Raul Ortega holds a plate of his famous “golden shrimp taco” outside his original Mariscos Jalisco food truck location in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
It’s midday on a hot Sunday afternoon, and along the Boyle Heights stretch of Olympic Boulevard, taco hunters are out in force. Virtually every truck and stand on this prime taco corridor attracts a line, often with diners staring at multiple spots, gastronomic journey-style.
At the red fire truck at Tacos y Birria La Unica, quesatacos of goat birria dipped in beef consommé are the call. Seafood cocktails and fish tacos abound at Mariscos 4 Vientos and Mariscos La Colima. At Carnitas Los Chingones, on the west end of the Lou Costello Jr. Recreation Center, three copper pots are fired up on the sidewalk for carnitas and tortilla chips fried in carnitas fat that make radically good chilaquiles. (Chicharrón also goes in the pot on weekends.) Down the road, Los Originales Tacos Árabes De Puebla is getting ready to open. As night falls, more taco trucks and stands will appear.
But of all these places, none inspires more respect than Raúl Ortega's Mariscos Jalisco, one of the pioneering taco trucks on Olympic Boulevard.
Raul Ortega holds a miniature Mariscos Jalisco food truck.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
Famous for its tacos dorados de camarón (golden shrimp-filled tacos that emerge tender in the center and crispy around the edges after being dipped in the deep fryer), the truck has been a part of every “101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles” guide since 2013 under the direction of Times critics Bill Addison, Patricia Escárcega and the late Jonathan Gold.
Addison has written that her serious eating for the annual 101 list always begins with a plate of Mariscos Jalisco's golden shrimp tacos.
“Food is a ritual,” Addison said in 2022. “Juicy salsa and sliced avocados quench the first fiery bites like liquid metal cooling a nuclear reactor.”
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1. Shrimp taco from Mariscos Jalisco. 2. Mariscos Jalisco's version of the Poseidon toast. (Photos by Mariah Tauge r/ Los Angeles Times)
“It might just be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had,” he wrote in our most recent 101 guide published in 2023, “and a quick entry into the city’s culinary culture.”
Much like Justin Pichetrungsi’s Thai Taco Tuesdays down the alley at Anajak Thai or a Saturday afternoon at Mercado La Paloma eating kampachi and uni tostadas at Gilberto Cetina’s Holbox (both named Addison Restaurant of the Year in 2022 and 2023, respectively), eating shrimp tacos at Mariscos Jalisco is the kind of Los Angeles experience you want to share with close friends and out-of-town visitors alike.
“In some circles,” Gold wrote in 2012, “admitting that you live in Los Angeles but haven’t visited Mariscos Jalisco is like confessing that you’ve never been to Dodger Stadium, or driven through the four-level freeway interchange, or eaten a corn dog at Muscle Beach: inexcusable, really.”
These expressions of admiration for Mariscos Jalisco — and Ortega’s influence in shaping a part of the Los Angeles culinary landscape with a single beloved taco — sync beautifully with the parameters Gold set when he awarded Wolfgang Puck the first-ever Gold Award during the paper’s second Food Bowl festival in 2017. The key phrase: “to honor culinary excellence and expand the notion of what Southern California cuisine could be.”
It makes sense that Ortega de Mariscos Jalisco is this year's Gold Award recipient.
Ortega, who started Mariscos Jalisco as a lonchera, or stationary food truck, on Olympic Boulevard in 2002, has expanded his business to two other Los Angeles locations and to Pomona. He also added a simple indoor dining space with bathrooms steps away from the original truck to make it easier to eat tacos, plates of aguachile and Poseidon tostadas piled high with shrimp ceviche, octopus and red aguachile. (Many, however, still prefer to sit on the low wall outside the truck and balance their plates and bottles of Jarritos soda.)
Two sides of the Mariscos Jalisco taco truck in Boyle Heights. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Even with the stress of a growing business, as well as the challenges of the COVID pandemic and changing city regulations, on top of rising food and labor prices, Ortega has maintained the high standards he set for the truck when he introduced the ceviche-inspired shrimp taco he and a taquero friend knew from their days in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco.
A few years after establishing his business in Olympic, a new wave of food trucks emerged, with Roy Choi’s Kogi truck being the most visible of the new style in 2008. Think of Mariscos Jalisco as a bridge between the classic taco trucks that roamed the city for decades and the trucks that emerged in the 2010s.
Since then, a new generation of stands and trucks run by young Mexican and Mexican-American taqueros, many of them offering hyper-regional cooking styles, has come to dominate the streets. Even Choi has introduced a basic “backyard barbecue” style with his latest stand Tacos Por Vida.
All of this brings us back to the circle of Ortega Mariscos Jalisco and the shrimp taco that still endures.
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1. The owner of Mariscos Jalisco, Raúl Ortega, in his truck. (Carter Hiyama/For The Times) 2. Shrimp tacos at Mariscos Jalisco. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
The 2024 Gold Award will be presented to Raul Ortega of Mariscos Jalisco during this year's Food Bowl festival at Paramount Studios on September 20. Advance tickets go on sale this week at lafoodbowl.com.
Previous Gold Award Winners
