Mexico in L.A. : Waiting for the Revolution

“Why are you giving me this uncooked thing?” Socorro Herrera had just handed a freshly made taco to a first-time customer of Yuca’s, the tiny Los Feliz stand run by Herrera and her husband, Jaime. The woman, nicely dressed but visibly agitated, looked at the taco, then at Herrera and said, “Don’t you know how to fry a tortilla?”

“She wanted to drive me to Taco Bell,” Herrera laughs. “I still remember her words. She said, ‘ They’ll teach you how to make a taco!’ ”

Outnumbered only by non-Hispanic whites according to 1990 census data, Mexicans are the single largest ethnic group in L.A. County. The same is true in Orange County. Despite this, Southern Californians are remarkably ignorant about Mexican food.

Even as we argue over the merits of one Chinese restaurant’s Shanghai-style fish head casserole and another’s Chiu Chow-style salted-plum sauce for carp, as Cambodian frog soup and Korean raw and spicy crab becomes common enough for discussion, too many still think of Mexican food as simply hard-fried tacos, gooey enchiladas, guacamole and a side of rice and refried beans. It’s thought of as cheap food to drink with margaritas.

“Real Mexican food,” says Felipe Telona, owner of Culver City’s Mi Ranchito, “is not ground-beef tacos; it is not tostadas in big shells or salsa made from tomato paste and Tabasco. It is not mole that tastes like chocolate sauce. All of that is American -Mexican.”

Real Mexican food is tender bits of pork, marinated in an earthy Yucatan spice rub and slow-cooked in a banana leaf, which, in some bites, is reminiscent of meat from an Indian tandoor. It is the delicate creaminess and subtle notes of squash flowers in crema de flor de calabaza. It is the silky texture and raw, truffle gutsiness of the corn fungus, huitlacoche , tucked into a quesadilla. It is soft tacos.

Reflecting Mexico’s diverse topography and the influences of several foreign interlopers, Mexican cooking is sometimes sophisticated, often rustic and, for the most part, is not served in L.A.’s Mexican restaurants. Hard as it is to believe in this town of a thousand Spanish street names, an authentic Mexican meal is not easy to find.

“What you have are a lot of big, beautiful buildings with terrible food,” says Jose Rodriguez, owner of the East L.A. restaurant La Serenata de Garibaldi.

“My wife and I have tried all the expensive Mexican restaurants,” says Mi Ranchito’s Telona, “but there’s no good food. They serve fancy things like fajitas on a sizzling platter, and all those expensive things, but I go to eat, not to see a show.”

The craze for fajitas --a Tex-Mex version of carne asada that is now nearly impossible to find in its original skirt-steak form--is especially frustrating to those who are trying to popularize more authentic Mexican cooking. But for mass-market restaurants and fast-food chains, even for mom-and-pop cafes looking to draw a few extra customers, sizzling fajitas platters have helped make corporately bland Mexican food among the most popular cuisines in America.

Also on the Blando-Mex menu: anything mild and cheesy. Enchiladas come blanketed in thick layers of Cheddar or Jack cheese; tacos and tostadas are packed with piles of tasteless shredded lettuce and bright orange cheese. Chiles rellenos and quesadillas are still other platforms for cheese.

“It’s the sort of menu you could copy and drop into thousands of restaurants across the country,” says Border Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken. “It’s all so much the same.”

Of course, the newish Southwest-cuisine influence on Blando-Mex shouldn’t be ignored. But it basically has meant that instead of flour or corn tortillas, you may choose blue corn tortillas. You also might get to eat fish or chicken cooked in some sort of too-sweet citrus sauce spiked with lots of corn. Mexican food in Los Angeles today is where Italian food was 20 years ago--ubiquitous, but hardly authentic.

But at least the ‘80s brought some change. Twenty years ago most L.A. Mexican restaurants were stuck in the rut of the taco-enchilada combination platter. Other ethnic cuisines were cliched then too--consider chop-suey-house Chinese and red-sauce Italian.

But while the Southland’s Chinese and Italian food has improved dramatically in recent years, change has come more slowly for Mexican cooking.

For one thing, many second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican-Americans do not know what real Mexican food is supposed to taste like. Indeed, a good number of them were raised on Blando-Mex just like any other American. In my own family, my grandmother is the last true Mexican cook, and even she has Americanized her style. Years ago, for instance, she stopped using lard, though I’ve always suspected that she includes bacon in her otherwise purely Mexican breakfasts because she likes to use the leftover grease to cook her refried beans.

Most of L.A.’s Mexican restaurants--unlike Salvadoran and Guatemalan restaurants, which opened here to serve the recently arrived political and economic refugees who only started coming to this country in significant numbers in the late ‘70s and ‘80s--were designed to appeal to both Anglos and Mexicans alike. The East L.A. burrito stand, El Teyepac, created its famous Hollenbeck burrito--a massive mess of beef, beans, rice, guacamole, lettuce, tomatoes and spicy salsa--for the mostly Anglo LAPD officers of the city’s Hollenbeck Division.

“In my opinion,” Serenata’s Rodriguez says, “the political and social conditions that existed 100 years ago--and I’m talking about racism--contributed to the creation of California-Mexican food. Mexican cooking had to please the American people, and in those years, they didn’t appreciate spicy-hot sauces. In trying to give Americans what they wanted, Mexican cooks started making sauces on the sweet side.”

Traditional California-Mexican--smoky, grilled meats; good, stewed beans; salsa that is tasty, but not too fiery--is accessible and appealing. It’s the sort of relaxed, casual food that appeals to almost every American who loves a back-yard barbecue. But as pleasant as this ranchero cooking can be, there is much more Mexican food out there to explore.

“If each restaurant would put at least two original dishes from the owner’s home region on their menus,” says Yuca’s Socorro Herrera, “then people’s perception of Mexican food would change.”

There are some encouraging signs. Good Mexican street food is getting easier to find. All over the city, taco trucks--El Taurino at Hoover and 11th, for instance, and others--serve great al pastor and tongue tacos with fiery-hot salsa. At the Alameda Swap Meet, reviewed in last week’s Food Section, it’s possible to wander from stall to stall eating good huaraches , flautas , barbecued goat, menudo , tacos and more. Senor Fish in Highland Park serves excellent fish tacos and burritos and quesadillas. And at El Parian, a small, alley-like restaurant on Pico Boulevard, you can eat what might be the best birria , goat stew, in Los Angeles.

The Herreras’ taco stand, Yuca’s in Los Feliz, is in a mostly white neighborhood. And so, even after 15 years in business, the family still gets requests for ground-meat tacos and sour cream, which is not used in the Herreras’ native Yucatan.

“We decided that we were going to cook the Mexican food we know,” says the Herreras’ daughter, Dora, who has worked at Yuca’s since she graduated from Brown University 11 years ago. “If people are willing to take the risk, fine. If not, they don’t belong here anyway.”

Yuca’s rarely sends away unhappy customers. There’s almost always a wait, starting from about 11 in the morning until its late-afternoon closing time.

“Still,” Dora says, “it’s hard to get people to try different stuff. When we started selling tacos with cochinita pibil (spice-marinated pork slow-cooked in a banana leaf), we sold it only on Saturdays and we promised people that if they didn’t like it, we’d give them their money back.” No refunds were requested, and the pibil is now on the regular menu.

“When we first started selling Yucatan-style tamales, which are wrapped in banana leaves, people would look at us like we were crazy. They’d say, ‘Why didn’t you use corn husks?’ And we’d say, ‘Because that’s what we use in the Yucatan.’ You’ve got to go with what’s real.”

Up a tier from street food are the Mexican home-style cafes. These are harder to figure. You could luck out at, say, Pacoima’s Cafe San Juan, and find good Mexican Mom food. Or you could wind up at another place and get dishes that were best left a family secret.

One of the best places to find Mexican home cooking is Felipe and Maria Telona’s Mi Ranchito in Culver City. The food, which emphasizes the seafood dishes of Felipe’s native Veracruz, was developed by Maria, a native of El Salvador, who spent most of her adult life raising her children and cooking Felipe’s favorite Mexican food. “Maria is the best cook,” Felipe boasts. “If I like her food, then everyone will like it.” It just so happens that this husband’s bragging is justified.

But it’s L.A.’s serious Mexican food that needs the most work. The great hope for L.A. Mexican cuisine three years ago was the Whittier Boulevard restaurant, Tamayo, a beautiful, high-ceilinged restaurant with serious-food intentions in a Mexican neighborhood. But Tamayo co-owner Stan Kandel, an original investor in Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, hired a French chef, Claude Koeberle, to head the kitchen.

“I had no desire to take the job,” Koeberle told The Times in 1988. “I knew nothing about Mexican food; to me, it was just rice and refried beans.” But Kandel persisted. He took Koeberle to restaurants all over Mexico. “It turned out,” Koeberle said, “that Mexican food was much more exciting than I thought.” Still, Koeberle, a good chef of French cuisine, did not come to the job with any real passion for Mexican food. He did the best job he could, but he soon left the restaurant. Tamayo has yet to achieve the great-restaurant status it originally sought.

Border Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, however, have a great love of Mexican cooking. Talk to them about their first trip to a Mexico City market and they giggle with excitement, retelling the story of discovering the grilled masa snack, huaraches .

“There’s no comparison between going to a country to eat and cook the food and reading about it in a book,” Feniger says. “Only by watching how a dish is prepared can you get a true appreciation, an understanding, of the food.”

Although some may question the authenticity of their food at Border Grill, no one can deny their role in educating American palates. A wonderful tongue stew and a salad of pickled pig’s feet are just two of Milliken’s and Feniger’s more daring--and delicious--dishes. There are lapses. Salsas may be fiery on one visit, wan on another. But Feniger and Milliken are an important link in the creation of a new Mexican cuisine in Los Angeles.

Ultimately, however, the revolution will have to be fought by Mexican chefs. The center of the budding movement may be at East L.A.’s La Serenata de Garibaldi, run by Jose Rodriguez.

The first thing you notice about Serenata, on the same block as a mariachi supply and music store, is that it doesn’t look like a typical Mexican restaurant. Smooth, ecru-colored booths line one side of the restaurant; the walls are painted a clean white and hung with modern Mexican art. There are no tchotchkes hanging from the ceiling.

But it is the food that makes Serenata different from most other Mexican restaurants. Fish, cooked crudito al centro, literally, raw at the center, or undercooked, in the style of L.A.’s most careful French and Italian kitchens, might come with a bright-green, absolutely fresh cilantro sauce or with a good and smoky, extremely hot chipotle chile sauce. Rodriguez has at least 60 different sauces in his repertoire, with at least 10 available on any given night. He has little patience for bad Mexican cooking.

“I think what we have to do is introduce real Mexican food,” Rodriguez says, “to present Mexican food with dignity and pride--and also, to educate the people.”

What he hopes, more than anything, is to inspire a new Mexican cuisine in Los Angeles. In his kitchen, he gives his chefs, as he puts it, “the liberty to be creative and develop themselves. Of course, I supervise, but in other restaurants where Mexican cooks work only in the back of the kitchen, they can only imitate and do what they are told. They cannot grow.”

One thing that bothers Rodriguez is that his restaurant does not attract more neighborhood customers. People in the area are too poor to afford his food, which by L.A. restaurant standards is downright cheap. Instead, Serenata attracts Mexican artists and middle-class business people, as well as non-Mexican club-goers and a few celebrities from L.A.’s Westside. “No one could have been more surprised than me to see Jaguars and Mercedes Benzes in my parking lot,” Rodriguez says.

Ironically, because Rodriguez’s food has found a cross-over audience, some say that that his food is not Mexican. He strongly disagrees.

“When people suggest that, I say, ‘Why not?’ First of all, I am Mexican. Secondly, we use ingredients that are used in every kitchen in Mexican cooking. Chile serrano is not from Poland or from France. It’s Mexican. If French chefs can develop nouvelle cuisine and Italian chefs too, why not Mexican chefs?”

Or as Mi Ranchito’s Telona puts it, “We have a lot of pride. We are Mexicans and we do things right.”

A Few Good Mexican Restaurants

* Alameda Swap Meet, 4501 S. Alameda Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 233-2764.

* Border Grill, 1445 Fourth St., Santa Monica, (213) 451-1655.

* Cafe San Juan, 13324 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima, (818) 897-6144.

* El Parian, 1528 N. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 386-7361.

* El Taurino taco truck, weekends behind 1104 S. Hoover St., Los Angeles, (213) 738-9197.

* La Serenata de Garibaldi, 1842 E. First St., Los Angeles, (213) 265-2887.

* Senor Fish, 5111 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, (213) 257-2498.

* Yuca’s Hut, 2056 N. Hillhurst Ave., Los Feliz, (213) 662-1214.