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LA Times: Carlos Salgado’s Taco María is The Times’ 2018 Restaurant of the Year

Yet no restaurant in years may have had quite the impact that Taco María and its chef Carlos Salgado have had on the Southern California scene. The restaurant, which serves tasting menus of Salgado’s Mexican-influenced cooking, is at the center of a culinary movement that seems to grow in importance each year. By regarding tortillas with a seriousness familiar to any fanatical French baker, by using perfect seasonal produce and by treating regional Mexican dishes with both imagination and respect, Salgado has propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine.

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OC Register: Taco Mario on the list of 12 best, unforgettable foods in 2017

It was just a tiny bite at the end of the meal, a demitasse half filled with sweet corn porridge flavored with coffee and Mexican chocolate, the spices and scents so familiar from childhood, reinforced with heavy cream to flood the palate. In an instant the warm atole, served with a pig-shaped gingerbread cookie –an homage to a panaderia treat–transported me back to San Antonio. When-o-when will Taco Maria start serving more substantial desserts? tacomaria.com –Anne Valdespino

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Taco Maria

Carlos Salgado Costa Mesa, Calif.
There’s a reason why Taco Maria, a snug, tasting-menu focused joint roughly an hour from most places in Los Angeles took the number five spot on Los Angeles Times food critic Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list, just out this week—Salgado is just that good. An Orange County native, he first blipped on the radar of SoCal diners after launching a taco truck back in 2011, his (to most eyes) illogical follow-up to decade or more of toiling in various Michelin-starred (Coi, Commis) kitchens up in the Bay Area. The truck begat the sleek little fine-dining spot where you find him today, and while you can still get tacos here, it’s really all about the four-course prix-fixe menu of what Salgado likes to refer to as Chicano Cuisine.      

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