Inside the Metal-Punk Menu at Evil Cooks
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A fountain spouting blood. The Grim Reaper looming over your table, with a Kreator poster behind him. With this decor, plus a very popular menu item called “The McSatan,” it’s no wonder that Evil Cooks in El Sereno gets clocked as “punk” and “heavy-metal.”
But chefs Alex and Elvia Garcia describe Evil Cooks simply as a “rebel kitchen.” With creativity and freedom as their driving force, they do what speaks to them. Period.
Alex found his calling, and founded Evil Cooks, by following his gut and getting back to what he truly loves. He’d spent 17 years in the restaurant business, working his way up the kitchen ladder. “One day, I said, let me go back to the simple life and be a cook. Executive chef is another beast; you become more like an office worker, and I’m not that person. I like to be in the kitchen, creating and cooking. So that’s when I took a chance.”
In 2018, he left his restaurant job and started Evil Cooks, initially envisioning it as a clothing company for chefs. His customers knew he was a great cook, and soon started asking for his food at private events. Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta was also paying attention: She slid into Garcia’s DMs and offered her help. A romance soon blossomed, and the couple started popping up all over Los Angeles. They landed a slot at Smorgasburg in 2019, followed by a pop-up in the front yard of their home in El Sereno. “We were doing everything at that time,” says Garcia.
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From the beginning, a certain no-holds-barred mentality and metal-punk aesthetic guided the duo. Things they’ve put on a trompo (vertical rotating spit) include beef tongue, a whole pig, and an alligator. They’ve twirled pork ribs around in a cotton candy machine. They even built a trompo for ice cream. “We were just going with the flow and breaking as many rules as we could,” says Garcia. “We’ve learned so many techniques, and we just wanted to twist those techniques into some delicious abomination—something people would get crazy about.”
The pop-up days are behind them, but their brick-and-mortar, opened in 2024, is now a staple of El Sereno. “We’re trying to bring something valuable to the community,” says Garcia. The restaurant is filled with locals, alongside visitors from across L.A. and beyond.
The menu is a mix of pop-up favorites, like the McSatan, and new dishes born from their once-a-month kamikaze dinners, a taco-leaning omakase experience. Garcia can wax poetic when describing the food: “We like to present people with a kind of chaos,” he says. “That way, when they bite into it, they find something that makes sense. Some kind of memory fiber in their brain. And it makes them feel, somehow, home.”
Tom Yum Aguachile
Inspiration: Elvia, my wife
“The Tom Yum Aguachile was a dish I created for Elvia on her birthday, at a kamikaze dinner in her honor. Elvia loves aguachile, a classic shrimp dish from Northern Mexico, and she loves tom yum. So I was like, why not marry the two? There’s ginger and lemongrass from the tom yum, and a refreshing lemony-and-spicy flavor from the aguachile. We use habaneros and chile de árbol. People always take the leftover sauce home because it’s good on everything.”
El Asesino
Inspiration: Los Angeles death metal band Asesino
“I’ve been a superfan of Asesino since they started. The first time I met him at a concert, around 2002, he gave me one of his demos and signed it. I still have it. When he came to the pop-up at our house, I asked him if I could do a taco in his honor.
We first made this campechano (mixed) taco at Smorgasburg in 2019, as a Halloween item. We’d always wanted to do something black, but without artificial coloring—and with intention and flavor. We marinate octopus and pork in a black spice blend from Yucatán called recado negro, and cook them on the trompo. When we first made the taco at Smorgasburg, people loved it so much they lined up for it, so we kept it going. “
The Simmons
Inspiration: Gene Simmons
“When I was a kid, I looked at Simmons, the demon of KISS, like a God. I had to pay tribute. There’s an urban legend that says Gene Simmons has a cow’s tongue implanted in him. So when we decided to do a beef tongue taco, we were like, why not play with that? We braise the tongue in a really nice mixture of spices and black beans, then we take the beans and use them for our bean-and-cheese dumplings. We slice the braised tongue like steak, and serve it with a Thai basil salsa verde.”
Pork Belly Baklava Wellington
Inspiration: Amir, and eating quickly during the dinner rush
“When I was first starting out in kitchens as a dishwasher, I was at a restaurant that served Wellingtons, a dish I loved. My friend and fellow dishwasher, Amir, was from the Middle East. One day, he had baklava for dessert and offered me some while I was eating my Wellington. But it was the dinner rush, so I was eating fast because I had to go back to work. I mixed them together and thought: this flavor is amazing.
At one point at the pop-up, we were taking pork ribs and moving them around inside a cotton candy machine. The candy gathers all around the rib, and when you bite it, you get that barbecue rib-type flavor. Eventually, I had the idea to make the baklava Wellington for a Kamikaze dinner. We took pork belly, wrapped it in phyllo dough with mushroom duxelles, and topped it off with pashmak, a less-sweet cotton candy from the Middle East. We finish it with nuts and rose petals.”
The McSatan
Inspiration: The “Don Toño” tacos de hamburguesa stand in Mexico City
“We’ve been doing the McSatan, our cheeseburger taco, since 2019. When I lived in Mexico, I used to travel to Mexico City to buy toys for Christmas, to then resell. McDonald’s was more of a luxury back then, but there was this guy who sold really cheap hamburger tacos at his stand—and still does. He’s been doing it for over 30 years. All you get is a beef patty and a tortilla, and then he has a salsa bar. He’s a rockstar. That was the best burger I had as a kid. So I thought: I can pay homage to him and to the American burger.
We start with a hand-pressed tortilla, then do mozzarella, the beef patty, American cheese, onions caramelized in our red salsa, a piece of bacon, and a little avocado. It doesn’t make sense. People on social media are like, ‘It’s not a burger, but it’s also not a taco.’ But when they try it, they’re like, ‘Oh s—. It makes a lot of sense.’ They love it.
That one went viral when Elijah Woods, from Lord of the Rings, came and tried it. We also have a French family of four who come in and order eight McSatan tacos. That’s all they eat.”
