The best holiday tamales from around the world in Los Angeles

Tamales rate among the essential staple foods of Southern California. At major bus stops and along the bustling food corridors in Latin communities across the region, a decent tamal is never very far. We’re lucky to live in the historic center of...

Is there an abuelita laboring over a basin of masa in the kitchen of Artesano Tamaleria? There is not. The backbone of the kitchen at this 4-month-old downtown tamale cafe is a hand-operated tamale-making machine called Tio Carlos’ Tamale King....

Have you ever plowed through a plate of hot uchepos? Not unless you’ve spent time in Michoacán, I’m guessing, or at least visited Birrieria Apatzingan up in Pacoima. Uchepos are like tamales caressed by an angel, clouds of sweet, fresh corn...

I don’t think you can find them all on Google, but this is probably the 12th or 13th time I have been assigned to write a year-end tamale piece, and for almost all of them I have made the rounds of more or less the same Boyle Heights tamaleros...

How do you know it’s Christmas at Bricia Lopez’s house? There’s a big Christmas tree in one corner of the art-filled hillside bungalow; a baby bobs in his bouncy chair. Bricia, her sisters Elizabeth Lopez and Paulina Lopez Velasquez, and her...