-Since I was a kid, I used to be a night owl.

I belong to that life.

That's when I feel more inspired.

Like everything's quiet, everyone's sleeping, and I'm planning how to feed them and create.

-We try to push boundaries, get people upset, and then they end up falling in love with us.

[chuckles] -I might sound crazy, I talk to food.

I told that food, like, "You'll be the most delicious food that people's going to taste, so I'm doing my job.

You do your job and let's make this happen."

[music] -Recado negro is, I call it the black magic.

Black magic because we do it mostly at nights.

We burn the chilies.

We set this stage on fire.

We get chilies secos, we get cacao, we get tortillas, we get anise.

We get all these spices and for sure, you're going to cough a lot because of those chilies, but when you grill that onion to charred, it gets sweeter.

That chilies loves their spiciness, but they still taste like chilies.

At the end of the day, when you grind everything, this taste that comes out of it, is just delicious.

It's sweet, smoky, and it adds so much flavor to the food that you get a taste of the Yucatan for sure.

[music] I have this friend in Dallas, Texas, and he owns a taqueria called Revolver.

He was doing already the octopus al pastor, and he used to email me random night, "Hey, why you don't put the octopus?"

I'm like, "Dude, that's your thing."

He's like, "No, dude, do it.

We used do it for special events."

I told him like, "If you give me the blessing, I'll do it."

I told him, "I'm going to use our Recado Negro to make it our own thing."

It went viral.

It went crazy that we never imagined it would be that crazy That was basically our signature, just putting it in Recado Negro, make it black, and have the torch and torch it and make it crispy.

Just basically, use your corn tortilla, your octopus, some pickled onions, but the onions that we pickle, we pickle it like in Yucatan, Mexico, with limon, real pineapple, and our avocado salsa.

[music] Evil Cooks is a rock band.

We have our van and the whole idea is to travel the whole country and do a pop-up in every state.

That's our idea, just like a rock band, and live the rock and roll life.

Cooking and music is the same thing.

Same thing with a taco.

You have the tortilla, that's your drums.

You put some meat, that's your base.

Then you put some salsa, that's a guitar, and then the toppings that you want to put on top, that's the boys.

You make it, Eli -There's people that argue like, what are they?

Are they punk?

Are they metal?

It's everything that we like.

It doesn't have to be one thing.

-I think metal is part of my life.

We came up together.

Evil Cooks and the music came together, really organic.

[music] When I'm driving the van, I feel like a pirate traveling in the ocean of LA.

I think the streets always call me because that's where I started my journey.

I started selling on the streets and I got used to that.

I got used to talk to people.

I got used to hustle.

I got used to learn how to survive.

It was basically me and my mom selling donuts in the streets, and my dad making them.

My dad was the one making the pan dulce and we were the one, after school, going out and sell the pan dulce, knocking on doors.

[music] -How many hours did we sleep?

-Probably like- -three?

Three hours.

-Elvia is the love of my life.

-It's a good day.

-She makes me happy.

We've been through so much in our lives.

I think when I found her, it was the moment when I felt free.

I felt that I was able to do what I love because I found someone who was in same page.

-I was stuck in my career.

I was stuck in life.

One day, he posted something funny and I was like, "Ha ha ha."

One day, I'm like, "Hey man, I just want to pick your brain.

I want to like, I don't know, do something."

We started hanging out.

I started helping him when one thing led to another.

[laughs] [music] -Smorgasburg has been like a house for us.

It's a place where you can find all these different food and unique food.

[music] I think it's a perfect fit for us because we try to do something different, something that's outside of the box for sure.

-The Poseidon, the McSatan, the Chile Killers, La Bruja.

It's mostly Alex with his silly names.

[laughs] I love them.

-This one is called a Megadeath, it's our version of a torta cubana.

It has a little bit of everything.

It has green chorizo, black al Pastor, hot dog.

It has caramelized onions, it has bacon, it has an egg, and plus all the toppings.

Yes, everything basically, so something that we live in our childhood for sure, like the dessert tacos.

[music] -I make a flan that's like a citrus flan, like an orange.

We top it off with polvorón, which is a shortbread cookie, coconut flakes mint, and a thinly sliced orange peel.

-It is really citrusy, really flavorful.

She put in this hybrid tortilla that we create.

We mix flour and corn, so I tell people it's like, "Let's imagine that a tortilla and a pancake had a baby, and into that tortilla, we put so many stuff.

We put the churro cheesecake, we have put arroz con leche, camote con leche.

We put as much stuff that you can imagine.

When I do sometimes some things, she refines them.

She's like, "Why don't we change this thing to make it our thing?"

That was our first collaboration when we met.

We call it La Bruja.

La Bruja to Elvia, that's her nickname.

[music] -We need to break down the whole circus and put it back in the van again and we finish at around 7:00.

7:00, we're free.

We're like, "Okay, we're done."

We're sleepy, so we go inside and my daughter receives me with open arms, all happy.

Sometimes crying, but she's ready to go and have sushi.

She loves sushi.

That's a ritual, like sushi after Smorgasburg.

Eat, come back, get everyone in bed and sleep until the next day.

-Our goal in life is happiness and I think we found it with each other, with our daughter, with Evil Cooks, and I hope it goes all the way.

Hopefully, I don't know, we will find four walls or maybe not.

How things are going right now, I can't ask for more.

-I like the fact to be in a restaurant, but I like to be outside and I like to meet people.

I like to go around LA and find people who's hungry, so I think that's why I always say that Evil Cooks belong to the streets.

When you go to your roots, that's when you find happiness, and I think this is happiness.