- Villas Tacos specializes in 7-layer
tacos and blue corn tortillas. - Along with mulitas and quesadillas, they offer several family-recipe salsas.
- This year they had to shift to Instagram for a pre-order process which allowed the business to grow rapidly due to their vibrantly colored tacos.
Following is a transcript of the
Victor Villa: Everyone loves us. I mean, we love them. We smile when they pass by.
Joe Avella: Villas Tacos in
Driver: We love this place. We've been coming every week since we found out about it.
Passenger: Since August.
Driver: Yeah.
Lizette Villa: Well, this is our grandparents house, so we always used to play with our cousins here, like, every Sunday when we were little. We got to see, you know, the neighborhood, grow up, be part of it, and now serve it. It's really something special.
Victor: On the menu, you got this here. You got the handmade blue corn tortillas. We take this masa, and we make it into tortillas for tacos, mulitas, and quesadillas. All our meats are grilled over mesquite charcoal. We have pollo, chorizo, asada, and then vegan options, we have black bean and ensalada de nopales, which is a cactus salad. Potatoes, and they should look like this, nice and crispy here. It goes to the finishing station. We throw in this salsa, that salsa, hibiscus pickled onions. Once it's finished bagging, out the door. It allows maximum efficiency with the given space that we have. Hear that [hisses]? Ah, that's what I'm talking about. Let's go.
Joe: Really, really colorful, especially the tacos. You guys have, like, seven layers of different colors.
Victor: [laughs] Yeah.
Joe: You also had to consider how they would taste together, right?
Victor: Well, I figured, what are some of my favorite toppings and what would make my ideal taco, my taco of choice? If I were to go to a taqueria and I had all these tools at my disposal, how would my taco look?
Victor: It wasn't always like this. It wasn't always the family working with us. When we were on York Boulevard, it was pretty much just, like, me and a couple of buddies. [record needle scratching] But we're right here. But before, but before -- no!
Lizette: We were here! We've been here since day one!
Victor: Let's ask that question again. I like it. I mean, they're my sisters. I'm with them sometimes, you know. Sometimes we can get on each other's nerves, but that's when we just gotta get together and get through the day.
Joe: Villas Tacos has a simple menu of tacos, mulitas, and quesadillas with your choice of carne asada, chicken, or chorizo combined with any six of the Villa's family salsas, and you have food so delicious you'll forget you're eating it off the hood of your car on a noisy street. [traffic rumbling]
Customer: I try every spot that I possibly can, big, small, medium, whatever. And what he's doing is just totally, totally different. There's nothing like it. Texture's different, the flavors are different, just visually, they're probably some of the prettiest tacos you've ever seen.
Victor: So, Instagram has helped us out a lot. We don't use a major ordering system. We are our ordering system. We announce when we're taking orders, and through direct messages, they're able to contact us, say, hey, you know what, 7:20, 7:25 works good for me. We lock them in. They send their order. Then, from there, we write their order on this here. That's how we control the line, we control the flow of things.
Sister: Thank you!
Customer: Good night.
Sister: Have a good one!
Joe: Villa starts with fresh-pressed blue corn tortillas.
Victor: Best way to enjoy a tortilla is a fresh, fresh tortilla made just seconds before it gets topped off with that beautiful meat and all those toppings.
Joe: Blue was an interesting choice.
Victor: I had never tried a blue corn tortilla. Can you believe that? And I thought, "How many other people in Los Angeles were just like me?" And I decided to go with handmade blue corn tortillas. That was gonna be my thing. This is mesquite carbón, mesquite charcoal.
Joe: Why mesquite?
Victor: That's all we use. The flavor from the smoke, from the wood. It's the only way to do it. The only right way to do it. This grill here, this is the one that we started off with. Her name is Maria. And then this one here, this is Rick, and this is his twin brother, Morty. Now it's gonna start popping, so be careful. [laughs] That's why we have our fire extinguisher here, just in case. We're gonna fill this grill up here. Hey, supremo! Cómo estás? We cook it this way. We let it cook for about 20, 25 minutes, slow and slow. We don't rush it, because sometimes I go places, you know, and try their food, and the fire is all the way at the top, and it's just, the heat is excessive. This, it's actually grilling, you know? We're grilling, and we're chilling.
Joe: As mentioned before, there are six family salsas.
Victor: So, this one here is my grandma's salsa. It's a red salsa. So, we have salsa guacamole, and we have actual guacamole, chunky. This is our tomatillo-based salsa. Mango pico de gallo. And then we have a roasted salsa. This is my dad's recipe. So you mix this with this, and that is the recipe that his dad showed him in Jiquilpan, Michoacán.
Joe: It's a three-generation salsa, right there?
Victor: Correct. This one is my recipe. This is the mango habanero. We use almost 4 liters. We have 14 liters of guacamole today, 14. This is our The Works vegan taco here. Starts off with your handmade blue corn tortilla. Next step, you add some homemade black beans. Let that get nice and hot there. And we got our soyrizo with grilled onions and grilled pineapple. 100% vegan.
Driver: Since the first time we found out about it, we've been telling friends. We're picking up orders for other people now. [laughs]
Victor: The first hour is the busiest because we're trying to get everything in order. But then the last hour is the busiest as well, because we're taking chances and we might just be accepting a couple orders. Yeah, what up, Instagram? It's about that time again. Villas Tacos in the building! Buh-buh-baby!