Review: Goth tacos with tentacles and wild, wonderful cooking at this heavy-metal taquería

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

It’s rare that I come across a dish so bewildering it shocks me mid-bite, the flavors so ineffable I’m left more than a little dumbfounded.

Alex Garcia’s cheeseburger tartare is a mound of rib-eye sliced by hand into dice-sized squares of meat, dressed in a vinaigrette that zips with pickle brine, soy, mustard and even a squirt or two of ketchup. A square of bright yellow American cheese is draped over the top. And the entire dish is buried under a heap of fried onions.

It was a recent special at Evil Cooks, the year-old restaurant in El Sereno that he runs with his wife Elvia Huerta.

It’s an amalgamation of flavors and textures that shouldn’t work. A stick-your-tongue-out, high-octane take on classic steak tartare. But imagine a good cheeseburger, stripped down to its essential elements in raw form. Even the slice of cold, waxy cheese, mashed into a spoonful of tartare, manages to impart a sense of cohesion and even lusciousness.

In the words of the German heavy metal band Accept, “wrong is right, wrong is right.”

It’s just the sort of cooking you might expect from a heavy-metal-themed pop-up turned bricks-and-mortar taquería, run by two chefs who often refer to themselves as Pobre Diablo and La Bruja. They opened Evil Cooks restaurant in a sliver of a storefront on Eastern Avenue in late 2024. The restaurant’s walls are jet black and covered in a dorm room-style collage of music posters. Jim Morrison’s sultry lips share real estate with the dance metal band Rammstein and Knucklehead, the terrifying, gun-wielding skull mascot for the heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch.

Out back on the patio, a pair of angels cry red blood tears into a fountain, skeletons escape their open coffins and a hooded skull peers over the tables like a Gordon Ramsay grim reaper.

Metallica plays on the stereo while Garcia and Huerta operate like two rock stars with no inhibitions in the kitchen. Some of their most captivating dishes are the result of complete acts of wildness, with many racing from idea to fruition in the hours before service.

Chewy dumpling wrappers brimming with silky smooth black beans under a deluge of queso fresco and salsa macha. Crispy, golden bunuelos filled with mushroom pate. Arroz con leche, chocolate mazapan and cream cheese nestled together in a sheet of crisp nori. At Evil Cooks, evil is sublime.

The bean and cheese dumplings at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. The dumplings are garnished with salsa macha, queso fresco and fresh mint and dill.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

“It all started as a tattoo I wanted to get, and I thought about the metal music I love and all the craziness and I wanted to put the words ‘evil chef’ on my knuckles,” Garcia says. He had spent years working at restaurants all over Southern California and was growing tired of the executive chef role.

“I was doing so much paperwork and I wasn’t cooking anymore. I wanted to go back to my roots. I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says.

He asked the tattoo artist to ink the words “evil cook,” on his knuckles instead, and the name stuck. Next came an Evil Cooks T-shirt business and a restaurant pop-up in their El Sereno front yard in 2019. The two secured a spot at the Sunday downtown food market Smorgasburg, and drew lines for their maximalist menu of tacos. The most striking among them was the Poseidon, or the octopus al pastor, rubbed with an ink-black recado negro Garcia calls his “black magic.”

It’s a marinade he learned to make from his stepfather, who is from Yucatán, Mexico. He slathers it onto a whole octopus, then lets the flames lick the creature on the trompo until it’s charred and an even deeper shade of black. The taco features a stratum of smoke and heat, with the octopus piled onto a fresh corn tortilla with purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus.

In a constellation of Los Angeles tacos, the Poseidon, like the entirety of the Evil Cooks experience, is one of one.

Chef Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia’s knuckles read “Evil Cook.” He runs the El Sereno restaurant with his wife Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The restaurant’s menu is printed on the back of a record sleeve, with a list of starters mined from special, one-off dinners Garcia and Huerta host monthly called Kamikaze, and mains rooted in their signature tacos, tortas and burritos. The two also offer at least one savory and one sweet special a week, where they afford themselves the creative latitude to be truly spontaneous.

If you’re familiar with the Poseidon taco or the Chilakillers torta, crammed with green chilaquiles, mozzarella and a fried egg, it can be difficult to veer away from your favorites. But allow me to tempt you over to the dark side, and create a meal entirely of starters.

The tom yum aguachile at Evil Cooks was created for a one-off Kamikaze dinner for Huerta’s birthday. It’s now a starter on the new menu, where Garcia showcases some of his favorites from Kamikaze dinners over the years.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Taken from a Kamikaze menu Garcia created for Huerta’s birthday, the tom yum aguachile vibrates with heat under a canopy of fresh tortilla chips shaped like half moons. Elephantine blue sweet prawns crowd the pool of lemon juice seasoned like the classic Thai soup, with fragrant lemongrass and ginger. The first bite delivers a familiar sour punch, but it’s spiked with enough habanero and chile de arbol to leave your tongue ablaze and tears in your eyes.

A trio of tostadas is where you can most appreciate Garcia’s lifelong love of masa. His fresh black corn tostadas are made with maize from Michoacán, passed through a grinder instead of a molino. The resulting tostadas are thick and rugged, with a flavor and texture similar to popcorn. It makes a stellar canvas for a refreshing salsa verde bright with raw tomatillos and Thai basil; a salsa tatemada that resonates with smoky tomatoes and peanuts; and a salsa roja that glows with the warmth of chile de arbol.

1

2

3

1. A trio of black corn tostadas with mild, medium and “wild” salsas at Evil Cooks in El Sereno. 2. The baklava Wellington is filled with pork belly and served with romesco sauce. 3. Cheesecake pani purri looks tempting. The cheesecake is made with queso fresco. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

The menu can feel a little capricious at times, with items that require an open mind, and just the right elements on your fork to work. The baklava Wellington involves a slab of pork belly wrapped in phyllo dough. It’s crowned with a mountain of pashmak, the ultra fine threads of candy floss found in Iranian and Armenian markets all over the city. It teeters on the edge of too sweet, depending on how you build your bite. A swipe through the accompanying garlicky romesco sauce and it strikes just the right balance. Too much pashmak and it becomes cloyingly sweet. Take the chance and order it.

End the meal with one of Huerta’s sweet flan tacos, called La Bruja, built on a crepe-like tortilla with a slab of velvety flan. And if you’re lucky, the special dessert of the week will involve Garcia’s mother’s cheesecake, modeled off of the pan de queso she sold in Mexico, made with queso fresco. Recently there were pani puri filled with his mother’s wonderfully tangy, grainy cheesecake and strawberry lassi.

The “evil” spirit pulsing through Evil Cooks has always been more about embracing spontaneity and an unyielding rebelliousness rather than anything sinister. A place where the existential conflict of good versus evil is about boundaries and constraints, and the delicious creativity that flourishes when you free yourself from it all.

Chefs Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta at their restaurant Evil Cooks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)