Andrew Ponce knows what comes to mind when you crunch into one of the crispy beef tacos at his Echo Park restaurant, A Tí.

Soft, mulchy meat folded around a thin corn tortilla fried until it’s poised to shatter, then dressed with curls of Tillamook cheddar and served with sweet tomato salsa? The mix is an instant hit of hard-shell taco nostalgia, a tribute to the midcentury Southern California craze that, even as we’re passing through the 21st century’s first quarter, endures as a throwback pleasure.

Ponce’s L.A.-coded Mexican cooking at A Tí is a love letter to the city written in ever clearer, more confident penmanship. Some dishes rechannel professional experiences. Others are familial, or nod to the region’s culture.

The beef-stuffed tacos manage all three at once.

Ponce grew up in Culver City. He recalls his father frowning on his occasional trips to Tito’s Tacos, a neighborhood institution since 1959, and the half-cylinder shapes, with shards of lettuce peeking out from the orange shredded cheese, he’d bring home in a box. “That isn’t real Mexican food,” he’d say to his son.

Making them for his menu, Ponce also thinks about pasta. The taco filling draws on methods he learned during his days in the kitchen at Bestia, on duty for the oxtail ragù cradled in agnolotti. At A Tí, he braises beef shank, chops the meat, sautés aromatics (onions, garlic, shallots, cilantro and Fresno chiles), returns the shank and its braising liquid to the pot, simmering everything down to fragrant stickiness.

By the third bite, your brain moves beyond the recognition and the post-irony and begins to pick up on the taco’s layered details. I love that he skips the watery lettuce in favor of sharper, meltier contrasts.

Through the years Ponce also cooked at Jon & Vinny’s, Cento Pasta Bar and, during its brief run, Onda in Santa Monica. His culinary path began merging with his Mexican American identity under the inspiration of Carlos Salgado, during a pandemic-era stint at Salgado’s closed-and-still-missed Taco María in Costa Mesa. A Tí began as a pop-up in 2021.

Anna Kawanishi, Ponce’s partner, had worked at short-lived Kushiba, located in a small complex along Sunset Boulevard. While the space was in transition, Kawanishi connected Ponce with the owners. They agreed to a trial-run in September 2024 that was originally called Bar A Tí, leaning into cocktails and a short menu of mostly antojitos and tacos.

Right away, the breakout star was the tuna tostada. It always had the visuals: dark blue corn tortilla (using masa from Kernels of Truth), overlapping slices of fish the color of fruit punch, a slick of aioli peeking out around the edges, splotches of salsa negra and whole cilantro leaves to finish. Its composition has been consistent, but as the restaurant settled in — and, to convey a sense of permanence, dropped the “Bar” from its name — the tostada’s components have sharpened. The aioli is lemonier, and better merges with the yellowfin into unified velvetiness. The salsa rushes the senses more thrillingly with its distinct, smoky-cherry notes from chile puya.

As the menu has expanded over two years and Ponce’s style has cohered and become more assured, I’m freshly reminded of an abiding L.A. formula: the pluralism of our communities, plus our region’s unparalleled agriculture, plus our penchant for creative individualism can equal greatness.

How does that translate at A Tí in high summer? Thickly sliced Regier Family Farm peaches paired with wedges of cucumber in a bracing aguachile verde dotted with minty hoja santa. Wedges of Weiser Family Farms melon, its floral qualities teased out by honey and lime, and offset by the distinct pepperiness of red shiso. Meaty red and yellow tomatoes from Munak Ranch, popping against batons of cured nopales over rightly salty whipped feta and more of the good-good salsa negra. Grilled esquites, the grilled sweet corn smoothed with lime crema and given novel umami dimensions via uni butter and tuna bottarga.

The restaurant’s snug, dim dining room appeals any time of year, but this sun-drenched collage seems especially suited for sharing on the small adjacent patio bordered by olive trees.

A date-forward mole, served underneath a crackling duck leg confit, anchors a concise selection of entrees. Ponce concocted it on the fly during his pop-up days when he was missing his father’s birthday celebration and wanted to prepare something that night to honor him.

Ever since then he’s been feeding the mole sourdough-style, in the manner made famous by Enrique Olvera at his Mexico City fixture Pujol. It’s three years old now, and the sweetness is duskier, more complicated, and silkier.

In stone fruit season, though, Ponce makes a peach mole he serves with lamb. It’s lighter and less dense with spice, as moles are often made in Zacatecas, where his father has roots. I’ve never had a version of the dish that sings a hymn to California seasons in such pure tones.

The crispy beef tacos are a perennial craving, but other unorthodox tacos tempt, too. Troy Nakamatsu, co-founder of Sawtelle Sake, sells the restaurant shio koji, which is used as a rub for satsumaimo (a.k.a. Japanese sweet potatoes) that are carved and perched sculpturally on small, nicely weighty tortillas. It’s subtle, but the brain does catch the extra umami among a healthy dollop of crema and the dark heat of chile morita salsa. Deft charring brings out the beefiness in oyster mushrooms, gathered into a cheese-lined taco sparked with winey urfa pepper.

Given the restaurant’s bar-leaning origins in the space, the drink options remain robust and veering. I feel most often pulled to sip tequila or mescal from among a tight selection of small-batch distillers. A ripple of apricot runs through Bixhidú pechuga that falls right in line with the summer flavors on nearly every plate.

Ponce recently hired a new crew of bartenders, but he’s been the one dreaming up the cocktails with an untamed sort of inventiveness: daiquiris infused with cherimoya pulp and sake lees, negronis lightened with strawberry amaro, a clever vermouth-based highball hinting of cilantro and citrus that plays nicely with the seasonal small plates.

It’s a lot for one person to handle everything, and some refinement would likely come from wisely handing off some responsibilities. A Tí has already proved itself as a place of possibilities. One major growth spurt at a time.

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