When I lived down on Catalina Avenue, we’d hit Riviera Mexican Grill weekly. I practically lived off their Carnitas and it’s hard to beat just relaxing on the patio and sipping on a pitcher of Cadillac Margarita on a Saturday afternoon. Oh, wait, this is about tacos. Now Riviera doesn’t have a formalized “Taco Tuesday”, (we’ll need to work on that with them), but they do have some pretty good old-school tacos.

We learned from our first stop on this Taco Tuesday Tour to only order 1 taco each. It was an easy lesson as we’re both already feeling full but we must push on! By now it was approaching 7 PM and although many of the tables were full, there was no wait for inside dining.

Once seated we asked Mitch, our server, what were the best tacos on the menu. He thought for a second and offered up a crispy Chicken taco and a soft Carnitas taco. We agreed to try them, ordered a couple of Cadillacs and nibbled on chips and salsa while we waited.

TIP: The Guacamole was a great addition to the crispy Chicken taco and the Chipotle sauce was excellent on the Carnitas.

As you can see from the picture above, the tacos looked great, as you can’t tell from the picture they smelled great too. The crispy Chicken taco was a nice textural change from the prior 4 tacos at Ortega. Crispy tacos seem like they’ve gone out of style in favor of the street-style taco. I like them both but I assume that the street-style is better for you since the tortilla isn’t deep-fried.

Carnitas soft taco…we’ll I do love Carnitas, I do love Riviera’s Carnitas, so yeah, shoving it in a soft corn tortilla was a no-brainer.

RECOMMENDATION: Crispy Chicken Taco

[themify_button style=”large red rect” link=”http://www.localistamagazine.com/redondo_beach/2014/08/20/taco-tuesday-tour-third-stop-coyote-cantina/”]Third Stop: Coyote Cantina[/themify_button]