Column: Sariñana’s Tamale Factory churns out thousands of traditional treats

At this moment, there is likely a line outside Sariñana’s Tamale Factory in Santa Ana.

It runs from the single register inside the nearly 80-year-old pocket-sized restaurant, out the teal-painted security gate and (at the right time of day) through its parking lot in a sleepy industrial tract of Fifth Street, reaching past the mercadito next door.

Everyone in line is inching toward a common goal: tamales.

The holidays are the busiest time of the year for Sariñana’s, the second-oldest Mexican restaurant in Orange County.

For five generations, descendants of the original owners — Juan and Felipa Sariñana, who immigrated here in 1921 — have spent December working long hours in the structure’s industrial kitchen, kneading, spreading, rolling and steaming thousands of tamales for customers who have made the family’s chile-soaked versions part of their own Christmas traditions.

Because for many people of Mexican descent, Christmas isn’t much of a Christmas without tamales.

Even though the caloric punches of stewed meats swaddled inside a blanket of masa dough are eaten year round — it’s a popular on-the-go breakfast in many bustling neighborhoods — the holidays are when their labor-intensive creation includes Mexican history lessons along with togetherness and cultural bonding.

The humble tamale’s origins can be traced to Mesoamerica, where they were used as portable meals for Aztec warriors and travelers. Today, the dish is one of the oldest surviving forms of sustenance from pre-Columbian times and Latin America is home to dozens of adaptations. In Mexico, intense culinary regionality means tamales there vary from state to state too; they can be rectangular, square, round, stuffed with fruits or meats or even wrapped in banana leaf.

Sariñana’s renditions riff on the specialty of the founders’ native state of Durango in the north of Mexico, where tamales are long and skinny, wrapped in corn husk darkened by meat and marinades. The people there call them tamales de dedo — “finger tamales,” for their shape — and they are logical precursors to the dense and hearty hot tamales that still please palates in the Mississippi Delta.

Sariñana’s makes seven kinds of tamales year-round, each rolled into a corn husk with just enough lard to ensure the masa doesn’t stick to the casing when you try to separate the substance from its vessel.

The pork is traditional, slow-cooked shoulder immersed in a chile so rich and red it almost stains skin. Chicken and beef versions get similar treatment (chicken is also available with a spicy green tomatillo sauce). A vegetarian tamale comes with a sliver of poblano pepper and melty queso oaxaqueño. Tamal de elote has no filings but uses sweet yellow corn for the masa instead of the more savory harina.

For dessert, Sariñana’s makes a sweet tamale that remains an outlier even in Santa Ana, a city with no shortage of tamale makers to choose from. Shaped not like a dedo but a Sizzler baked potato, it’s a formation of masa that’s been dappled with raisins, walnuts, pineapple chunks and cinnamon for an experience that’s part fruitcake, part apple pie, part regular tamale.

Of course, tamales aren’t the only thing to eat at Sariñana’s. Since opening as an actual tamale factory in front of the Sariñanas’ house in 1939, the menu has expanded to include other classics of the Mexican-American canon, from chicharron burritos to beef birria to enchiladas coated in a rich mole sauce.

Possibly even more than its tamales, the restaurant is known for its tacos, which don’t come on soft corn tortillas like you’ll find at most taquerias in town, but are deep fried to order and loaded up with iceberg lettuce and shreds of cheese. These days, tacos prepared this way get snubbed as “gringo style,” but they are not unlike those still being served daily at Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino, the Mexican diner that famously gave Glen Bell the idea for Taco Bell. Gustavo Arellano, former OC Weekly editor in chief and author of “Taco USA,” once called Mitla’s taco “the ur-taco, the taco that launched a thousand tacos.”

History lives in every corner of Sariñana’s, in the food that recalls Mexican history both ancient and modern, in the garage-sized dining room where black-and-white photos of five generations of owners keep watch from the wall, and in the few picnic tables that line the room, each flanked by a creaky bench worn from years of satisfied diners.

It’s a bite of O.C. food heritage worth waiting in line for.

Sariñana’s Tamale Factory is located at 2218 W 5th St. Santa Ana. For more information, call (714) 558-8650; sarinanastamalefactory.com.

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.