B. Mesirow

The strip of Sunset between Mohawk St. and Elysian Park Ave., more or less the beating heart of Echo Park, has become a destination for drinking. One can, with a series of walks not long enough to raise your heart rate, hop from craft beer palace to dimly lit record spinning mini-lounge to classic dive bar to cop bar turned hipster dance party and beyond. As excellent as its cluster of bars is, though, it is the other component of a great night out that really makes Echo Park shine -- tacos.

That stretch of Echo Park is home to three well-established taco trucks, Tacozone, Tacos Arizas, and El Flamin' Taco, and each has its own loyal following. After hearing years worth of fanboy chatter and taco trolling we decided it was time to perform a truly unbiased scientific experiment, and for the good of the neighborhood we set out to determine and weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each truck. What follows is your Echo Park taco truck guide.

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G. Snyder

Barcelona Torta at Tortas 2 Die 4

It's a widely accepted notion in the marketing world that using numbers instead of words in titles is an easy way to increase "edginess." The blockbuster smash and Vin Diesel vehicle 2 Fast 2 Furious is one notable example; and did you know that the working title for TRON: Legacy was TR2N?

So when we walked up to the Tortas 2 Die 4 (@Tortas2Die4) truck, we expected something a bit different, a bit more hard-core, from this mobile eatery. Starting a gourmet torta truck in Los Angeles is a tough prospect, if only because there are countless taco trucks slinging delicious tortas at nearly unbeatable prices citywide.

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G. Snyder

Meat the Greek

Given how iconic the "street meat" pita is in the pantheon of portable foods, it's hard to believe that there aren't more food trucks serving Greek cuisine rolling around Los Angeles. To help remedy that problem is the recently launched Meat the Greek (@MeattheGreekLA) truck, which serves home-style Greek food cooked by a husband-and-wife duo who tout recipes "passed down for generations." Personally we might have gone with the name "Meat and Greek " truck instead, but hey, that's just our preference for puns.

The first thing you might notice about Meat the Greek's menu is it's lack of gyro, an omission that about every other customer seems to bring up. "How can you have a Greek truck without gyro, man?" It's a fair question, but the truck makes up for it by offering a choice of grilled chicken or pork skewers in their wraps, as well as petite "popcorn fried" Greek meatballs.

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G. Snyder

Braised Pork Wrap

We know what you're thinking -- another pork-themed truck, really? Did someone find a new way to infuse bacon with more bacon? But before getting on your high hog, you should know that despite the pun-riffic name, Pigs Feet Under (@pigsfeetunder) has some unique tricks up its sleeve.

The menu is composed mostly of wraps and balls (once again, not exactly original). The Braised Pork Roll ($8) is essentially tender pulled pork drizzled with hoisin sauce, while the Al Pastor Roll ($8) features sliced pork shoulder saturated by a vinegary chile sauce that might not convert any taco aficionados but gets the job done.

The real gem of the Pigs Feet Under truck is the use of scallion pancakes instead of tortillas for wraps, which might excite anyone who's a fan of the Shandong beef rolls at 101 Noodle Express. Even more amazingly, they make the scallion pancakes to order, rolling out the dough and cooking them on a griddle so that they arrive hot, pliable and pleasantly chewy -- like a fresh flour tortilla with some Chinese flair.

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Guzzle & Nosh

Lidia's Dominican Kitchen: Pernil (roasted pork) with rice, beans and gandules.

It's love at first bite with Lidia's Dominican Kitchen (@lidiaskitchen), a food truck run by someone who actually knows how to cook, not someone who's just itching to cash in on a trend. It no doubt helps that owner Lidia Ramirez ran a catering company, so she has both the culinary chops and the organizational skills to cook great food at a street eats pace. For fans of Dominican food, it means they don't have to always trek to Mama Fina in Bellflower.

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When is a pancake more than a pancake? When it's topped with bacon, noodles, mochi and provolone and comes off the the Glowfish Truck (@glowfishtruck) truck. Launched barely two weeks ago, Glowfish boasts a menu of Japanese "festival" food: i.e. zaftig, thoroughly intercontinental combos as kooky and irreverent as Japanese street fashion. Glowfish makes a credible if slightly underrsalted katsu and an array of stir-fried rice dishes that fall under the broad category of teppanyaki, but the okonomiyaki is where it's at.

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It's a bit cheeky naming your business "The Bomb," but that's essentially what Brazilian food truck Ta Bom (@ta_bom) has done. The one menu item that lives up to the title is their pastel.

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New York congressional rep Anthony isn't the only wiener grabbing headlines these days, though he may be the greasiest. There's the New Jersey fried hot dog, something The Greasy Wiener truck (@thegreasywiener) claims as its specialty. The long thin dogs, reminiscent of the ones at LA's newly opened Papaya King, are grilled until the skin grows tight and brown, shriveling like a raisin in the sun or, less poetically, a middle-aged tanning addict. If these hot dogs don't snap like a wiener from Let's Be Frank, at least they offer a pleasant resistance.

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Sometimes, "tempura" is just another way to say "we deep-fry everything." That's the situation at the OG Tempura Truck (@ogtempura), where crisp apple rounds, delicate squash blossoms, tough hunks of flank steak marinated in sake and miso, turkey wrapped in bacon and, of course, the standard lineup of vegetables and shrimp get the hot oil treatment.

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To which school of cooking, precisely, do the concoctions from The Nacho Truck (@nachotruckla) belong: baroque or stoner? The line between the two can be thin.

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