Gorditas Laguneras

🇲🇽 MÉXICO (Coahuila)
📍 15755 Arrow Blvd., Fontana, Inland Empire
🅿️ Street Parking
💲 Cash or Zelle Only

Historic Route 66 plods by as Foothill Blvd. just one block north through Fontana and its neighboring cities, but people wanting to travel faster know to use Arrow Blvd. Traveling at near highway speeds, it is here that you may or may not notice the green and black trailer parked Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays offering gorditas made in the style of the city Torreón, Coahuila.

Coahuila is México's third-largest state and sprawls all the way from Texas and the Rio Bravo del Norte into the central part of the country and almost halfway to Mexico City. Torreón is in the far southwest of the state, and residents of that city only need to pass over one river bridge to be in the state of Durango.

In Torreón, you are likely to find quite a few vendors out early in the morning with their homemade guisados ready to be stuffed into fat corn or flour tortillas to make gorditas. The best of them are sold out by noon, but Gorditas Laguneras keeps more standard hours for a Southern California crowd, opening mid-morning and shutting down well into mid-afternoon serving breakfast to late lunch crowds who might be working or living nearby.

The trailer has a set list of twelve options to be stuffed into their freshly made flour gorditas ($4 each, below). Ten of these are guisados that are prepared fresh for service daily. Since one person can only put back between two and four of these depending on their appetite, the wealth of choices makes eating here a little difficult. Who would want to leave carne con chile or picadillo off an order?

You can get gorditas made with corn in Torreón as well, but it is their flour gorditas that really stand out and have made their way to Los Angeles in recent years. The flour is wholesome but has less of a competing taste than corn, and really allows you to focus on the flavors in those guisados. From this visit, four options were all delicious and would all be recommended. From bottom to top, these were birria con queso, arriero, chicharrón en salsa roja, and rajas con queso.

The arriero is worth noting more, as it is more rare than the others and really enjoyable. Described simply as "pork in red sauce and beans," that red sauce is doing a lot more than just being red. There is a superb smokiness in the roasted chiles used for the sauce, the pork is tender, and the small smear of beans provides the perfect complement.

They offer three salsas with every order, all delicious, but honestly the guisados themselves do not require them. The rajas con queso version is delicious on its own but is one of the few (besides beans and cheese) that can benefit from the salsa of your choice. The bright orange habanero salsa should be used with caution, but paired excellently with those poblano peppers and melted cheese.

The chicharrón and birria were both top notch as well, as you bite into your different options you will at the same want to try all the others and want an order of four of the same. No one ever said life was easy, and Gorditas Laguneras is not making it any easier. In addition to those already mentioned (rajas con queso, frijoles con queso), the truck also has a potatoes with chile guisado for the customers who prefer not to eat meat. There is definitely something for everyone here, including tightly packed burritos to go since you will want to have even more guisados later.

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