Hot’s Kitchen is the most uninhibited taco joint I’ve found on the planet
To the roster of culinary adventurers, add Hot’s Kitchen in Hermosa. I was going to wait a while for the place to find its groove before reviewing them until I realized that they don’t intend to ever settle in. This restaurant is all about continuous experimentation. The menu is printed daily, and items have known to become available midway through an evening. We asked about an eel and avocado taco that was listed as a coming attraction, and our server told us that the ingredients had arrived about an hour before, so they would serve it. We didn’t actually order it because the flavors were too much like a sushi roll with a tortilla instead of rice, and there were more interesting and arcane things to be had.
The theme here is finger food of various kinds – more or less standard appetizers, wings, and burgers, plus very non-standard riffs on tacos, featuring everything that can fit inside a corn tortilla. There are some salads that require forks, but except for those, you could forget that humans are tool-using creatures.
At first the selection looks daunting, but it is actually manageable. There are no prices after about a third of the items, which means they have rotated off the menu on the day you’re there. This is brilliant marketing — I can imagine someone who was entranced by the idea of, say, an alligator, green onion, and yellow pepper taco with Creole sauce and decided to keep coming back until he could try it.
The selection goes from mild to wild. You can get a plain chicken, beef, or pork taco, but we didn’t, and neither did anybody at any of the tables I could see.
We decided to start both of our meals with appetizers and salads — potato wedges and chili-lime chicken wings on the first visit and sweet potato fries and a lobster salad on the second. The potato skins were the usual “Irish nachos” with a few modern touches, like tomato comfit on the side and a drizzle of green Tabasco sauce crema. Anything involving potatoes, cheese, and bacon has something going for it, but these were measurably better than usual. The wings were less outstanding, not bad — just not special, but the sweet potato fries hit the spot thanks to the drizzle of coconut crème fraiche. The coconut was fragrant rather than sweet and added a tropical flair. I’d order these again any day. The lobster salad was quite good too — a decent chunk of crustacean for 10 bucks, framed with heirloom tomato, cucumbers, corn, pistachios, and greens with an orange Muscat vinaigrette. It was creative and balanced; a good omen for all that was to come.
Most of what came afterward was tacos, but first I have to mention the beer selection, which is the best in Hermosa. It’s not as eclectic as the food list, but that’s a good thing. Rather than aim at novelty, what they serve here is expertly chosen to represent the best of a number of styles. The servers know the selection and can make intelligent recommendations, which is necessary because some relatively obscure brews are unexplained. I would have never ordered the hoppy, rich Hairy Eyeball based on the name alone, and I might have missed the Obsidian Stout, whose creamy oatmeal and coffee flavors were almost reminiscent of a good breakfast. Hot’s has a fine wine list too, but a beer selection like this is such a rarity that I have to take advantage of it. Besides, tacos and beer are such a hallowed combination that it seems silly to order anything else.
Those tacos arrive on a plate in the center of the table unless you request otherwise, and we liked it that way. It made sampling everything not merely easy, but inevitable. Among the relatively normal ones we tried were chicken with onions, jalapenos, and pepper aioli; chorizo with tomatillo sauce; and crispy shrimp with a Cajun mayonnaise. The wild side tacos we tried included king crab with roasted cauliflower and mustard butter; oxtail with horseradish and braised leeks; duck comfit with cheese grits and maple glaze, and a “Cubano” with Swiss cheese, ham, aioli, and pickles.
Obviously, there’s nothing Mexican about most of these. It makes sense to think of Hot’s as an eclectic sandwich shop for people who prefer corn tortillas to bread. Except that it’s better because tacos are small bites, so you can enjoy a novel flavor for a few bites and move on. I have had gargantuan Cuban sandwiches and tired of the flavor, but that’s not going to happen with a Cuban taco.
By the way, that Cuban taco was delicious, as was everything else we tried. The gyro taco was made with fresh grilled lamb instead of the usual pressed and formed meat mix, and it was excellent. Even the wild ideas were successful. The crab and cauliflower taco made me wonder why nobody else had noticed how well those flavors combined, and the duck comfit with grits was all richness with just the right touch of sweet. A taco of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy; or one with braised cabbage and granny smith apples will hit the spot for anyone wanting a tapas-sized burst of comfort food.
It all worked, proof of concept and execution in every bite, and at $2.50 to $4.50 each, you could afford a fair number of bites without breaking the bank.
The ambiance at Hot’s is loud, the crowd young, and there is an air of excitement about the place. The bill is very fair for the experience – a full meal for three with four beers ran $72.44, a bargain for two hours of creative fun at the most uninhibited taco joint I’ve found on the planet.
Hot’s Kitchen is at 844 Hermosa Avenue. Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, street parking, wheelchair access OK, some vegetarian items. For more information visit hotskitchen.com or phone (310) 318-2939.
