La Chaparrita
La Chaparrita earns the seventeenth spot because Mendez built a restaurant so honest about what it is that Netflix noticed, and the neighborhood had already known for two decades.
At 2500 S. Whipple, inside a grocery store in Little Village, Angelina Mendez has been cooking tacos de fritangas — meats cooked on a wide metal charola — since 2001, bringing a Mexico City street-food vernacular to the southwest side with no apparent interest in explaining it to anyone. Cabeza, tripa, sesos, lengua, carne asada: everything comes from the flat-top as ordered, folded into small tortillas with toppings from the salsa bar. Netflix put this place in Taco Chronicles. The line got longer. The food stayed exactly the same.
La Chaparrita is a reminder that the best tacos in Chicago are not in Wicker Park or on the North Side; they are where the populations that built the taco tradition chose to live. You eat at a steam table counter or take your tacos to go, and the price is what tacos should cost.
- Tripa tacos
- Cabeza tacos
- Carne asada tacos
