Lola 55
Lola 55 in East Village has always been a bit of an anomaly. They serve real chefy tacos that other restaurants might charge $10 to 12 for, then somehow charge about half that. For instance, the Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant smokes its carnitas for four days, then the meat finds a home in hand-made tortillas and hits your plate for less than five bucks (post-inflation!).
The approach has always seemed ripe for replication, and that’s finally happening. The company is bringing chef-driven Mexican food to The Beacon La Costa shopping center in Carlsbad.
Owner Frank Vizcarra was raised by a single mom in Tijuana, where he’d go door-to-door selling eggs for the family. He became a hell of a soccer player, eventually riding a standout run at Ohio State to a pro career (his last season was with the San Diego Sockers in 1983).
After his sports days ended, he worked his way up the restaurant world ladder, eventually becoming VP of corporate strategy for McDonalds before investing in Tender Greens in 2009. Through it all, the desire to become a restaurateur lingered in the corners of his mind.
“I had been wanting to open a taco shop for a long time—since I was very young,” he says. “It got to the point where I was going to [have to] either open a taco shop or stop talking about it.”
Lola 55 Interior
Courtesy of Lola 55
He honored the self-appointed ultimatum by launching Lola 55 in 2018. His goal was to disassociate good food with high prices. “We wanted to create something meaningful we could grow with,” Vizcarra emphasizes. “We looked at the taco scene in LA, San Francisco, and San Diego. We went to other cities with taco cultures, like Dallas and New York. Then we went to Mexico City and Oaxaca. We visited over 100 concepts, and nobody was doing high quality at a reasonable price.”
The new Carlsbad location (7720 El Camino Real) is a 3,360-square-foot storefront that will feature a 1,200-square-foot patio and airy, industrial-chic vibes reminiscent of Lola’s Downtown locale. The open kitchen provides a stage for tortilla-making—and a test-run for the chain’s new Oaxacan breakfast concept from chef Kathleen Shen, with memelas, breakfast tacos, and a modest selection of fresh juices and coffee.
Although he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of expanding north of Carlsbad, Vizcarra notes that he’s focused on heading south, at least for now. “Our intention is to work our way down the coast, not up,” he says. He is also flirting with the idea of a commissary kitchen, a place where menu prep will occur for all current and future locations as a means of monitoring quality and consistency.
Lola 55’s Carlsbad outpost opens in June.
Have breaking-news, exciting scoops, or great stories about San Diego’s food scene? Send your pitches to [email protected].
