Tacos Baja Ensenada

East LA is the greater Los Angeles area's undisputed Mexican food capitol. Today we were in the mood for Ensenada style fish tacos, which have batter-fried fish. We were pleasantly surprised when we got to the restaurant, because there were plenty of other seafood choices as well!

My favorite was the fish taco, which is on the far side of this photo. A nice big piece of crispy deep-fried fish with salsa, crema, and cabbage. The closer taco is a barbacoa taco (BBQ beef, I assume). The meat was juicy and well-seasoned.

The second place flavor winner was the clam cocktail. The sopes, a thick dough (kind of like a pupusa) was topped with carnitas, beans, salsa, lettuce, and crema. Very good, but not as good as everything else.

We got the smallest clam cocktail just to try, but the bigger versions were served in fun glass goblets. This is one of the biggest clams. J missed the stinky black insides, but I was glad the restaurant guts the clams. Talk about a labor intensive $5 dish. There are also shrimp, octopus, scallop, and mixed seafood cocktails. The cocktail ingredients were visible from the kitchen window, and it's rare to smell all those sweet seafood smells so far inland.

J had a fish burrito. It was ENORMOUS. Okay, I don't know if it's enormous by East LA standards, but compared to what we're used to it really was huge for $5.

It was good, but I'm just not a huge burrito fan. I'd rather have three or four tacos than all that rice and beans. I can't eat enough to make a burrito the smart budget decision, so unless there's someone who's going to share with me, I always get tacos.

I really liked the roasted peppers at Tacos Baja Ensenada. They look deadly, but are actually on the sweet side. If you avoid all the seeds, there's actually barely any more heat than is in a bell pepper, and a lot more sweet pepper flavor. But if you do want heat, the seeds are on par with a jalepeno without that offputting grassy flavor.