After paying his dues on the line at Atla, Ceviche Project, and a nine-month run as a chef of food truck La Hija del Marondo, chef Saúl Pérez García will finally open his own Hermosillo-style street cart in Silver Lake. Tacos Royale opens Friday, June 5, as a street stand in a parking lot on West Sunset Boulevard serving tacos and burritos filled with steak cooked over charcoal and wrapped in flour tortillas.
The project comes from Pérez and his cousin and partner, chef Eloy Aluri, a renowned chef, culinary researcher, and restaurant consultant based in Hermosillo who has appeared on many television shows, including Netflix’s Taco Chronicles. Born in Guadalajara, Pérez spent many family vacations in Hermosillo, a city in México’s northwestern Sonoran state, and both he and Aluri have pooled their resources to engineer a carne asada stand unlike Los Angeles has ever seen.
Like Los Angeles’s other local keepers of the flame, Sonoratown, Tacos La Carreta, and Tacos Don Cuco, Tacos Royale will be cooking its asada with charcoal. For now, the taquería offers one cut, USDA Prime diezmillo (chuck roll), typically served by street stands in Hermosillo, that has a unique preparation. “We separate the seven [primary] muscles, trim the fat and nerves and only use the meat in the taco, which is why we say steak taco — this is how it’s done in Hermosillo,” says Pérez. Some of the trim is used to make beef cracklings, known as veneno (poison) in Hermosillo. The cracklings can come on Pérez’s asada taco and OG taco, a taco de frijol made from a recipe given to Aluri and Pérez by none other than notable cook Nereida Vejar, owner of Rincon de la Nere in Matape, Sonora. The party beans, or frijoles de fiesta, are refried peruanos colored orange by fried chile colorado, using a blend of melted Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese with a kick from pickled jalapeños…