Danny Trejo knows he’s being watched. Glancing over his shoulder, the 79-year-old flashes a wide, toothy smile at the women a couple of tables down from us who’ve just clocked the presence of the baddest of all badasses. ‘No way!’ they exhale in unison. Trejo turns back to me, still grinning, and digs a tortilla chip into a mound of guacamole studded with pistachios. ‘Someone once told me I was the most recognisable Latino in the world,’ he says. ‘I went, wait, am I ugly or what?’ He erupts into a throaty laugh that reverberates like gravel in a cement mixer, then shakes his head. ‘Nah, you’ve just been in a lot of movies, holmes.’
To be fair, it’s hard to stay incognito when your face is plastered all over the walls. We’re having lunch at Trejo’s Cantina, a bright, colourful taco joint in the heart of Hollywood, with a full bar and a recurring motif in its choice of artwork. Trejo’s moustachioed mug stares out from hot-sauce bottles, staff T-shirts and the sign above the door. In the toilets, murals depict just some of his more than 400 film, television and video game roles: thrusting open a trench coat full of blades as Mex-ploitation action hero Machete, taking the mic in From Dusk Till Dawn, his severed head riding across the desert on a tortoise in Breaking Bad. If you didn’t recognise Danny Trejo in this place, you never would.
The quintessential screen tough guy opened his first taqueria a few miles south of here on La Brea Avenue in 2016, and now has five Trejo’s Tacos locations dotted across Los Angeles. Next he has his sights set on London, specifically a prime spot on Portobello Road. He fell in love with the city a decade ago while shooting Muppets Most Wanted. ‘I stayed there for about four weeks,’ he remembers. ‘Me and Ray Liotta walked all over. It was a joy. People are so friendly, especially because me and Ray are pretty recognisable. We went to see Buckingham Palace and were complete tourists. But both me and Ray said: “They need some Mexican food here!”’
Kevin EG Perry: Collected Works 