Tacos Los Gordos: Hidden Taco Gem in New Haven

Tender lengua taco, on a homemade tortilla, topped simply with salsa, onion, and cilantro.

If you’ve dined around the Connecticut restaurant scene with regularity, it’s pretty common to see familiar chef faces. Edgar Marcial is one of those.

Marcial is well traveled with stints at Geronimo Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill in New Haven, Shell & Bones Oyster Bar, Crave (now called Uptown Bar & Eatery), Prime One Eleven, Taco Co., and for a length stint as the executive chef of Gabriele’s Of Westport.

A new addition are suadero (short rib) tacos

These tacos don’t skimp on the meat. Get those napkins ready! Pictured: carnitas.

“I’ve been around quite a bit,” Marcial says.

For Marcial, however, being around wasn’t enough. And he’ll flat out tell you that he loved his time at other places, but despite some creative input in the kitchens at each of those restaurants, none of those places were his.

“I loved it, but I was making money for other people, and you have to do something for yourself,” he says.

Marcial didn’t jump right into a the role of a chef, he actually started as a dishwasher. “I started from the bottom and worked my way up,” he says. “It wasn’t that simple, but you know.”

Marcial, who was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and came to America at six months old to live in Anaheim, decided that his something for himself should be a taqueria that’s not only representative of his culture, upbringing, and the kind of spot that he wanted to see in Connecticut.

“I couldn’t find anything that hit close to home,” he says. “In Southern California you can always find good tacos. Not the ones that are modified by sour cream, lettuce, or cheese all over everything. When I got here (to Connecticut), I would travel to New York to find good tacos at places like Taqueria Ramirez and Los Tacos No. 1. I felt like there were a lot of people with me on that, like why doesn’t Connecticut have something like that?”

Al pastor, the right way.

Shaved to order with tortillas that are pressed to order.

Just under two years ago, Marcial opened exactly the type of spot he was looking for in Downtown New Haven.

And what he’s doing at Tacos Los Gordos is all love.

And judging from the waves of customers that wander in here and smash tacos and wash them down with a Mexican Coke out of his vintage Coca-Cola cooler, they’re loving it, too.

What’s represented, taco wise, is from all parts of Mexico: carnitas from Michoacán, beef birria from Tijuana, of course crispy cod taco that reps Baja and SoCal, and al pastor, cooked on a spit, from Mexico City that’ll immediately catch your eye upon entry.

The finished al pastor taco. Some crispy pork, some tender pork, sweet pineapple, a bit of heat from the marinade and red salsa, creaminess from the guac-salsa, and a tortilla that holds up. It’s easily one of my top tacos in Connecticut.

“It’s over 50 pounds (the pork shoulder), that’s butchered, then marinated for 2-3 days, then it goes up,” Marcial explains. “Once this one is up, we prepare the next one because the al pastor here goes fast. We’re one of the few places that does it the original way. It takes practice to do it right. We start it off cooking early, shave it to order, then the next part cooks. Shave, cook, shave, cook. It stays juicy and doesn’t dry out.”

The open kitchen in Tacos Los Gordos also provides another show as you can watch your tortillas get pressed, then griddled to order. The corn used here goes back to Marcial’s birthplace of Oaxaca as that’s where they get their corn from, and at a taqueria that takes pride in doing everything homemade and in-house, it should come as no surprise that they even mill the corn themselves before they turn it into masa.

While Tacos Los Gordos does have tortas (on homemade telera rolls), this is sort of a taco-quesadilla-sandwich hybrid by way of Tijuana called a mulita. And yes, that is birria between those cheesy tortillas.

Baja fish: battered Icelandic cod, cilantro, onion, shredded cabbage, Baja crema , salsa bandera.

“There’s a saying in Mexico that there’s no good taco without good salsa, but the most important part is the tortilla,” Marcial says. “There’s no good taco without a good tortilla. We’ve featured different corns in the past and every so often so people can try it and I can introduce them to our culture.”

Besides the different corns they may toss in the mix for a tortilla switch up, Tacos Los Gordos like to throw some pastry on the menu from time to time in the form of tres leches cake, flan, buñuelos instead of churros, and in the winter, you can expect sweet bread, that you know as conchas, as well.

Your napkin pile might look something like this during your meal and that isn’t a bad thing.

What it’s all about at the end of the day, in a place Marcial can call his own, is authenticity, if you couldn’t already tell. So authentic, in fact, that you might want to think twice about asking for cheese on your taco.

“We don’t do that, so we always point them in the direction of our mulitas—a Tijuana style quesadilla that’s two quesadillas pressed together—if they want cheese,” Marcial says. “Tacos are cilantro, onion, and salsa. We keep it simple. People still ask for cheese, but we let ‘em know that we’re pretty authentic here.”

167 Orange Street, New Haven
203.535.0851, tacos-los-gordos.square.site