Top 5 Street Food Stops in Los Angeles

If you are in Los Angeles with your taste-buds craving street food, the city’s ready with just what you need. From an array of food-trucks parked along the corners, to an open-air grill set up in a business’s parking lot after hours, casual food cooked and served outdoors is affordable, lip-smacking and often a crowd-puller, especially among tourists. The best street food in Los Angeles has got something for everyone: fried chicken, ceviche, ice cream, and of course, a lifetime’s worth of tacos. So whether you decide to get a quick bite right where you order, or plan to get takeaway, these are the top 5 street food spots to check out :-

1.  Mystyx Café– Boyle Heights

Recently inaugurated by a Goth enthusiast and barista (the guy has worked at Urth Cafe and Starbucks, among other coffee purveyors) and his girlfriend, this stand serves the best-quality caffeinated concoctions to rival the poshest of restaurants. The Nocturnal Latte with caramel and mocha dripping down your go-cup walls is sure worth a try. Or, you can go for the Horchata coffee (White Magic) doubled with an avocado toast or churro cheesecake. The cafe switches location frequently, and is parked most recently on Cesar Chavez Avenue between Gage and Record streets. One can DM the cafe to get the 11PM location and place orders from 7AM-2PM and 5PM-11PM, Monday through Saturday.

2. Tacos Arizas—Echo Park

The perfect Los Angeles late-night stop after Dodgers games, Taco Arizas is popular for its delicious carnitas and chorizo tacos served off Sunset Boulevard at Logan Street,by the stadium. This is part of a trio of taco-trucks (the others being El Flamin’ Taco and Taco Zone) on this stretch which operate until around 3AM to satiate late night partyers’ hunger pangs. While all are likely to go for the trick to quell early morning munchies, the crunch on the grilled chorizo herein late hours is the real winner.

3.  Dollar Hits—Filipinotown

Complementing authentic Pinoy street food, you can pick your skewered food, mostly proteins like half-cookedpork or chicken, and then take it to the parking lot to finish cooking over one of the grills set up just like in the Manila food stalls this is designed after. Following social-distancing cautions, diners might want to take home their skewers to finish cooking on their patio grill, there are many other reasons to stop here, even without the festive chat around the grills. Each skewer is priced at only $1, so you can experiment out of your comfort zone, adding tenga (pork ears), adidas (chicken feet) and other nose-to-tail cuts such as pork butt, chicken thighs and camote (potato fritter), all brushed with soy sauce, sugar and garlic. Don’t forget to leave without some of the vinegar dipping sauce!

4. Mariscos Jalisco— various locations

Known as the best shrimp taco in town, for a reason, Mariscos Jalisco serves it in a crispy-fresh shell, with big chunks of shrimp topped by red salsa and fresh avocado. There’s a bunch of locations (Boyle Heights, downtown, Gardena, Pomona and West L.A.) for this street food stop, and though the service is fast, you’re likely to run into queues due to the deserved O.G. iconic status of this place. Braving the lines, you throw in an order of fresh oysters and ceviche while you’re at it. You live once, and all this delicious seafood isn’t going to eat itself.

5. Cravin’ Crab Cakes—Studio City

Specializing in Maryland-style crab cakes, this mobile eatery serves large chunks of crab meat just barely held together with filler. Cooked exclusively with blue crab flown in from the Chesapeake Bay and seasoned with a healthy amount of Old Bay seasoning, these hearty plates are exactly what the heart of any transplanted East Coast seafood lover craves. Moreover, there’s beer-steamed peel-and-eat shrimp, along with waffle fries, corn on the cob slathered with butter and Southern-style coleslaw. It may not be the tidiest plate to eat in your car, but you cannot simply resist getting a takeaway without sampling at least a little.