Taco Tuesday: Bill’s Taco House #3

Sometimes I like to contemplate a universe where the default taqueria resembles Bill’s Taco House #3, a clean, airy fast-food place across from the Burger King in a South Los Angeles shopping plaza. The big mural on the wall depicts not a sleepy ranchito but scenes from the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The crowd is mostly African American. And the pong in the air is not the usual sharp smack of chiles and stewing beef tongue but the warm, familiar funk of frying hamburger meat and onions, a smell instantly recognizable to anyone who’s set foot in a diner.

If the pastrami burger comes from an old confluence of Jewish and Mexican communities in Boyle Heights, and the galbi quesadilla arose out of the Latino presence in what came to be known as Koreatown, Bill’s Taco House represents the long coexistence of Mexicans and African Americans in South Los Angeles — the Original Bill’s Taco House out on Martin Luther King Boulevard has been in business since 1949.

The mural on the wall at Bill’s Taco House #3 on Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles.

(Jonathan Gold / Los Angeles Times)

There is a tortilla warmed on the griddle, a handful of shredded iceberg lettuce and a sprinkling of un-fancy orange cheese. The meat inside is a well-done hamburger patty cut neatly in two. The salsa — is it salsa? — is dusky red chili gravy, like what you’d expect on a burger but runnier, and without the tiny chunks of texture. And when you pick up a taco, gravy trickling down your arm, and take a big, sloppy bite, you realize that a Bill’s taco is more or less a Fatburger inside a tortilla, a tasty, juicy expression of pure Los Angeles soul.

3292 W. Slauson Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 295-4500.