Midnight Tacos

You’ve seen the great brotherhood of taco eaters, huddled around trucks late at night, trying to maneuver 17 grams of highly spiced cow’s brains or whatever to their mouths without draining detergent-resistant chipotle sauce down the sleeve of their new Christmas jackets.

There’s something about the smell of charring meat, the island of warmth and light in the cold dark, that can practically compel you to stand around, to eat off soggy paper plates balanced on the roof of your car, to guzzle things like grape soda or the hibiscus-blossom infusion jamaica that you ordinarily wouldn’t drink on a bet. You munch still-muddy radishes in a vain attempt to disguise the smell of cumin and raw onion that will crawl into bed with you like a faithful pet.

You might actually strike up a conversation with your fellow devotees of the taco one of these days--it’s easy to sense something in common with the rest of the midnight shift, though it’s true that commonality often expresses itself in a certain furtiveness around the eyes--if not for the certainty that all that is beautiful and holy about the mess of corn and gristle in front of you would dissipate as soon as you said hello. If you’ve been there, you know: The chi, the elusive fire-energy of tacos, vanishes seconds after the tacos are served, and unless you’re at a first-class place, you’ll never experience it at all.

If you’re into the taco thing, at one time or another you’ve probably noticed the leaping flames outside El Gran Burrito, a stand tucked next to a barren Metro Rail construction site in East Hollywood, protected with razor wire, at its most crowded after the bars close. Like most great Los Angeles taco places, El Gran Burrito is less notable for the food served inside the restaurant than for the food served out back on evenings and on weekends, when the big grill is set up under an awning, and the mingled aromas of wood smoke and charred beef permeate the air for blocks.

Like all great taco stands, El Gran Burrito can seem slightly sinister after midnight, not in a watch-your-wallet kind of way, but with an atavistic dude vibe: bits of meat roasted on the communal fire; the fire-lit black-hats-gnawing-flesh thing that seems to have figured in half the Westerns ever made.

What is on the menu at El Gran Burrito: carne asada, grilled beef, snatched from a big fire, chopped--thwack!--into gristly nubs with a big cleaver, and swept into a gray pile of meat that glistens under the harsh artificial light. From the pile, still hissing, the grill man tips the meat onto a juxtaposition of two thick corn tortillas that have been briefly toasted with oil, splashes it with a bit of the stand’s tart, green tomatillo salsa, dusts it with chopped onions and a little cilantro, and slides the taco--or four--onto a thin paper plate in less time than it takes you to fish a couple of dollars from your jeans.

It is a grand taco, sizzling hot, oily, glowing with citrus and black pepper, the kind of taco that can for a fleeting instant seem like the best thing that ever happened to your life until it’s time to get the next one. A truly fine taco may be something like the crack cocaine of the food world.

There are things to eat inside El Gran Burrito that are not carne asada tacos--burritos stuffed with chicken, rice and beans; the mild beef stew called carne guisada; pork rinds stewed in tomato sauce; carnitas sandwiches served on toasted white rolls--but I can see no reason why you’d bother.

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Where to Go

El Gran Burrito, 4716 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 665-8720. Open daily, for lunch and dinner. Outdoor grilled tacos served evenings and weekends only. Cash only. No alcohol. Parking lot. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $5-$8.

What to Get

Carne asada taco.