On a Plate

I’m going to take a pause from recounting my Midwestern homecoming.

See, I really need to tell you about this plate of food. In particular, about the plate itself.

Let me back up. Let’s start with coffee.

In Los Angeles, people have no idea that Intelligentsia Coffee started in Chicago. People (in my anecdotal experience) tend to assume that it’s a Californian phenomenon. This assumption is understandable: when I first encountered an Intelligentsia coffee house out here (in Venice) the entire vibe of the place was categorically LA — sun-soaked, casual, breezy, but behind all that, working its ass off to be noteworthy. This was a far cry from the coffee I’d first tasted at the basement cafe at Crerar Library.

When I moved to California from Chicago, I was amused — bemused? — by the way something so familiar took on this unique shape in a new climate. It was in this spirit of anthropology that, in the summer of 2013, I stopped in Silver Lake on my way from Santa Monica to Pasadena.

I had heard that Silver Lake was interesting, and I had heard there was an Intelligentsia there. These two things brought me to the neighborhood, and nothing more.

I don’t remember much about the coffee, but I vividly recall that I had a short amount of time on my hands to explore this stretch of Sunset Boulevard,¹ and that in that time I wandered my way to a colorfully painted taco stand plastered with a gleeful boast:

“BEST CHILAQUILES IN TOWN!”

I’d only learned what chilaquiles were a few years prior, after my father returned from a trip to Mexico singing their praises. I knew I liked them. I still lived in distant Orange, but my near future held the promise of this city. I made a note in my phone: Tacos Delta — Chilaquiles.

Just over a year later, I lived within a mile of the place.

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In life, I’m not often a “regular,” and I don’t have a “usual.” I gravitate toward places I’ve never tried and Specials of the Day. But at some point, the chilaquiles at Tacos Delta became the exception that proves the rule. On Saturday mornings, if I’m in town with no obligations, I hike over the demanding hills of Silver Lake and make my order: chilaquiles con huevos, over easy, with everything.

My loyalty to the place, and the dish, continues to surprise me. I have virtually stopped ordering chilaquiles anywhere else, because they inevitably disappoint in comparison to the “best in town.” When I returned from three weeks in England in 2017, I posted a photo of the chilaquiles on Instagram and mentioned how I’d missed them while I was away. If I have out-of-town guests, I inevitably take them to Tacos Delta for chilaquiles. Sometimes people ask me what else is good there and I answer, honestly, that I have no idea².

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One day early in the lockdown of 2020, when (to me, at least) it felt like everything had temporarily (?) shuttered, my then-roommate, Kat, and I went for a walk over those hills. We didn’t have a destination in mind, we just wanted to reassure ourselves that the city was still there. It was. And so was Tacos Delta — open for carry-out.

What joy I felt, friends, at this discovery. I’d just assumed that this taco-stand — small, one-off, family-owned and operated — would have pulled down the roll-up steel doors and attempted to wait out those panicked first weeks. Seeing that I had been mistaken was a revelation. Here, in a styrofoam clamshell, inside a plastic sack (both items I generally abhor), was a glimmer of hope.

Also, there were chilaquiles in there.

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If rituals kept us sane during lockdown in Los Angeles, Tacos Delta has been my sanity. As the pandemic stretched on, details of the ritual changed, but those changes were themselves a meter of where things stood in the city, and where things stood for me. Before the pandemic, they served everything in plastic baskets lined with butcher paper. I always ate my chilaquiles at one of the red acrylic tables tucked under a corrugated roof behind the kitchen. For a while, that was not an option, so I would courier the chilaquiles in their packaging all the way home before eating them at my dining room table. One day, I noticed that some of the restaurant’s seating was open — the closed tables were criss-crossed with black and yellow police tape. I wasn’t ready to take my mask off in public yet. But at some point it felt okay to walk as far as the park and eat.

One day, I decided the dining area was empty enough for me to feel safe sticking around. Mask looped around my ear, I covertly scooped bites into my mouth while keeping an eye out for anyone who might come to close. I worried that I was being reckless. Eventually, that worry faded. Gradually, more tables opened up, until all the yellow tape was gone. They began asking me at the window if my order was “for here or to go.” But though “for here” orders were ferried out by a server, they were still dressed in “to go” attire. Those styrofoam clamshells in their plastic sacks, now a necessary evil, carried the faintest suggestion: You can and your chilaquiles should get out of here as soon as possible.

Everything at Tacos Delta is familiar to me. The chilaquiles, yes. But more than that: the red tables are familiar, the ferns are familiar, the blue-topped trash bins and the bottles of house-made salsa picante are familiar. Perhaps above all, the faces (if not the names, much to my shame) are familiar. I’ve prayed for them, been grateful for them, worried about the ones that were sometimes missing, and been worried about by them if I missed a few weeks in a row. I recognized the guy who brought me my chilaquiles this Saturday because I have seen him on a hundred other Saturdays. But this time, just before I took that first bite — the holiest part of my little sacred rite — I noticed that something was different. It didn’t take long to figure out what.

It was the plate. My meal was on a plate.

I snapped a photo. I wanted to remember it, this one, specific instance of the meal I’ve likely eaten more than any other in my life.

It was just a styrofoam plate, but its meaning was not lost on me.

It’s going to be okay, the plate told me. Relax. Stay awhile.

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1. Known as “Sunset Junction” — where the crosstown river of Santa Monica Boulevard unceremoniously empties out into mighty Sunset Boulevard.

2. It’s worth mentioning that anytime I’m with a guest who orders something other than chilaquiles, they’ve raved about the meal in much the same way I’m raving.