Over the next decade, Taco Mar ia received worshipful reviews from food scribes and packed tables from diners eager to sample Salgado’s prowess with corn. Michelin Guide reveals star Orange County restaurants for 2023.Kawamata Seafood serves some of OC’s best poke from an unassuming spot above Capistrano Beach.Popular Nashville hot chicken spot opens first O.C.Andrew McMahon’s Dear Jack Foundation to host benefit dinner in Orange County.Omakase pop-up makes West Coast debut at the Ritz-Carlton.The two, who met in San Francisco, landed in Orange County where they opened Taco María in 2013.

After culinary school, he spent time as pastry chef at several lauded Bay Area kitchens, including Coi and Commis, where he not only honed his craft but met his work-and-life partner, Emilie Coulson-Salgado. “No one else is doing what Salgado does with tortillas and beans, or for that matter with wood-fired arrachera or tongue-searing scallop aguachile.” While Gold noted in 2018, “By regarding tortillas with a seriousness familiar to any fanatical French baker, by using perfect seasonal produce and by treating regional Mexican dishes with both imagination and respect, Salgado has propelled California-Mexican cooking into the jet stream of abstracted modernist cuisine.”Ĭarlos, an Orange County native, grew up at his family’s flagship La Siesta restaurant in Orange. “Chef Carlos Salgado’s painstakingly authentic reinvention of Mexican cuisine is one of the most important things to happen to the California food scene,” Johnson beamed in 2017. The Register’s former food critic Brad Johnson and the late Los Angeles Times critic Jonathan Gold awarded Taco María restaurant of the year in 20, respectively. Opening in 2013 as a brick-and-mortar after starting life as a food truck, Salgado’s restaurant won immediate acclaim from critics and diners alike. Taco María, nestled inside the OC Mix at SoCo Collection, a luxury mall butting up against the 405, is one of three one-star Michelin winners in Orange County (the other being Knife Pleat and Hana re, also located in Costa Mesa). Salgado cites a desire for more space (the current space seats only 28 guests) and a more fitting vibe as reasons to close the current iteration of his lauded Alta California eatery of Mexican and American cultures. Hungry? Sign up for The Eat Index, our weekly food newsletter, and find out where to eat and get the latest restaurant happenings in Orange County.

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