Steve Hilton, a Republican front-runner in the race for governor of California, recently visited the oldest operating Del Taco in the United States for what he might have thought would be an uncontroversial pit stop.
“Check it out: the original Del Taco. There it is,” Mr. Hilton says in a video he shared on social media last weekend from the fast-food restaurant in Barstow, Calif. “My Barstow street taco. I’m going to enjoy it.”
The internet did not let him enjoy it quietly.
“That’s DEFINITELY not a ‘street’ taco,” Gustavo Arellano, a Los Angeles Times columnist who has written a history of Mexican food in the United States, said on social media.
The trouble, for many, was that Mr. Hilton had used “street taco” to describe a taco that was both not from a street vendor and looked — with its hard shell and lettuce and grated cheese filling — nothing like those that are.
For critics of Mr. Hilton, a British-born former Fox News host who received President Trump’s endorsement last month, the slip revealed a lack of familiarity with the cuisine in the state with the nation’s largest Hispanic population. Some said he had conflated a major fast-food chain with the humbler taquerias, street vendors and food trucks associated with California’s Mexican food culture, where soft tortillas dominate and lettuce is a rarity.
By late Monday, Mr. Hilton’s post had surpassed 1 million views on X, where hundreds of users piled on alongside commenters on Instagram and Facebook. One user joked that this should disqualify him from running the state.
Mr. Hilton pushed back.
“It’s what they call it!” he wrote on X. He said that he had filmed the video after a town hall event with his running mate, Gloria Romero, a former state senator who grew up in Barstow and worked at Del Taco as a teenager. The stop, he said, had been her idea, a sentimental return to a hometown landmark.
Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democratic former mayor of Los Angeles who is also running for governor, addressed Mr. Hilton directly in a social media video filmed at a taco truck. “That’s a street taco,” he said, biting into a taco filled with lengua, which is beef tongue, and topped with habanero salsa.
“Not everything in life has to be turned into a political argument!!” Mr. Hilton wrote on Monday.
A spokesman for Mr. Hilton, Hector Barajas, dismissed the debate in a statement to The Times.
“It’s honestly amazing that this is what passes for political journalism now,” he said, arguing that California’s bigger issues were cost of living, crime, homelessness and infrastructure. “Instead of covering any of that, reporters are chasing whether someone used the wrong taco terminology at Del Taco.”
Del Taco, which did not respond to a request for comment late Monday, uses the term “street taco” to describe several menu items, though those are served on a soft tortilla, not the crunchy shell that Mr. Hilton ate.
In Southern California, street tacos and vendors occupy a distinct place in culture and politics. In 2018, Los Angeles legalized sidewalk vending after years of debate over immigration, public space and regulation. Many immigrant vendors and advocates said the move recognized a tradition long woven into the city’s identity and protected some undocumented residents from deportation risks tied to the Trump administration. In 2019, street vending became legal in California.
In Los Angeles, Calvin Sosa, 21, a cashier at Taco Zone — a truck operated by his mother, who immigrated from Mexico and has made tacos for more than 20 years — said he understood both sides of the debate.
He explained that authentic street tacos use chopped and diced meat, seasoned simply with fat and spices, rather than ground beef. The toppings, he said, should be onions and cilantro, sometimes with pico de gallo. Shredded lettuce, grated cheese and sliced tomatoes belong to a separate, Americanized tradition, he said.
“We consider hard shells Americanized tacos,” he added while taking orders on Monday night. “They don’t exist back in Mexico.”
Traditional tacos, introduced to the United States by Mexican migrants in the early 1900s, are typically served on soft corn tortillas. Inspired by Mexican cuisine, which grew more mainstream as those immigrants advanced economically, Del Taco was founded in 1964, two years after Taco Bell. Both chains have popularized the crunchy, hard shells.
Politicians have drawn controversy for food-related gaffes before. Bill de Blasio did in 2014 when he was mayor of New York City: Mr. de Blasio used a fork to eat pizza, later arguing that he was being true to his Italian heritage. During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania in 2012, Mitt Romney, then the Republican presidential nominee, was heckled for ordering a meatball “sub” in the birthplace of the hoagie.
Mr. Sosa said he understood why some people were upset, but it didn’t bother him that many people were unaware of the differences between tacos.
“A lot of Americans don’t understand that — I think that’s fine,” he said. “It’s just a little nitpick.”
Did Mr. Hilton’s comments disqualify him from representing California?
“It really doesn’t matter,” Mr. Sosa said. “It all depends on his policies.”
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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