-I get pleasure out of watching
people eat the carnitas.
Like, their first expression
is like, wow, you know?
-It takes me back to my hometown
all the time,
the best tacos in LA.
-That's a mulita right there.
-We're all family, dude.
This is just the beginning,
dude.
You guys are about to experience
some -- some neighborhood.
♪♪
-My name is Juancarlos Acosta.
Everybody knows me as Billy.
To my right is my mom,
Inocencia Acosta.
To my left is Romulo Acosta.
-El Momo.
-El Momo.
The name of our restaurant
is Carnitas El Momo.
It's named after
my dad's nickname.
It's a family-owned business.
We specialize in carnitas,
which is pork.
It's confit in pork lard.
The three meats we use
are pork butt, bone-in,
pork stomach,
which is the buches,
and the skins, the cueritos.
One of buddies, Chuy,
when he first came, he was like,
"Dude, this is
the fucking aporkalypse,"
so it just stayed there,
like, the aporkalypse.
Right now, we are in
Boyle Heights, California.
We're actually at their house.
This is where I grew up.
This is pretty much
our home base,
so we do everything here
as far as prepping,
and then it goes off
to the truck.
It's $2.50 for
a pretty loaded taco.
It's not your average taco.
They're loaded, dude.
I'ma get it started.
We've got to get the --
the lard bubbling up.
That's all lard, dude.
This one here has about,
I want to say, 17 to 18 years.
So once the -- the lard is
at the right temp,
we'll throw in the --
the pork butt first.
After we have the pork butt
for about an hour,
then we throw
in the pork stomach.
The skins go in last.
They don't do this in Michoacán.
No, we don't use none of that.
It's just --
This just gives it that
brown color and some,
like, a sweet flavor.
Not to bullshit anybody,
but I knew
since I was a young one
that my dad was doing
something special.
I just --
Even when I was like 6, 7,
dude, I was like,
"Man, this is something,
like, really good, you know?"
Right now, I'ma poke it
so that the stomachs
gets cooked inside,
poke them softly.
♪♪
-My dad, when he first
got here, his job was welding,
but he got injured,
so due to the injury,
he had to go to back
to his roots, you know?
Carnitas El Momo has been
around for about five years.
Prior to that, my dad has been
cooking carnitas for 50 years.
I'm picking up whatever
they taught me, you know?
I'm just trying to take it
to another level.
It's not about Instagram for me.
It's not about none of that.
I'm here to work.
Like, I told him too.
Like, hey, we're on a mission
right now, you know?
So he used to go to West LA
to some apartment complexes.
He says he was already kind of
drunk still selling carnitas.
So my job was clean the cazos
after he was done cooking,
and then I moved up from
dishwashing to cutting the meat
to prepping it to slicing it
to going with him,
start charging, and then
packaging food and cooking.
That's how I moved up the ranks.
That's another cousin, Chris.
He works with us.
Yeah, that's the mulita king
right there.
Right now, I'm about to start
taking out the pork butt.
We ended up getting into
Taco Madness.
That was our first competition
ever.
We ended up winning
best in show,
so from there, it just
went on to another level.
I studied how my dad worked it,
and I kind of improved the areas
where he was kind of lacking,
and now,
with all the Internet stuff,
you can pretty much advertise
for free, you know?
My little nieces trip out
because they look
at the Instagram.
They're like, "Damn, Tío,
you have 14,000 followers?
How do you do that?"
I'm like, "Hard work."
You know, I look at other
people, yeah, they have, like,
80,000 followers, you know,
but my thing is
I would rather people come
and try our tacos
and then follow us.
That way we know if we're doing
a good job or not,
but I think we're at
another level
to where we've reached
all ethnicities, you know?
Asians, whites, Blacks,
they all come now.
So this here is the pork butt
burnt ends.
It has a little bit of skin,
some of the mix
but because the flavor all falls
to the bottom of the pot,
that's where all the flavors
are, dude.
This is the crème de la crème.
I get here, like, at 6:00.
I don't get home till, like,
12:00 at night sometimes.
A lot of work,
sometimes 20 hours.
If we have a concert,
you're talking about
a 24-hour shift.
Imagine my dad.
He worked by himself with my mom
for such a long time.
So this is my favorite taco.
This is the migajas.
My dad is a master
for sure, dude,
and then I learned
from a master,
so that's -- that's what's dope.
-Alright, so the customer here
ordered two mixed tacos.
I like to always start off
with the pork shoulder itself.
I like to put that
as a first layer,
pork belly,
or what we call buche.
It's nice, tender, bit of
a crunch to it, not so much.
Then we top it off with the --
with the cueritos here.
Onion, cilantro, and the
green salsa with sides of lime.
It's an awesome combination.
Traditionally, we would just put
a side of jalapeño,
but that's kind of faded away
a little bit.
People love the toppings on it.
-Oh, which one, eenie,
meenie, miney --
I'll go with the migajas because
this one is always my favorite.
I've bought from them for years
since, like, 2011
when they posted up over there
by my house
on Sixth East First and Avalon,
and since I worked
right around the corner,
so it's easy and convenient
for me to come over here
and sneak away for, like,
a good 20 minutes.
Oh, hopefully my boss
don't get mad.
He won't watch this.
-It's just like pure
deliciousness, that's it.
-The carnitas are soft.
The tortillas are delicious.
I'm just really full right now.
-Super delicious, man,
I finished it in less than,
like, 2 minutes, mmm.
-Two more.
Actually, he was
going to help too.
-Alright. Now I'm just heating
up some tortillas
for a pound order.
I first drip on some of the lard
that we saved,
so that's kind of what
sets them apart, the tortillas.
-I come from
a very humbling home,
and we use this as -- to help
other people too, you know?
♪ Raised by my mother
in the gutter, not give a fuck ♪
♪ Never had a brother,
we smother them up ♪
♪ And we cut them up,
and we cut them ♪
♪ Like giving a -- ♪
Yeah.
Started working for the place,
like, after I got out of jail.
It's a very positive thing
in a negative background,
kind of, you know, like,
it's not all lovely, you know,
but right here it is.
-Big Mario, he didn't have
his dad.
That's my friend, Mario,
from a long time.
He's like a father to him.
-Hi.
-She's another, uh, helper here.
We all grew up right here,
like I said.
-This is like a refuge
for a lot of people, you know?
The doors are open to everybody.
It doesn't matter where
you come from, your race,
you got money,
no money, you know?
They never let nobody walk out
of here being hungry, you know?
-That's what's embedded in me.
Like, people show up,
have a sample.
"Oh, what, for real?"
I'm like, "Yeah, have a sample."
-Just one mula?
-Yeah, one mula, please.
-Alright. No problem.
Mulitas, first starting off
with a tortilla.
Then you have cheese.
Then you have the meat, more
cheese, and another tortilla.
It's like our Big Mac.
Well, I've been helping out
since high school,
so that's about 16 years
I've been helping them out,
on and off,
but I've seen them grow from
beginning to what it is now.
I throw the onion on top.
Sometimes I grill the onion
depending on how they want it,
cilantro,
and then I just shut it.
There you go.
You have your mulita like that.
That's a mulita right there.
-Being humble to everyone,
working with people,
no matter who they are,
it just got us here that way.
-He had a stroke this year
in March.
It's been a rough road for us
these past couple months,
but here now, we still
have him here, you know?
That's why I feel like
they deserve
everything behind
what's El Momo right now.
They're so loving not just
because they're my parents,
but they're loving to everyone.
So I know El Memo is never
gonna die out,
and even if we're not
rich or famous,
I'm just going to continue
pushing, dude,
until the wheels fall off,
or I'm out of this Earth.
♪♪
♪♪
-I'll be like --
-You need a beat?
-Nah, I don't need a beat.
-Alright. Here we go.
-Here goes.
♪ Welcome to Carnitas El Momo
on Fairmount and Soto ♪
♪ Right here,
we don't showboat ♪
♪ We just take care
of our local -- ♪
I don't know.
