{"id":90,"date":"2010-02-24T19:48:55","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T03:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2010-02-24T19:48:55","modified_gmt":"2010-02-25T03:48:55","slug":"11-panchos-tacos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/11-panchos-tacos\/","title":{"rendered":"11 Pancho’s Tacos"},"content":{"rendered":"

11 Pancho\u2019s Tacos<\/p>\n

February 24, 2010<\/p>\n

9609 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034<\/p>\n

Palms<\/p>\n

Pancho\u2019s Tacos took over the vaguely Googie space that was formerly Campos\u2019 Tacos on Venice Boulevard in Palms near downtown Culver City. Campos\u2019 was a great place to get a couple extra large, extra sweet al pastor tacos and a Negra Modelo for a cheap and satisfying meal. I took the occasion to see if its successor was any good. As you can see from their sign, Panchos<\/a>\u2019 boasts of having roots that go back to 1977 \u2013 they have another location on Lincoln in Santa Monica.<\/p>\n

I stepped inside and noticed some changes. Campos\u2019 had a weird vibe, due to there being what looked like somebody\u2019s private den with sports-blaring televisions and easy chairs in one corner of the dining room. Pancho\u2019s walled off that corner, and instead sports a new mural featuring Mexican revolutionists.<\/p>\n

Next I looked up at the menu, and saw that the default taco consists of meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato, in either soft or crunchy format. Now I\u2019m no bigot opposed to the very institution of crunchy tacos, or tacos containing cheese. I\u2019ll eat half a dozen crunchy tacos at Del Taco any time you put them in front of me. I look forward to documenting a visit to delicious Tito\u2019s Tacos this year, primarily as a rebuttal to all those assheads who rail against Tito\u2019s on Yelp. But the crunchy and cheesy tacos aren\u2019t what this project is about \u2013 it\u2019s about the platonic, refined taco of tortilla, meat, salsa, onions and cilantro. So that\u2019s what I ordered \u2013 Pancho\u2019s sells them for $1.45 each, and they are called \u201cstreet cart tacos\u201d or somesuch, and I had the al pastor, carnitas, and carne asada. They were about average in size for tacos.<\/p>\n

The carnitas got eaten first, and it was pretty good. It had good color, more brown than grey, and was juicy and flavorful, but lacking the satisfying texture of really good carnitas. Next the carne asada \u2013 pure and simple, this was the best of the lot, with salt, pepper and citrus fruit flavors complimenting tasty beefiness. The tortillas were the typical bilaminated sort \u2013 nothing special. Lastly, and waiting might have been the biggest mistake I made all day, the al pastor \u2013 the meat was sludgy in a thick sauce with lots of grilled onions, and a rich, sweet flavor reminiscent of mole sauce. It tasted like chocolate! The tortillas became saturated with the sauciness and I experienced catastrophic taco failure halfway through eating. I had to finish my taco with a fork. The flavor of this al pastor was unique and still enjoyable, but weird \u2013 not a new favorite.<\/p>\n

If I go back to Pancho\u2019s, I think I\u2019ll try the crunchy cheesy tacos. There is the theory that if a restaurant has a food item in its name, then that\u2019s what you should order, and Pancho\u2019s is surely named after its crunchy beef taco. It should be noted that their menu features burritos most prominently \u2013 is this a burrito joint masquerading as a taco shop? The distinction between burrito shop and taco shop is an important one with seldom a fine line between.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 Pancho\u2019s Tacos February 24, 2010 9609 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034 Palms Pancho\u2019s Tacos took over the vaguely Googie space that was formerly Campos\u2019 Tacos on Venice Boulevard in Palms near downtown Culver City. Campos\u2019 was a great place to get a couple extra large, extra sweet al pastor tacos and a Negra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[13,12,14,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tacos.architectureburger.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}