Chinitos Tacos—Chef Beeline Krouch’s scene-defining taqueria where Cambodian flavors melded with the traditions of the mighty taco—will host its last day of service on Mar. 31. Come April 1, West Covina-based Filipino eatery Taste of the Pacific will begin taking over the space that formally sits in Lakewood.
“It’s not an easy decision but with our family growing, it was one we knew we were comfortable making,” Chef Beeline said, sitting with his wife, Tiffany, who noted that they are “selling the shop, but still holding onto Chinitos as a brand for catering and popup events. Chinitos is an inherent part of our family—especially Beeline’s identity—but I believe every change creates opportunities.”
Chinitos Tacos—no matter how you flip the tortilla—has left an indelible mark on the Long Beach food scene.
Chinitos Tacos was born out of a family obsessed with food and its love for Long Beach. Beeline’s parents not only owned a donut shop at one point—”Cambodian: gotta have a donut shop,” he would joke—but his mom also owned a Chinese food spot. And, in Beeline’s words, he was “born into food.”
Chinitos Tacos was just a natural extension of that childhood and growing experience. As part of Long Beach City College’s rightfully lauded culinary program’s inaugural cohort, Beeline proudly graduated from this program. This formal education in the kitchen cemented what would become his life’s passion: professionally making food. The move and Beeline’s experience echo the power of the program’s ability and compound the need for trade programs to be accessible for kids directly out of high school.
To empahsize, while Chinitos might be in Lakewood, it is one-hundred-percent birthed out of Long Beach. Chef Beeline serves up some of the region’s most distinct, lavishly layered tacos with his melding of Cambodian and Southeast Asian flavors with Mexican grub, where rounds of melted cheese—burnt to a brown, crêpe-thin crisp—act as taco shells and lemongrass and Chinese five spice blend into meats.
It’s a genuinely beautiful expression of our city’s culinary talent, one that will be sorely missed.
And Chef Beeline always had much larger dreams for Chinitos that, as life goes, simply didn’t come to fruition.
Anyone who talks to Chef Beeline immediately grasps two things: His love of food and his love of Long Beach. On a personal note, when I first met Bee and he was beginning Chinitos, his ultimate dream had always been formed by the lines of folks outside the taco window of El Sauz on Anaheim. Late hours. Throngs of chatty people. Some tomfoolery and drunkenness, perhaps. But indeed one thing: people connecting over a taco. In a parking lot. When nothing else was open.
Chinitos Tacos was supposed to be that. And like any talented risk taker, Beeline went where the tangible expression of his dreams could become a reality. That ended with him in Lakewood. For better or worse, the sleepiness of the suburban next door neighbor never entirely fulfilled his dreams of a packed parking lot at 1AM, filled with hungry Long Beachers downing ponzu chicken and Chinese five spice barbacoa tacos. That, however, doesn’t mean the entire dream was unfulfilled.
“Chinitos is my identity, man—I won’t fork over that,” Chef Beeline said. “But it’s not just me and Tiffany hustling alone anymore; we have a family. Do I have regrets? Absolutely not. Will Chinitos live on? Very much so. In what way? That we shall see.”
Applause, Chef. Applause.
The last day of service at Chinitos Tacos will be Monday, Mar. 31. It is located at 11130 Del Amo Blvd. in Lakewood.
