Review: Goth tacos with tentacles and wild, wonderful cooking at this heavy-metal taqueria

"It's rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I'm left more than a little dumbfounded. Alex Garcia's cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup."

"It's an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn't work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness."

"It's just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant's walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters."

Evil Cooks is a year-old Mexican restaurant in El Sereno run by chefs Alex Garcia and Elvia Huerta, who embrace a rebellious heavy metal spirit in their culinary approach. The restaurant features jet-black walls decorated with music posters and operates from a small storefront on Eastern Avenue. The menu showcases unconventional dishes that blend familiar flavors in surprising ways, with particular emphasis on starters and rotating specials. A signature example is the cheeseburger tartare, which deconstructs a classic burger into raw rib-eye dice dressed with pickle brine, soy, mustard, and ketchup, topped with American cheese and fried onions. Despite seemingly incompatible elements, these dishes achieve remarkable cohesion and sophistication.

Read at Los Angeles Times