In Redwood City, a Great Taco Is Always Just a Few Blocks Away — Even at Midnight
The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.
Cruising down 101 at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were hit with that most Bay Area of cravings. We needed oil-slicked tortillas and crisp-edged carnitas. Carne asada served hot off the plancha. In other words, we were hungry for tacos — a whole clutch of them, shoved down our gullets, posthaste.
At this point in the night, we would typically hit up one of our usual after-hours haunts on Richmond’s 23rd street taco corridor, or in Eastside San José. But we’d been hearing about a legendary Peninsula taco scene we hadn’t yet properly explored.
And so we headed to Redwood City for a good old-fashioned late-night taco crawl.
In 2008, the San Jose Mercury News called Redwood City “the center of the taco universe,” citing a density of taquerias — at the time, 49 of them in a city with a population of 74,000 — that seemed higher than just about anywhere else in California, if not the entire United States. Individual shops have come and gone in the 18 years since, but the scene remains incredibly robust. Just last year, no lesser authority than the president of Mexico herself, Claudia Sheinbaum, shouted out Redwood City for having the best Mexican food in the Bay Area, thanks in part to its unusually high influx of immigrants from the city of Aguililla, Michoacán.
On one three-block stretch of Middlefield Road, we must have spotted a dozen taquerias, four or five taco trucks and a handful of informal roadside tents that had set up trompos to sell fresh-sliced al pastor. And across the city, a decent chunk of the shops stay open until midnight on weekends, if not later.
For our first stop, we pulled into a big Costco and Outdoor Supply Hardware parking lot on Middlefield Road. Parked right in front of the hardware store, El Paisa by Los Alegres is one of the newer taco trucks that cropped up in Redwood City during the pandemic, specializing in Mexico City–style tacos. At this late hour, the truck still drew a steady stream of customers — mostly groups of middle-aged Latino men who made quick work of their tacos in the tented dining area.
If Redwood City’s taquerias share a collective theme, it’s that they tend toward old-school simplicity — honest street tacos unadorned with anything more than a dollop of salsa and a flurry of chopped onions and cilantro. El Paisa is the only spot we visited that offered any of the flashier dishes trendy on social media these days: decadently overloaded baked potatoes, alambres (a kind of sizzling, cheesy meat skillet) and so forth.
As tempting as those sounded, we had a long night of taco eating ahead, and needed to pace ourselves. So we ordered a sampling of the truck’s workmanlike street tacos, served on a double layer of fragrant corn tortillas. Every one of them was a winner. There was juicy, well-caramelized Mexico City–style al pastor dotted with chunks of tangy-sweet pineapple; rich, steaky chunks of suadero; and cabeza (pig’s head) that was a dynamo of soft, slippery, gelatinous textures.
One of the most memorable bites was the beef lengua, which had been cut into the thickest, widest slabs I’d ever seen on a taco. The overall effect was like biting into a buttery, impossibly soft piece of steak — extra delicious topped with some spicy pickled onions from the truck’s self-serve salsa bar. Meanwhile, the sope, served open-faced with shredded lettuce, crema and choice of meat, was simply extraordinary. We loved the extra-thick masa base, which had a chewy-crisp texture and a beautifully smoky, charred flavor from the grill.
Our next stop was Tacos Los Gemelos, a lively sit-down taqueria on El Camino Real, less than five minutes away and still doing brisk business at almost 11 p.m. The vibe was an interesting mish-mash of past and present. There was the old-fashioned picture menu board, the kitschy rooster-themed artwork, the quaint blue-and-white gingham pattern laminated on the tabletops. On the other hand, a more recent layer of AI-generated signage had been plastered everywhere, bleating out the same cartoonish font you see at so many other restaurants. (“We are selling FLAN as a dessert!” one of them read.)
The food, on the other hand, tasted altogether homey. The plush handmade tortillas were wonderfully soft and aromatic. The Michoacán-style carnitas were moist and tender, rather than crispy. And the shrimp had been diced into cubes before getting a hard sear on the griddle, which imbued them with the texture and subtle smokiness of grilled octopus.
Best of all was the specialty of the house: juicy, impeccably tender slow-cooked barbacoa, which you can order with a side of consomé. I suppose you could dip your barbacoa taco in the hot broth if you aren’t afraid of making a mess. We simply sipped it at the end of our meal, Chinese-style. A perfect final bite.
At this point in our journey, we were pretty well stuffed. But we couldn’t call it a night without visiting an outpost of El Grullense, easily Redwood City’s most well known and beloved taco chain. So we loosened our pants and made a beeline for the 5th Avenue location of Tacos El Grullense E&E, which is really just a window attached to a Mobil gas station mini mart. It’s a bare-bones, cash-only operation without any seating to speak of. The best play is to simply lay your spread of tacos out on the hood of your car before digging in.
Might this be the most quintessential Redwood City taco experience? The carne asada had crisp, well-charred edges, and the tripitas (beef intestines) were the tastiest I’ve had in a long time — not over-fried, but with a crispy-chewy, slightly squishy texture that was incredibly addicting. They burst with hot, meaty juices as soon as we bit in. We tried another sope, topped with al pastor, and it was wonderful here too — the pork deeply savory, the shredded lettuce particularly fresh and crisp.
Tying everything together was El Grullense’s hallmark item: red salsa with a slight smokiness, a sneaky heat and an incredible depth of flavor. We couldn’t get enough of it.
As full as we were, we wound up polishing off every bite, barely bothering to wipe the grease stains off the hood of the car before we drove off into the night. All we knew is that there were still at least another dozen taquerias we still wanted to check out the next time we came through this part of the Peninsula. Hours later, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers still smelled faintly of masa and meat juices.
El Paisa by Los Alegres is open Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 2110 Middlefield Rd. in Redwood City. The truck is usually parked in front of the Outdoor Supply Hardware.
Tacos Los Gemelos is open Wednesday through Monday 9:30 a.m.–midnight at 1630 El Camino Real.
Tacos El Grullense E&E is open 9 a.m.–midnight daily at 795 5th Ave. Cash only. Attached to a Mobil gas station mini-mart, the taqueria is one of four El Grullense E&E locations in Redwood City — and one of at least eight loosely affiliated restaurants on the Peninsula that bear the El Grullense name.