Los Ángeles is a metropolis of tacos, with new taquerías popping up on road corners around the county weekly. To aid us get by them all, L.A. TACO provides our Taco of the Week” column, wherever we rejoice the most current taco we have eaten that blew our minds.
Takuma Fumoto is a superhero on Centinela.
Not only since the indigenous of Japan and longtime L.A. road food stuff presence stepped out of his truck in March to protect a mom and her infant from a random assault on the Mar Vista avenue exactly where he operates. But also because he places yakisoba in his burritos and pork tonkatsu in his quesadillas and manages to make it all work.
Takuma has been developing U.S. quick foods favorites with a Japanese lilt on the L.A. asphalt given that very first opening a stand in Silver Lake in 2013. There he provided soused revelers fleeing Los Globos the contemporary burgers, takoyaki, shaggily battered and audibly crisp waffle fries, and other inexpensive eats they necessary in times of fantastic metabolic need. Soon after finding his truck in 2017, he was driven off the streets by 2020’s plague right before generating a short-lived reemergence in the old hood.
But today, you’ll generally find Takuma’s Burger parked at Centinela and Venice Boulevard, straddling the control outside the house of Mar Vista’s Mitsuwa, the national Japanese supermarket beloved and besieged by the Westside’s higher-median householders, Asian emigres, and ramen-addicted College product alike.
There he does a brisk organization in crushable curios like clam chowder croquettes, hush puppies, yakitori-shaded kara-age, and burgers with toppings that span the gamut from crab cakes and Kewpie mayo to veggie croquettes and unagi sauce. It’s obvious Takuma fires on an improvisational wavelength, flourishing in crafting meals that is as whimsical as it is adored, if not perhaps a little bit provocative in particular circles that may sense their peanut butter should really have by no means collided with your chocolate.
The chef not too long ago went general public with a secret, off-menu dish: his okonomiyaki burrito. That is, a flour tortilla rolled up together a glut of the fried, Worcestershire-seasoned wheat noodles recognised as yakisoba, with cabbage, bonito flakes, Kewpie, egg, teriyaki sauce, mozzarella cheese, seaweed powder, and praise the lord, bacon.
Okonomiyaki, a sizzling wheat pancake normally topped with meat, cabbage, red ginger, and tidy squirts of a number of sauces but susceptible to infinite interpretations, perhaps to Tokyo road food what the bacon-wrapped scorching dog is to Los Angeles.
When you are wandering the intersections of Roppongi following a few too several, dazed and perplexed by all the lights, you know you’ve landed in the proper location when undulating flakes of bonito wave to you from a sidewalk teppan (griddle) just before sitting down and performing a thing you will almost certainly regret the next working day but desperately need to have at the minute.
Takuma sells these burritos for $12, with the solution of a kimchi burrito for those people who will not get large on the hog. He also offers a quesadilla edition.
Captivated by the thought, we had been tremendous stoked to come across the burrito is fantastic. Genuinely good. The comfortable tortilla cedes into a smoky realm we can’t remember tasting inside a burrito ahead of, abundant with the layered flavors of soy sauce, accents of funky cabbage, the sudden bite of pickled ginger, delicate scrambled egg, and sticky cubes of salty, thick-slice bacon. The yakisoba, meanwhile, plays like a wheat-ier, Japanese style of fideo, a slick tangle of starch sponging up and liberating all the sauces held in just for a texturally lively mouthfeel.
Despite its hybrid character, the burrito does not strike 1 as fusion so a great deal as a major focus of Japanese avenue meals flavors within an perfect, handheld vessel. We also did the bacon-considerably less model with kimchi, which functions, but is secondary to the model stuffed with pork belly. One can also buy it with popcorn hen or shrimp.
The only factor lacking from our burritos was a strong and sharp salsita to established them off. We deployed our possess bottle of Marie Sharp’s to effective benefits at property and also paired the burritos with the canned, Kyoto-designed Junmai of L.A.-based manufacturer Sake Higher!
We dug into a tonkatsu quesadilla, as properly, savoring the delicate, fried pork cutlet encrusted with sweet batter, fried onions, and cheddar cheese, alongside with the subdued acidity of mustard and Worcestershire sauce and the lingering bitter complete of child arugula. Like lots of tonkatsu sandos, it was even improved revisited the future working day after a night time in the fridge.
For a Mexican food stuff fetishist and previous neighbor who the moment lived off Mitsuwa’s chilly tonkatsu sandwiches and marveled at the market’s shock visual appearance of a yakisoba sandwich, Takuma Burger’s okonomiyaki burrito and tonkatsu quesadilla felt like the proper factor to be appreciated in the suitable place.
We’re keen to occur back again for a chunk of that tortilla full of smoke.
Takuma’s Burger ~ 3760 S. Centinela Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90066
The truck typically seems at this location from 12:00 pm ~7:00 pm, Tues-Sunday, with occasional days off for catering functions. Always ideal to look at with Instagram.
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