La Troca Catracha

🇭🇳 HONDURAS
📍 Wilshire Blvd. & S. Ardmore Avenue, Koreatown, Central Los Angeles
🅿️ Street Parking
💲 Cash and Zelle only
🥤 No Alcohol

It was not so long ago that El Troca Catracha was a nondescript shade of dull green that might be called pistachio, a color that was easier to miss than see and drew no attention. Nowadays the street-facing side of the truck is an unmissable bright yellow and adorned with a large blue and white flag of Honduras that covers more than half the length of this kitchen on wheels.

While Koreatown and further east have no shortage of Honduran and Central American restaurants, the reason for this specific location is of course the Consulate General of Honduras located just a block away. In addition to Hondurans taking care of passport and visa business, these blocks are busy with the consulates of Ecuador, Kenya, Indonesia, Philippines, and Paraguay with others a few blocks farther down the boulevard. It is always a fascinating mix of humanity coming together around the high rises of Wilshire Center.

While waiting for an order, you are likely to see Hondurans come over after exiting the consular building; smiles returning to their faces as breakfast or lunch starts to heal the awfulness of dealing with paperwork and immigration bureaucracy. On the back of the truck the flags of four other Central American nations are joined by the waving Honduran flags, a beacon to any of the nation's neighbors. Hondurans at home eat pupusas just as much as they do here in Los Angeles, so the truck has always offered these to provide a broader base.

You are just as likely to see faces light up coming from the opposite direction from the adjacent Wilshire/Normandie D Line station as many riders get off the train to do business here on the boulevard. The truck keeps hours that generally mimic those of the consulates, getting going mid-morning and gone by mid-afternoon.

Baleada "La Especial" con carne molida.

A baleada is probably the standard bearer of Honduran cuisine, and from the outside looks pretty harmless. In its most simple form it is a thick and chewy handmade flour tortilla with thin layers of beans and cream, and a dusting of crumbled cheese. This truck's baleada "La Especial" ($6.50, above) adds to those three ingredients with avocado, scrambled egg, and your choice of ground beef, carne asada, chicken, chorizo, or pork chop.

It is big enough to fill most bellies on its own, and the special version allows the tastes of the truck's delicious meats to shine through as most ingredients of a baleada are decidedly subtle. The ground beef is spiced thoroughly and wonderful, going back to the simple version might be difficult for meat eaters. Next time the bold chorizo will probably be chosen.

Since they are sitting in sauce, the taquitos dorados de pollo (above) are a good option for those that want to eat immediately at the truck. While still crisp, the fried tortilla rolls shatter loudly with each bite, giving way to the shredded chicken stuffed inside. Make sure to get that sauce, plenty of the cabbage garnish, and mayonnaise in each bite to round out the flavors and moisture.

After baleadas and depending on your mood for breakfast or lunch, the truck offers two platos tipicos (typical plates) which each offer a wide selection of items that are common on Honduran plates during any meal. The desayuno tipico (below) centers around two eggs cooked any way you prefer and two thick corn tortillas that are made to order.

Along with most plates, there will also be beans, a square of cheese, and a slice of avocado. The breakfast includes fried sweet plantains and sweet cream to dip them in, and despite not looking like much is about the perfect combination of tastes. The upgrade to these tasty tortillas from boring toast might be an adjustment for those that grew up on American-style diners, but it is hard to go back once you get hooked.

The almuerzo (below) is also a plato tipico and is designed to get much more meaty during lunch and replace those eggs. You can choose a pork chop or pan-fried chicken, but the move here is the carne asada. Whatever your choice, it will be joined by a small link of chorizo, beans, cheese, rice, and a pepper and onion that have been blistered by the grill.

The cut of carne asada will surprise you coming from a truck, perfectly marinated and generous. White rice is cooked in Honduran style, oily and full-flavored with butter and a pinch of salt. This is definitely easier to eat at home with a real knife, and thankfully travels pretty well as long as the tortillas are still warm when you get back.

Round out any meal here with a bag of Zambos (below), plantain chips that can come with or without various types of flavoring. The zesty ceviche option is perfect with lime and chili flavors. After a bag of these at the end of a meal you will start feeling the "Soy 504" that the truck emblazons on its side. Just like people from various parts of Southern California use the 818, 626, and other area codes to take pride in their home, Honduras's country code is used just the same.

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Rincon Hondureño

HONDURAS 🇭🇳

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (18 October 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/rincon-hondureno-comida-catracha-los-angeles

From the outside as the name suggests, this does indeed look like a little Honduran nook, the corner of a block awash in the blue of the flag and painted with guaras rojas, the colorful national bird of the country. Inside that corner door, the inside has a lot more blue, a lot more scarlet macaws, and seven booths and a few tables ready to take customers.

Be warned though, that if those tables are even half full, there will be some waiting involved. The staff here works very hard, but the kitchen capacity just cannot keep up with big orders from multiple tables and takeout customers at once. On a couple recent visits, time was measured by how many songs the jukebox played on its own, something that happens about every 30 minutes.

But the jukebox is not so loud, and you could definitely do worse than sitting here for some time in the comfortable booths surrounded by pleasant scenes from Honduras on the walls and families enjoying themselves. Grab a bottle of banana-flavored Tropical soda or a glass of their wonderful jugo de guanábana and do not watch the time. Throw some money in if you do not like the automatic playlist.

Essential to any Honduran restaurant is of course the thick and fluffy flour tortillas that are served with meals and used as the wrapper of a baleada sencilla ($2.50, above). This staple in its most simple form includes just beans, some crema, and a sprinkle of cheese. This is one of the tastiest in town.

Two more of those beautiful tortillas are also served with breakfasts like huevos rancheros ($10, above), which are never so much about the eggs in Honduras as they are about the complements. Every component that surrounds eggs at breakfast must also include those three ingredients from inside a baleada as well as fried sweet plantains and a nice wedge of avocado.

Lunches like Honduran-style carne asada ($13.50, below) come with beans, cheese, and avocado as well, as well as a light marinade that is an immediate transport to Central America. This can be cut into slices and thrown into tortillas or eaten on its own, either way it is all extremely pleasing.

Because Los Angeles is home to so many people originally from El Salvador, and since the foods of each of these two countries are enjoyed in the other, the menu also has a page of Salvadoran staples and soups, if you are in the mood for pupusas or sopa de gallina indio on a visit here.

Honduran soups are well represented too, most days you can find sopa de caracol, a conch soup so famous it even has its own ballad. Also worth a try is the sopa de camarón ($14.50, below) which is filled with large, fresh shrimp and vegetables.

The broth is lovely, made from the shells and heads of the shrimp. It benefits from a squirt or two of lime to add a sour smack and can also be heated up with their intensely spicy salsa. More flour tortillas can come with this, or you get fried sweet plantains or tostones.

Beloved throughout most of Central American is the shredded beef salad known as salpicón ($12.50, below), which is prepared here with cilantro, radish, onion, and lime and served at room temperature. It is an especially good choice for extra hot days.

And the menu only goes onward and upward from there. Exploring it all would take dozens of visits, something that some of your fellow customers have probably been doing by the looks of it.

📍 1654 W. Adams Blvd., Adams-Normandie, South Los Angeles

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Eat the World Los Angeles is and always has been free. It is a hobby born of passion and never solicits money or free food from restaurants. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better please tell your friends about us and if you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World Los Angeles is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

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El Sazon K-Tracho #2 Restaurant Familiar

🇭🇳 HONDURAS

EDITOR'S NOTE: An updated version of this article (19 January 2024) is available as part of the Historical section of our Substack page. Check that out here:

https://eattheworldla.substack.com/p/el-sazon-k-tracho-2-restaurant-familiar

 

The Honduran flags will be the things that pull you into this nondescript storefront, as the sign is fading and/or rusting and barely legible. If you could read it, the "K-Tracho" will be recognizable by those that have traveled through the Central American country or have friends here. This is a stylized way of saying catracho, the slang used for talking about someone from Honduras.

Inside, the five year old restaurant is much larger than it seems after a renovation last year combined the neighboring space into one large open dining room. The kitchen and other service areas are in the back, so many choices for seating are available right when you walk in.

Semitas katrachas

Like its smaller sister (which opened first about ten years ago) over on Figueroa just south of Exposition Park, the TVs here are quite often tuned to football and the place gets really fun when important international matches are taking place.

What you may not be ready for when you walk in is the fact that this may be the only restaurant that serves the food of of either Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or Nicaragua that is not painted entirely or mostly in blue. Instead, a friendly shade of dark coral welcomes customers and lets the food exclusively speak the language of the country.

The baleada is of course the flagship culinary creation of Honduras, a fluffy flour tortilla toasted up nice and wrapped around various ingredients. The baleada sencilla ($2.25, above) contains the essentials you see in any of them: beans, cream, and crumbled cheese. The aroma of the comal still lingers on the tortilla, while the beans and cream are those with specific tastes from Honduras and bring back vivid memories of being there.

These beauties have an eating culture very similar to what tacos have in México, find them sold by vendors on the street, out of front windows in restaurants, or sit down for them at lunch and dinner. Sometimes people will fill them with meats and make a more hearty meal, but if you have any plans of eating other plates, just grab the "simple" version and sample the baleada in its purest form.

Plates of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners usually come with a a few fresh tortillas like the one used for the baleada, making any of them a really filling and hearty meal.

A road construction crew working nearby spent their break here ordering breakfasts and replenishing their energy with these massive plates and amazing tortillas.

On the menu, breakfasts do not really have separate names, but instead just list the components. This breakfast ($11.99, above and below) was centered around carne asada and eggs, but also (and possibly more importantly) included all the components that every respectable Honduran breakfast should.

Given the fact that you also get three tortillas, the plate fills up two normal people (or one construction worker) quite well. Usually the cut of meat included in a dish like this is a bit of an afterthought, but the carne asada here was tender and tasty. The breakfast did not contain one wink link.

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ADAMS-NORMANDIE South Los Angeles
1483 W. Adams Blvd.

I COULD USE YOUR HELP

Eat the World Los Angeles is and always has been free. No advertisements block the content or pop over what you read. If this website has helped you explore your city and its wonderful cultures a little better and you have the means to contribute, please consider doing so. Eat the World Los Angeles is a labor of love, but also takes a lot of money and time everyday to keep running.

You can Venmo me @JAREDCOHEE or click here to send PayPal donation, no account is necessary. Thank you!