They may very well be right because I haven’t experienced them all. Who has? What I do know is that one of the most quintessential LA experiences is pulling up to a family-run taco stand under industrial tents on the side of the road and watching taqueros grill, chop, slice, fold and shape their masterpieces with expertise and devotion before inhaling them on a wonky table or the hood of your car.

Sadly, this is not that is easy to find in the Bay Area — unless you are in East Oakland.

La Parrilla Loca in Oakland, Calif., serves some of the best tacos in the Bay Area, and perhaps California. (Nico Madrigal-Yankowski/SFGATE)
La Parrilla Loca in Oakland, Calif., serves some of the best tacos in the Bay Area, and perhaps California. (Nico Madrigal-Yankowski/SFGATE)

When you first drive up to La Parrilla Loca at 9829 San Leandro St., you’ll instantly know it has the makings of a legit taco stand, just like you find in LA. A line will be halfway around the block on Prune Street. BART trains pass overhead intermittently as the Daly City-Berryessa line parallels San Leandro Street. Smells of charcoal and chatter in Spanish, English and other languages fill the air.

On the corner sits a small trailer where you place your order. Then you get into the longer line, which turns the corner of the old Fandango Latino nightclub, where you’ll eventually see an assembly line of taco greatness. The carne asada al carbon, marinated chicken and traditional chorizo all cook over intense flames from the charcoal grill. At the center of the operation, you’ll hand the taquero your order stub and watch the magic show firsthand. Just behind him sits the trompo, or spit, of pork al pastor, waiting to be carved.

The meat of your choice is chopped with a long, thin saber on a weathered tree-trunk-like slice of wood that acts as a chopping block. Then it’s scooped into a handmade tortilla, smeared with a generous dollop of guacamole, doused with your choice of a silky red salsa or a chunky green salsa and smothered in a healthy handful of chopped onions and cilantro. Finally, it is wrapped and cradled in a piece of butcher paper, a defining characteristic of Tijuana-style tacos.

When I visited La Parrilla Loca last Sunday with a friend, we ordered five different options so we could try as much of the menu as possible. First up was the carne asada al carbon, which is grilled over charcoal. It had an intense smoky flavor, which is part of the allure of meats al carbon. The meat was still tender and elicited memories of the carne asada at Tacos Mama Cuca, which is unfortunately closed at the moment.

Next up: al pastor, which many people know as the meat on the spit. Thin cuts of chile-marinated pork are delicately layered on top of one another around a vertical metal rod to create what is called a trompo, which then rotates next to a hot flame. The meat is slowly cooked over the course of hours, and the taqueros shave off the crispy bits into the tacos. Often, the taqueros will perform a bit of pageantry and slice a nub of fresh pineapple, which sits at the top of the trompo, making it fly acrobatically through the air with a perfect landing on top of the meat in the tortilla. The sweetness of the piña, “pineapple” in Spanish, offsets the mild spice of the marinated pork.

The chorizo taco was definitely the favorite of the bunch. Typically, the Mexican sausage is decased and cooked on a plancha, giving it a coarse texture. But at La Parrilla Loca, they cook the sausage in full over the charcoal as they do with the chicken and carne asada. When it was cooked like this, there were nice little plumps of porky pop with each bite and a medium amount of spice.

Lastly, I tried the chicken vampiro and quesabirria taco. A vampiro at La Parrilla Loca is almost like a tostada — a crunchy fried tortilla that holds a mound of diced chicken, onion, cilantro, guacamole and salsa. But most importantly, it has a thin layer of fried cheese beneath the meat. Quesabirria, slow-cooked beef that is shredded instead of chopped in a tortilla dipped in beef broth, had its moment in the Bay Area in 2021, but it’s still popular at La Parrilla Loca. The beef was smooth and juicy, and it was presented like a quesadilla, tortilla folded in half, but also came with guacamole and salsas. Unfortunately, it did not come with a side of consomé.

While there are certainly many good tacos in the Bay Area, I’ve always wondered why the tacos in LA are better. I think, for me, it has to do with the freshness of the tortilla. It has to be homemade. The use of regional cooking methods, such as grilling meat over piping hot charcoal for a smoky flavor, also adds a dimension rarely seen in the Bay Area until recently. Also, each family brings its secret seasoning or marinade to the operation, as well as salsa recipes that have probably been passed down for generations. With LA being a lot closer and easier to get to, it has just taken a bit longer for different types of tacos to make it to the Bay Area.

La Parrilla Loca and other East Oakland taco stands like Tacos Mi Reynita and El Asadero Poblano make their tortillas on-site and by hand, using a time-consuming process called nixtamalization. It is a traditional maize preparation in which dried kernels are cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution then drained, rinsed and milled to produce masa, or cornmeal, which can be formed into tortillas.

The homemade tortillas at La Parrilla Loca in Oakland, Calif., make the tacos special. (Nico Madrigal-Yankowski/SFGATE)
The homemade tortillas at La Parrilla Loca in Oakland, Calif., make the tacos special. (Nico Madrigal-Yankowski/SFGATE)

On the right side of La Parrilla Loca’s operation sits the tortilla station. Giant mixing bowls overflow with fresh yellow masa, ready to be pressed and molded into a tortilla before puffing up like a balloon on the plancha. I can’t imagine how long the arduous process of creating that much masa takes the employees of La Parrilla Loca. But I can’t thank them enough because a great homemade tortilla is truly one of the great separators between a good taco and a great one. Just like in LA.