A Taste of Guadalajara

By Katharine Essa

Wedged between a 99-cents store and a boarded up meat market sits El Parian Restaurant. It blends in seamlessly with the dozens of stall-like storefronts that line this section of Pico Boulevard, though its reputation sets it apart from the crowd. Every food critic and restaurant rating website in the Los Angeles area raves about the traditional Mexican food that comes from El Parian.

Raul Cisneros was just fifteen years old when he began working at El Parian Restaurant. Raul’s father and mother opened El Parian shortly after they moved here illegally from Mexico over fifty years ago.

“When we first started, I remember people telling my father that nobody in the US eats tortillas and my father, he said, ‘Well now they’re going to eat tortillas, and we’re going to make them,’” recalled Raul.

They began with fresh, hand-made tortillas made daily by the hundreds and later became one of the only Mexican restaurants to sell goat. El Parian soon became famous for those hand-made tortillas and, most importantly, the birria. This is the name for Guadalajara-style roast goat soup. This warm bowl of the stew, which seems as though its secret ingredient is love, paired with fresh tortillas to sop up the broth could not be kept a secret for long.

“We started serving goat and pretty soon we had lines all out the front and the back. And we never had any advertisements, this was all by word of mouth,” Raul said with a smile, “It made me feel good.”

El Parian also makes a wonderful carne asada dish. The steak, seasoned and charred to perfection, is delicious on the warm, thick tortillas but is rarely ordered. When you sit down at a table, the waiters do not even ask if you would like to see a menu, but whether you are hungry enough to have a full order of birria, or just a half. The dish is so authentic and fresh-tasting it is almost shame to eat at El Parian and order something different.

When he began working, Raul was a dishwasher. During this time, he was able to enroll in school and complete his high school diploma. When Raul was old enough, his father promoted him to the kitchen. In total, he spent ten years working at the restaurant before volunteering to fight for the United States in the Vietnam War.

Raul said plainly, “We had a good life, but when we moved here to the US, we had a better life. When I went to serve, it felt good. I volunteered. It was like a thank you.”

When he came home from Vietnam, Raul came home to El Parian. He met a girl, started a family, and began working for his father full-time. Raul’s father loved him and took care of him by paying him a good salary.

“He didn’t tell us, ‘I love you son’ because it was the culture. Man to man, you don’t say that. But we knew,” Raul said with a smile, “He gave us a good life.”

Raul has since dedicated his life to El Parian and wonderfully authentic Guadalajara-style Mexican comfort food.