LA Street Food Sensation Teddy’s Red Tacos Jumps From Instagram to Venice

The hottest item on Instagram right now, naturally, is tacos. Places all over greater Los Angeles are building huge social media followings on the backs of some beautiful shots of regionally-specific tacos, but one of the biggest in the game has to be Teddy’s Red Tacos. Luckily, owner Teddy Vasquez isn’t just letting his photos do the talking; he’s actually opening restaurants.

As L.A. Taco first reported, Teddy’s Red Tacos expanded this week to right off the Venice Boardwalk, on one of the city’s most heavily-foot-trafficked plots of land. The Windward Avenue location formerly housed a Mediterranean spot called Cairo Cowboy but now it’s all about Vasquez’s bright-red birria with tortillas from La Jolla in Vernon. The restaurant had its first day of service on Sunday, and is operating six days a week for now (minus Monday) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Teddy’s Red Tacos started as an occasional pop-up in front of South LA bars before moving to a food truck off the railroad tracks along Slauson. The company expanded to a busy Pico Rivera storefront in September of last year, and will likely add to its arsenal as 2019 continues. Still, it’s rare to see tacos this popular on the spendy Westside.

Meanwhile, a number of other taco stands and trucks have become immensely popular online over the past year or two in Los Angeles. There’s Tacos El Venado with four stands (and nearly 100,000 Instagram followers) up in the San Fernando Valley, while the Tacos 1986 crew continues to battle long weekend lines at Smorgasburg and outside of Mama Lion in Koreatown. Both offer Tijuana-style carne asada and adobada, while Tacos y Birria La Unica near Mariscos Jalisco sports 115,000 followers and just catered a party for John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.

Teddy’s Red Tacos Venice. 46 Windward Ave., Los Angeles, CA.

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