Chef-owner Pablo Becker buys his fish every single day from local fisherman
Everything at San Diego’s popular seafood-focused taqueria Fish Guts — from the fish to the masa for the tortillas — is sourced locally. Working in a small kitchen with no freezer, chef-owner Pablo Becker makes his fish tacos using whatever local San Diego fishermen bring in everyday. Becker usually purchases whatever the rockfish of the day might be for the spot’s best-selling Baja taco: “Instead of using what other people traditionally use, frozen tilapia or something like that, we want to use the best ingredient,” Becker says. “And I do think the West Coast has some of the best rockfish.”
Keeping with the restaurant’s philosophy of serving the freshest food possible, everything on the Fish Guts menu is made to order. Prep cook and tortilla maker Jimena Alvarado hand-makes up to 200 tortillas every day, cranking them out as order tickets come in. “Everything we do is a la minute,” Becker explains. “[There] is nothing that is pre-cooked, pre-battered, pre- anything.”
Customers at Fish Guts can expect to find modern takes on traditional Mexican cooking. For example, Becker uses mustard in his fish taco batter, a trick he learned on a trip to Ensenada, where the fish taco was invented. A slaw on the Baja taco has a base of three cabbages and is made with pico de gallo and chipotle aioli. Meanwhile, the blackened fish taco uses two cabbages, red onion, jalapeno, cilantro, and the same aioli.
Although Becker intends to serve his tacos everyday from noon to 9 p.m., he regularly sells out before dinner service.
Watch the latest episode of The Experts to see how Fish Guts expertly serves up some of the freshest fish tacos in San Diego.
