Late in 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal began serving tacos from a food truck on the northern fringes of Long Beach. They mirrored the style his father had learned growing up in a town called El Verde in Mexico’s Sinaloa state. The quick success his son found led to the opening of a taqueria, its menu nearly identical, in a Whittier strip mall in early 2023. The foremost Sinaloan glory: a chorreada, which begins by crisping a corn tortilla on the comal and sprinkling on Monterey Jack and, crucially, asiento, a rendered paste made from the remnants of frying chicharrones. Its taste crisscrosses the nutty, caramelized purity of homemade ghee with the explicit richness of pork. Morales makes three meats: carne asada, adobada and tripa. Mixing the asada or adobada with tripe lands the flavors in a sweet-spot juncture of smoke, seasoning and funk. Consider the same combination when ordering the Sinaloan pellizcada, a medium-large round of masa, thicker than the average tortilla but thinner than a sope. Morales drives to Tijuana weekly to pick up pellizcadas made by a vendor in Mazatlán. The number he needs to order, he told me recently, keeps growing and growing. — B.A.

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