07-14-2024 Baltimore's Best - Flipbook - Page 4
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, July 14, 2024
THE BALTIMORE SUN’S BEST READERS’ CHOICE 2024 FOOD & DRINK
Taco Love Grill was voted Baltimore’s Best Latin and Tacos. LLOYD FOX/STAFF
BEST LATIN, TACO
TACO LOVE GRILL
1065 S. Charles St. #128, Baltimore and 11550 Philadelphia Road, Suite 109-110,
White Marsh. tacolovegrill.com
There’s not a more delicious way to show your love than to craft a dish
from a family recipe. And that’s what Jimena and Gelmin Portillo, owners
of Taco Love Grill, have done with their Mexican eateries in White Marsh
and Baltimore’s Cross Street Market.
The Parkville couple, both graduates of the University of Baltimore with
careers in accounting, said they had searched for a restaurant that would
offer a taste similar to the favorites that Jimena Portillo enjoyed during
her childhood in Jalisco, Mexico.
“[My wife] was always looking for good and authentic Mexican restaurants in the area. And we were having a hard time finding one, so we
started our own,” Gelmin Portillo said.
In 2011, they opened Taco Love Grill with an idea to create a menu of
authentic Mexican food, made from scratch using familiar ingredients.
“That’s one of the things that we implemented in the restaurant is
family recipes that have been passed down by family for several genera-
tions,” said Portillo, whose two teen daughters and young son sometimes
help out at the restaurant.
That level of authenticity infuses everything from the marinade to the
tortillas. The menu offers standards like tacos and burritos, but also tortas
— a Mexican sandwich made with breaded chicken or steak and beef
birria, a menu item that is popular with customers.
“It’s a very elaborate recipe and we use somewhere around 25 ingredients into the [birria] recipe,” Portillo said. “Again, that’s something that we
also make from scratch that is very labor consuming and time consuming.
But that’s one of the things that we like to do, the way that it’s always been
done instead of using premade.”
The birria has been such a hit that in December, the couple opened
Birria Love in Parkville, offering a broad variety of birria dishes, including
fries topped with birria, birria ramen and birria pizza.
“Baltimore is our home and Baltimore County is where we decided to
grow roots,” Portillo said. “We’re happy to put our grain of salt into making
the community better.”
— Michelle Deal-Zimmerman
SEE MORE WINNERS ON PAGE 14
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