The speed at which a single dish can travel from the kitchen of a specialized food blogger to the laminated menus of twelve unfamiliar beachside eateries is almost suspicious. That’s precisely what the crispy fish taco accomplished. It spread quickly, widely, and with a kind of breathless enthusiasm that made it difficult to pinpoint a single origin point—not slowly, not quietly. This is how things spread when the internet is involved.
It’s possible that the moment began somewhere along the San Diego coast, where restaurants like Oscar’s Mexican Seafood and food trucks like Mariscos Alex had been serving battered fish tacos for a long time before anyone had the idea to take ring light photos of them. These locations weren’t following fads. People were being fed by them. The recipe, which had been successful for decades, included corn tortillas, flaky white fish, shredded cabbage, and a sharp crema. When Instagram came along, everything about how a plate of food was seen abruptly changed.
The recipe that went viral on the internet was simple. In order to keep the coating lighter and less bready, it relied on a beer batter, typically made with cake flour instead of all-purpose. The fish, which was usually tilapia, cod, or any other white fish that was readily available in the area, was dipped in the batter, then tossed through a mixture of seasoned dry flour before being submerged in hot oil. The entire purpose of the double-coating was to create those additional nooks. The air was trapped. They remained crispy even after being wrapped in a soft tortilla, which is more difficult to achieve than it seems and was somewhat of a revelation for many home cooks learning this method.
Almost exactly this technique was described by J. Kenji López-Alt in a piece for Serious Eats. He noted that the wet batter dripping into the dry mix produced tiny pockets that turned golden and remained crackly long after the fish hit the plate. People stopped scrolling because of that detail, the particular mechanics of crunch. There is a perception that the majority of viral food content succeeds due to a single, exact, nearly scientific explanation of why something truly works rather than spectacle.
It’s difficult to ignore the reaction of the coastal restaurant industry when observing this from the outside. Within a few years, Baja fish tacos began to appear on menus from Charleston to Malibu. The structure was the same, but the language was always a little different—pickled red onion here, chipotle crema there, mango slaw somewhere else. Fish battered with beer, double-coated for crunch, and served in corn tortillas with heat and acid to balance out the richness. It wasn’t necessarily a criticism, but it was template cooking disguised as local inspiration. There are templates because something is effective.
The original San Diego version never really needed to be fixed, which is interesting. The Instagram version was attempting to mimic the tacos that were already delicious and well-balanced when they came off those food truck griddles. The popular recipe translated a local dish into a format that the rest of America could prepare on a Tuesday night in a Dutch oven, but it didn’t really improve anything.
Whether that qualifies as cultural spread or something more nuanced is still up for debate. In any case, the fish taco has become ubiquitous, crispier than before, and no one is complaining.
