LOS ANGELES — It was Friday night in Cypress Park, and King Taco glowed with neon. Inside, teenagers in sweatshirts and shiny puffer coats tipped cups of salsa on beef-tongue tacos. Cooks hustled, calling out orders in Spanish.

Angelenos don’t usually know where I live if I rattle off the cross streets, but add just one detail — that the first location of King Taco is close by — and many of them can drop a pin on a map. A few have reminded me that Raul Martinez Sr., who started the California chain in 1974, drove one of the city’s first food trucks, altering the course of culinary history in Los Angeles with little more than an old ice cream van and a stack of tortillas.

The first King Taco is a cramped, vaguely peach-colored building at the end of a residential street. The windows are covered up with posters of chimichangas and champurrado. The grout is stained. It’s nothing fancy. But like many old restaurants in Los Angeles, it’s a landmark in the city’s consciousness.

As a new critic in town, I knew I had to start by paying respects to elders like this one — the steakhouses and the taco stands, the diners and the burger joints that have endured and collectively defined the city, as new contenders have come and gone.