Fresh flautas are served from this LA food stand and people can't get enough
- Estiven Torres, owner of Los Dorados and LA's first flautas-only eatery, became inspired after his father-in-law's recipe was a huge hit at a 2017 family baptism.
- He's since gotten the hang of expertly frying taquitos in a makeshift setting, working out of a food truck that's stationed in front of bars on weekends.
- The two flautas per order cost $6. They're served fresh and piping hot, on a paper tray, topped with homemade red and green salsas, crema, and cotija cheese.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Estiven Orozco Torres: A tortilla that's fried to perfection, you could tell when you pull it out, it's fluffy, it's a little bubbly. You could tell that when someone's gonna bite it, it's gonna have this amazing crunch that's just gonna stop conversation.
Customer: Mhmm
Estiven: This is more of a Mexico City style flauta, which is gonna be a little saucier. We almost butter them up with cream, we top them with salsa verde de guacamole, so it's a guacamole-based green salsa. And the red sauce adds just a little bit of spice, and the cotija cheese gives you a little bit of saltiness and like cheesiness at the end.
Customer: You taste everything, it's full of spice, it has sazon. I personally like all of the toppings. I like the green salsa, the sour cream, and the cheese on top, it tastes amazing. Just you can't find it anywhere else. I know that he gets really busy and the lines get really long, so I wanted to make sure I got here before the line got really crazy.
Estiven: Our lamb barbacoa is estilo Texcoco, which is my father-in-law's home state. So he brought back these recipes that were from family from a long time ago, and throughout the whole years has perfected this lamb barbacoa that loses some of that gaminess, that is still juicy. Part of the tradition of it is using pencas. It's like a blue weber agave leaf, avocado leaves, different spices, different seasonings, and steaming it for a very long time, approximately 12 hours. It's an art. Making sure it gets nice and soft and succulent.
Crystal Lee: Thank you. The chicken?
- Definitely.
Estiven: It's a chipotle chicken tinga that we stew for a few hours, drain it, we cool it, and we put it into the fryer. So it's very fresh. We don't want it to be too dry. So the thigh gives a little bit of juiciness too. Tomatoes, onions, you add a little bit of bay leaves, then you add some spices to it. So we put it in our flauta. I mean, even when you fry it, when you smell, when you get close to Los Dorados truck, you're smelling that Chipotle, tomato, onions, like just heating up and letting out their aromas out into the world, right?
Estiven: La charola is the pan that we use to fry the flautas. We put the perfect amount of oil, the perfect amount of flautas in there at a time, heats them efficiently, they look beautiful standing on the side of the charola. It's even like a show. You see the flame in the bottom and you know, the way that you can drop them in there and kind of make sure that they're getting cooked from the inside. our charola specifically has been used with our family for generations. And it was specially made for flautas and passed down to us. Every time we start our service, we use a little bit of each previous services oil, so we can keep that flavor each and every time that we fry flautas in it. It's like the mother oil that we've been using since the beginning. The tortilla that we make, it's particular to frying. There's a balanced moisture content, and you could even see it in the flautas the way they fry. So it doesn't absorb oil and you get the crunch without the oiliness of it.
Customer: Man, these are crispy delicious.
Estiven: Los Dorados started the day I went to a baptism and I had my father-in-law's flautas and fell in love with them and thought that everyone needed to try this. He was one of the first Taqueiros in LA. So everything that comes from those Los Dorados is based off of a family recipe that has been going on for ages for over five decades. For him to allow us to use the family recipes, to create happiness- It's heartwarming. That's the energy that keeps keeps us going. That keeps me going.
Crystal: These are incredible. Ooh. Wow. It's so good. It's like juicy chicken with a really crispy exterior and all the sauces stick to the outside really well. No watery sauces here. The best time eat them is right when they come out of the fryer. The inside is piping hot, steaming. The outside sauces are chilled So you have that temperature difference too. These sauces are what really pull everything together. They compliment the way that the chicken is spiced perfectly. These are hands down the best flautas I've ever had in my life and quite possibly the best flautas I will ever have. Social distancing. Cheers!