A Couple From Mexico Became Soft Taco Pioneers in Los Angeles 50 Years Ago. Now, Their Restaurant Is a Landmark

Raúl and Lupe Martinez opened King Taco and served up soft corn tortillas like they remembered from home. The rest is—now officially—history, thanks to a vote from the Los Angeles City Council

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

April 23, 2026

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In the mid-1970s, Raúl and Lupe Martinez opened a casual, walk-up counter in Los Angeles’ Cypress Park neighborhood, where they served soft corn tortillas topped with meat, salsa, cilantro and onions—a novelty in the United States at a time when hard-shelled tacos reigned supreme. Their tender creations caught on quickly, giving many Angelenos their first taste of authentic Mexico City-style tacos.

“The hard shell was an Americanized version of what’s done only in a very small part of Mexico,” Casandra Martinez, the couple’s granddaughter, tells SFGate’s Karen Palmer. “My grandparents were from Mexico City and wanted to serve the type of tacos they ate. For us, the tortilla is the vehicle for the protein. My grandparents created the mold for our tortillas, and it’s still the exact dimensions for the taco today.”

Now, more than 50 years later, the original King Taco restaurant has been deemed an official historic-cultural monument, a nod to the couple’s influence on the city’s food scene and culinary identity.

On April 21, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved the designation, reports City News Service’s Jose Herrera. The decision follows an approval by a city council committee and a recommendation from the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission.

King Taco’s story dates back to 1969, when the Martinezes boarded a bus in Mexico City with just 12 Mexican pesos between them. They were trying to reach the U.S. but only made it as far as Tijuana when they realized they didn’t have enough money for the rest of the journey. A bystander overheard their plight and paid for their fare. They settled in Los Angeles, where Raúl Martinez worked as a dishwasher, then a butcher.

Raúl Martinez had played soccer in Mexico, so the couple watched local matches at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, where they grilled meat for tacos near the sidelines. “When the games were done, the players began to line up to ask if they could purchase tacos,” according to the company’s website. “Raúl was inspired by the number of people who would remind him how difficult it was to find authentic Mexico City-style food in the city.”

Their homemade tacos were such a hit that the couple bought a 1950s ice cream truck and, in 1974, started serving tacos from it outside a bar in East Los Angeles, launching one of the first-known taco trucks in the nation.

“This was a completely new concept, of grilling and cooking inside of a truck,” Raquel Martinez, another of the couple’s granddaughters, tells CBS News’ Matthew Rodriguez. “They sort of spearheaded it that in a way.”

Taco trucks, also known as “loncheras,” have long served as community gathering hubs for Latino communities in Los Angeles. Serving affordable, traditional Mexican fare, they have become “a symbol of culinary and cultural identity,” as April White wrote for JSTOR Daily in 2017.

The origins of the taco itself, meanwhile, are a bit murky. However, historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher suspects they arose in Mexico’s silver mines in the 18th century.

“In those mines the word ‘taco’ referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore,” Pilcher, who has authored several books about Mexican cuisine, told Smithsonian magazine’s Katy June Friesen in 2012. “These were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face. When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite.”

Raúl Martinez died in 2013 at the age of 71. Lupe Martinez, meanwhile, is “still very active” in the family-run business, per SFGate. Over the past five decades, King Taco expanded its operations to include more than 20 restaurants across the greater Los Angeles area. Many diners still love visiting the original location for tacos al pastor and sopes.

“It’s just a cool little hole-in-the-wall restaurant,” Jaime Martinez, who has been eating at King Taco for four decades (and is not related to the owners), tells the Los Angeles Times’ Stephanie Breijo. “This is the original one—it’s always been ‘the one.’”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.