This small Los Feliz spot serves some of the best Tex-Mex we’ve encountered on the West Coast. L.A.’s Mexican food is in a category all of its own, but we’d be remiss to overlook Mexican food by way of Texas. HomeState, with its two locations in East Hollywood and Highland Park, has become L.A.’s Tex-Mex go-to. Chef-owner Briana Valedez is serving staples like Migas (definitely worth a try) and, of course, Frito pie (because who doesn’t love Frito pie?), but let’s face it—people are lining up for the tacos, savory fillings swaddled in one of their knockout house-made flour tortillas. Because while beefy, smoky Texas barbecue gets most of the press, eggs and bacon in a flour tortilla just as surely reflects the collision, and fusion, of cultures in Central Texas. There’s an argument to be made that they’re the most important. Barbecue is the special occasion meal, worth the two-hour drive, the four-hour wait. Breakfast tacos start every single morning. Valdez grew up all over Texas and spent her college years in Austin, where she fell in love with the breakfast taco. When she moved to Los Angeles in 2000, she was bewildered to discover the food she’d considered Mexican food her whole life was nowhere to be found. She says, “I remember when I asked for queso at a Mexican restaurant, they brought be a bowl of shredded cheese.” HomeState puts an impressive amount of effort into re-creating the contemporary Austin breakfast experience. The flour tortillas are handmade. They serve coffee from an Austin roaster, Cuvee. Topo Chico, a Mexican mineral water with a deeply devoted cult in Texas, is cold and plentiful. Valdez even turned their lack of a fryer into an opportunity to work with another Austin vendor: El Milagro, one of the city’s best local tortillerias. The make for HomeState their own, special tortilla chip, one designed with just the right amount of heft for queso while still remaining light.
HomeState
4624 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Hours
Contact:
(323) 906-1122
hiyall@myhomestate.com
