If you haven't had Korean BBQ, you're missing out.
Posted on 01/22/2021 10:43:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
David Delfin’s Los Sabrosos offers LA a rare treat from Nayarit, Mexico
Many of Mexico’s most coveted tacos feature pork, from carnitas and cochinita pibil to the various tacos de trompo. There’s tacos árabes from Puebla, adobada from Baja California, tacos de trompo out of Nuevo León, and the nearly ever-present al pastor, with deep roots in Mexico City and many other Mexican states. Much the same is true in Los Angeles, which makes a new type of pork taco contender here in Southern California all the more rare, indeed.
Suckling pig tacos, featuring whole roasted young pigs, are a rare delight even in Mexico, only found as a common dish in states like Aguascalientes, the tri-state Yucatán, and in the town of Acaponeta, Nayarit, a municipality just south of the Sinaloa border. Now, Angelenos can find them on Saturdays and Sundays from a small stand called Los Sabrosos al Horno in the tiny Southeast LA city of Cudahy.
Called tacos de puerquito horneado (roasted suckling pig), or colloquially puerquito echado (lying down) in Acaponeta, these sucking pigs arrive at the stand burnished and brown from a serious oven roasting. The whole pig is split head to tail and laid flat for maximum crispiness on the skin, and it all gets chopped up into various pieces on site and served with corn tortillas and a salsa de mostaza, or spicy mustard salsa, plus a squeeze of lime. This is unlike any other pork taco in greater Los Angeles.
After five years catering events for locals from Acaponeta and Tecuala, Nayarit, Delfín decided to give his own street stand a go at the end of October 2020. Now, with plenty of his paisanos showing up (and bringing friends), what may be the only puerquito echado stand in the entire United States is drawing a weekly crowd.
Workers load a cooked suckling pig onto a table. The face of a cooked suckling pig ready for tacos. Workers reach in to grab pieces of a cooked suckling pig for tacos, with masks on. Twice each weekend, Delfín roasts a whole fifty or sixty pound suckling pig, plus one or two more for private events as time allows. The best time to arrive, real fans know, is around 2:30 p.m., when Deflín’s pig — butterflied and cooked for four hours in its stainless steel box — is first revealed. Its golden skin glistens like a beacon for delicious tacos, beckoning diners to this dusty roadside off Atlantic, inside a Cudahy industrial park.
Taqueros carefully remove rectangular cuts of crispy skin before diving into the moist flesh below, building a pile big enough to handle all those waiting orders. “Okay, that’s good enough,” says Delfín, signaling from his yellow cart to the waiting crowd that it’s officially time for tacos. Plates are quickly assembled with white meat tacos and a dark, crispy strip of skin, then a dealer’s choice of spicy mustard salsa made with Roma tomatoes and chiles serranos, or a milder mustard salsa with tomatillos. Both are kissed by smoke from time in the oven, and finished with ribbons of raw, white onion. That’s it — just lightly salted pork on corn tortillas and some salsa de mostaza, which adds all the seasoning these tacos need. These plates are rich and bountiful, each mouthful chased by a bite of crispy skin.
“The tradition started in Acaponeta with Anacleto [Carrillo], a man who came down from the Sierra Madre and started to sell it,” says chef Betty Vasquez, gastronomic ambassador for the Riviera Nayarit region. “His son carried it on and then his grandson Marcelo [Carrillo], who passed away this year from COVID.”
In those intervening decades, according to Vasquez, puerquito echado has spread around the state to places like Tepíc, all thanks to people from Acaponeta. Now Delfín is one of the dish’s small handful of messengers, promoting the tradition in Los Angeles through his countrymen and women, one plate of tacos at a time.
White gloved hands pull apart cooked pork for tacos. A large cleaver works over pork for upcoming tacos, on a wooden cutting board. “These guys over here are from Acaponeta, they have a construction business and have been sending all their employees,” says Delfín, pointing across a growing crowd on a recent Saturday. “And this couple here is from Tecuala.” Throughout a day of service, Delfín makes sure to talk with each customer, to learn where they’re from, reaching for a connection to the food. Small business owners, tradesmen in construction, roofing, and landscaping, locals; everyone stops by for a five- or six-taco lunch.
Customers leave here smiling, many wiping nostalgia and pork fat from their mustard-stained lips simultaneously, as if they’re departing a family reunion. There are comments about how they haven’t had sickling pig in years, and how the flavor of the salsa takes them back to Acaponeta. Groups often seem to know each other, though in reality, it’s just the common bond of Mexicans from this pair of small towns, Acaponeta and Tecuala, who miss eating mariscos at Playa Novillero, dancing to banda at backyard parties, and spending afternoons snacking on tacos de puerquito echado. Now they’ve found it once again, except in Cudahy, the second-smallest city in LA County but a big destination for rare suckling pig tacos.
Los Sabrosos al Horno, 4901 Patata St., Cudahy, (323) 407-5930, Saturdays and Sundays only, starting around 3 p.m.
Halal I hope!
The dog the Koreans use gives them a unique taste.
No. Just good ol’ sammich breads.
That almost looks like a fetal pig. I wonder if they got this from a late term pregnant sow that was slaughtered.
It’s funny: there were a lot more types of bread in Boise than here in CO. I’d love to get a hot roast beef and cheddar on pumpernickel, but it’s just not available here.
It’s probably hard to find a pita pocket full of sprouts, tofu, and organic heirloom tomatoes in Boise.
Used to be. Don’t hear many good things these days.
I don’t know the age of the pig but they are common here in Spain. They are popular because they fit on a standard-sized grill.
You should see what they put on pizza in Italy.
If you haven't had Korean BBQ, you're missing out.
“You should see what they put on pizza in Italy. “
I’ve been told that pizza as we know it (PAWKI) was invented in New York.
Besides, the US Men’s Foil Team took the world championship, (unimaginably, incredibly, although the reigning Olympic champion is Italian), so the Italians can just clam up for a while.
An utterly absurd contention. Pizza is documented in Italy going back to antiquity. The difference is that Americans see pizza as some sacrosanct thing with an approved list of acceptable toppings and anything else is some kind of heresy against authenticity.
Italians, on the other hand, see it as a piece of flat bread you put stuff on.
“An utterly absurd contention.”
Just made a quick DDG search.
Apparently, the controversy rages, with large numbers of partisans on each side.
Yes, I watched. Luckily my exploits were epic. I studied for many years with Diana Kennedy....the recognized expert in Mexican food. I flew to her home in Zitacuaro, Michoacan every year and more often to study. We then flew out to other states to cook regional specialties.
Sadly, it has become dangerous to traveling southern Mexico...so it has affected my desire to try certain regions.
Sadly, given our ages [mine in the 70s] and Diana’s [pretty close to 100] ...
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