The Best Tacos in Pittsburgh Come Out of a Beechview Grocery Store

Here is the part that trips people up the first time: you walk into Las Palmas expecting a restaurant, and instead you are standing in a grocery store. There are shelves. There is produce. There is a cooler humming somewhere with Mexican Cokes and a wall of dried chiles and bags of masa. You think you have the wrong address. You do not. Keep walking. The whole point of this place is at the back, where a small counter and a flat-top griddle are doing more for Pittsburgh than most kitchens with twice the square footage and four times the markup.

This is Beechview, up the hill on Broadway, a stretch of the Burgh that has quietly become one of the best places to eat in the city if you know where to point your car. Las Palmas is the anchor. And yeah, it is a taqueria inside a tienda, which sounds like a gimmick until the food lands and you realize the grocery store is the secret, not the bit.

What you are here for

The tacos al pastor. Full stop. That is the order, that is the reason, that is the thing you drove across the river for. Pork that has been living its best life on the spit, shaved off with a little char on the edges, a hit of pineapple that is sweet without going syrupy, onion and cilantro, two small corn tortillas doubled up underneath so the whole thing holds together until the last bite. They cost about what a candy bar costs at a gas station. They taste like someone's actual abuela is back there judging your life choices.

Get more than you think you need. These are small, the way real street tacos are small, and you will sandbag yourself ordering three and then standing there sad while everyone around you is on their sixth. A few things worth knowing before you go:

• Order the al pastor, but do not sleep on the carnitas and the lengua if you are even a little adventurous. The lengua is tender in a way that converts skeptics.
• Hit the salsa situation hard. The green one has a slow burn that creeps up on you. Respect it.
• Grab a Mexican Coke or a Jarritos from the cooler on your way back. It is right there. Use it.

The honest catch

We give this place a 4.5, and I will defend every tenth of that number, but let me be straight with you about the trade-offs, because that is the whole job here. This is not a sit-down experience. Seating is limited and the vibe is fluorescent-lit and functional, not cozy. You order at a counter, you wait, you eat where you can. At peak times, weekend afternoons especially, there is a line, and the line moves at exactly the speed it wants to move at. Nobody is rushing the griddle for you, n'at, and honestly that is part of why the food is what it is.

So plan around it. Go a little off-peak if you can. Bring cash to be safe and keep it simple. Come hungry and a touch patient, because the reward is tacos that genuinely beat half the trendier, pricier Mexican spots dahntahn, made by people who clearly care, for the price of pocket change.

The Pittsburgh City Paper put Las Palmas on its Best Of list, and for once the award and the actual experience line up. This is not a hidden-away curiosity you visit once for the story. This is a place you start working into your week, the spot you send the out-of-town friend to when they say Pittsburgh food is all just sandwiches and fries. Walk past the produce. Trust the counter. Order too many. That is the entire move, and it is one of the best cheap meals in the city.