-MIDNIGHT | DINNER FOR TWO, $6-12

Tags: carne asada, Food, hawaiian gardens, tacos san pedro