La Taqueria and La Cumbre, a tale of two taquerias that own their own buildings

In the comments section of our post over the weekend about Taqeuria Cancun being in possible danger of eviction, an interesting discussion has developed. Commenter Chris says:

La Taqueria, La Cumbre are 2 examples of popular taquerias that had foresight to buy their buildings. They are here to stay.

To which small donkey responds:

That’s a funny pair. La Taqueria has stayed awesome, maybe even gotten awesomer over the years. So you’d say that owning the building has freed them to focus on making good carne asada.

La Cumbre has really gone to shit — it used to be really good 20 years ago. Now it’s all meat dried out and not tasty, poorly steamed tortillas, and the staff doesn’t appear to give a crap. So maybe owning the building has freed the owners to sit home running the numbers on their exhilarating property appreciation while the business becomes no sabroso.

Hmmmm. It’s like these two taquerias are trying to tell us something about the human condition or something.

[Photos by Google Maps]

14 Responses to “La Taqueria and La Cumbre, a tale of two taquerias that own their own buildings”

  1. Also, the people working there being able to afford to live (or commute) here. That’s getting harder.

    I fear that the current generation of taqueros/taqueras will retire and no one will replace them.

    • MrEricSir says:

      It’s worse than that — they’ll be replaced with “upscale Mexican fare” where you pay three times as much for extra buzzwords on the menu.

  2. JohnnyL says:

    @Burrito La Taqueria is printing money. They can afford to pay their employees wages to stay local. They also appear to be one giant family anyway.

  3. Jennifer Bock says:

    La Cumbre is delicious. how dare you, small donkey? have you tasted the barbequed chicken?

  4. Chris says:

    Also note that because both businesses are longtime owners, they pay a pittance in property taxes (from the Accessors website):

    La Taqueria pays tax on:

    Land: $46,719.00
    Structure: $20,332.00

    and La Cumbre pays tax on:

    Land: $38,806.00
    Structure: $19,765.00

    Thanks to Prop 13, these businesses are literally printing money.

    Must be nice!!!

  5. kiko says:

    Guess what? these places make food… other than that NO ONE GIVES A FUCKING SHIT.

    boring.

  6. kiko says:

    this article figuratively put me to sleep.

  7. manishewitz says:

    I don’t think its as much a matter of “foresight” as it is capital. The bias in that statement implies that the taquerias that have continued to rent simply made bad business decisions and thus, deserve the hardship they now endure.

  8. Cara says:

    La Cumbre is my favorite! Love the barbecued chicken! Very flavorful – don’t dis my favorite spot!