Talo Organic – Venice, Los Angeles

A 100% gluten free guarantee. That is what Talo Organic promises on their website and what drew me to visit them in Venice. After having parked in the conveniently free parking lot at the back, I entered the building of the Colony. The Colony can best be described as a food court slash ghost kitchen. Talo Organic is one of the restaurants that you can order from, but do not expect a front of house experience. Instead, you order at a self-ordering kiosk and wait until your food is ready at the counter. There are tables to eat inside and when I was there on a Friday night there were quite a few people doing exactly that while music played in the background.

I was in the mood for tacos so decided to go for the Taco Trio ($19,95). Easy, because now I could try the three different ones on offer. Each taco comes with at least 1/4lb of meat. The steak taco and the honey chipotle chicken taco were served with house made guacamole, house made salsa verde, chipotle crema, onion, and cilantro. The pineapple barbacoa taco had the same guacamole, salsa verde, and chipotle crema, but was served with pineapple pico de gallo instead of onion and cilantro. When I picked up my bag of food I wondered why I was given a fork to eat tacos with. However, the tacos were so stuffed that it was handy to pick up the pieces that fell out when I ate them by hand first.

Besides tacos they also offer salads and (build your own) bowls, but what I would have ordered if I had been hungrier were their French fries fried in beef tallow. I will have to do that another time. Talo Organic also offers a meal prep delivery service on their website, so that might be of interest to the celiacs out there. Celiacs (I am not one) have posted positively online about the safety of the food when they ordered at the Venice location.

Gluten-free taco trio.

Wall with the many food options you can choose from for non-celiacs! Except for Talo organic!