Leo's Tacos Truck — Restaurant in Los Angeles

If I was desperately trying to convince someone to love Los Angeles, I'd probably first take that person to Leo's Tacos. I'd take them here at 1am on a Thursday night when the area surrounding the truck is a hang-out for a diverse horde of happy young people standing around and ordering tacos, eating tacos, ordering more tacos, and so on.

Leo's Tacos is a highly-esteemed fleet of trucks serving $1 tacos across L.A. This location in a gas station parking lot at Venice and LaBrea is the original truck and known to be the one to visit if you were looking for the very best version of Leo's tacos.

During my recent visit, I ordered the "Al Pastor Taco" (pork shoulder marinated in adobo, shaved off of a spinning trompo) and the "Cabeza Taco" (braised cow head meat). First of all, forget about the Cabeza Taco: despite having some interesting varying textures within the small pile of meat on the tortilla, the overall flavor is too muddy and the cabeza is not appropriately seasoned, resulting in a below-average cabeza taco in Los Angeles. I implore everyone to instead focus 100% of their attention on Leo's "Al Pastor Taco."

Think of your typical good Al Pastor pork: some pieces ultra-crispy, others ultra-tender, and the best of those magenta-glazed meat strips share both textures in one piece of meat. Now think of a taco consisting only of the latter, but with the sticky, spicy pineapple adobo sauce "turned up to 11," and with the meat sliced almost paper-thin off the trompo so that there is even more caramelized surface area in your taco. That's Leo's secret: through excellent knife-work, they maximize the amount of crusted, sticky edges in their tortillas. I've never had Al Pastor pork so tasty in the U.S.

As great as the Al Pastor pork was, I was disappointed by the fact they use packaged corn tortillas that smell less like corn and more like talcum powder. Also, I love dollar tacos as much as the next guy, but the downside to that is that they're often minuscule, as they are here. You'll want to order no less than a half dozen of these little guys at minimum. Additionally, you will need to dress these tacos yourself: for the Al Pastor Taco, I recommend onions, cilantro, and their salsa roja (deep red sauce) from the salsa bar; for the Cabeza Taco, a tangy salsa verde is more appropriate.

For all of these reasons, although I believe Leo's Al Pastor pork is head-of-the-class on this side of the border, I can't recommend them over San Diego's Tacos El Gordo or Escondido's TJ Tacos, two SoCal taquerias that have Al Pastor Tacos with slightly better overall quality due to larger, better tortillas, and a dependable mixture of condiments and sauces applied to the taco in precisely correct quantities by skilled taqueros.

Even still, I highly recommend Leo's. My above quibbles are very minor, and I bring them up only because when you're talking about a taco this good, you are talking about the very best tacos you can find, and this invites contextualization and comparison against other tacos in this tier. I have not found a better Al Pastor...

Wholly guacamole! These tacos really hit the spot. My girlfriend and I were passing by and we both had a little crave for something while we got back home. Hunger was striking a little harder as she mentioned that she'd been at those tacos at the beginning of the year. A quick right turn around the block took us back to the gas station were Leo's food trucks are taking the orders of a line of a bout 10 people before us. As we get half-way to the line we realize that they only take cash! We started scratching our pockets trying to find enough so we can each have at least 2 tacos each. Considering that a few months ago we had eaten $5 tacos by a car wash on La Cienega Blvd, we could be able to buy at least one taco. To our surprise all tacos are $1.25!!! so we went semi-wild and bought three tacos each. Pastor are #1. Hands down. Asada take 2nd. And chicken take the 3rd and last place. Tacos de Pastor are made just like they're done in the traditional Mexico taqueria. The meat is sliced in thin flakes that fall over a warm taquito, ready to cushion a slice of pineapple that invites you to pour a dangerous amount of green hot sauce, or their red salsa. Limes are included as well as your choice of radish. The asada tacos were fine. The chopped meat had the right size, but the flavor wasn't as rich as the Pastor. I guess the asada are to be heavily accompanied by a good amount of salsa and lime. Chicken tacos were too salty and the seasoning didn't have a good flavor overall. I hope you enjoy your visit at Leo's and I look forward to going again and again and...

The best “pastor” tacos in LA period. At $1.50 each they are also probably the best deal around. Inconvenient location when it gets busy but they serve the real LA community. They unfortunately only accept cash which sucks cause if they took card they would be making more money.

They are at the corner of La Brea & Venice Blvd but they do have several other locations throughout LA. This particular location has 1-2 taco trucks parked in the lot of a gas station called Sinclair’s. I do recommend to try the habanero pickled onions with your order, it’s a nice spicy kick to the sweet & tender juicy pastor meat.

Their signature pastor used to be trimmed off 2 large vertical meat spits & they still are but due to health reasons they are no longer street side but in the trucks. The unfortunate thing is that it only happens after 6:30pm for the “good” meat cuts. Other than the pastor tacos there really isn’t anything to brag about.

As of May 2024 upon my last visit. I can no longer say that this is the best pastor tacos in LA. The price of the tacos are simply not worth the wait or the lack of flavor now. It’s heartbreaking to say this but Leo’s tacos is now overrated, not worth it and just ok tacos. Find a local street side spot and I promise you for a better price you’ll be much more satisfied. I highly recommend tacos el flaco on Inglewood Blvd in front of Northgate or their other location on Centinela Ave in front of Mitsuwa. They only charge $2 for tacos and $10 for burrito with as many meats as you want. Their pastor is what...