What Purports To Be Mexican Food at Tito’s Tacos

I’ve come a long way since my teen years when I was afraid of tasting my Mom’s home-made lecsó, which was made with rice and Hungarian banana peppers, some of which were fiercely hot. Now, most of what I eat is seasoned with chiles. Today I finished up my Spanish Rice, made with fire-roasted hatch chiles and dry Chiles Japoneses. This morning, I had home=made quesadillas with Mexican jalapeños en escabeche.

Yesterday I dropped in for lunch at a popular Culver City restaurant called Tito’s Tacos in Culver City. I suddenly realized that I had come a long way from my early days. The two hard shell tacos tasted like unseasoned hamburger with a bit of shredded lettuce. Where were the chiles? Nowhere, to be exact. There weren’t even any bowls of pickled jalapeños to spice things up.

In the space of half a century I have morphed into a chile-head. Interestingly, my brother Dan is one as well. I remember going with him to a farmers’ market in Templeton, California and being offered a sample of olives stuffed with habañero chiles, which, as you may know, are probably the hottest chiles in common use, except for special purpose lethal items like the Carolina Reaper.The man offering the stuffed olives expected us to crumple with flames coming out our orifices. When Dan and I looked at each other and expressed approval, we asked for another sample—to the consternation of the seller.

Few of the people I know are able to match me on the Scoville Scale, where I am quite comfortable at tyhe 100,000 Scoville heat units level. For a look at the Scoville scale, check out Wikipedia.