The Road to San Juan

There are plenty of reasons to drive out to Pacoima on a Saturday afternoon, even if you don’t like picking through great old junk stores. You could visit Pacoima Junior High School, Richie Valens’ alma mater and the place where he recorded “Richie Valens Live at Pacoima Junior High,” which is still among the best live albums ever made--look for the surreal mural where the singer floats among his hit records. You could cruise down San Fernando Road, the street where Los Angeles gives way to the scrub and railroad tracks and seedy ‘30s motel courts of the West, and pretend that you’re starring in your own remake of “Touch of Evil.” If you remember to make a reservation, you can visit the Merle Norman Tower of Beauty down the road, and spend a couple of hours contemplating the beauty of Merle’s automobiles and old chandeliers.

But the best thing about Pacoima is probably the Mexican food, which is just about as authentic as it gets. Upper Van Nuys Boulevard is lined with taquerias and Mexican seafood houses, Norteno joints and restaurants that specialize in barbecued goat, places splashed with neon and trumpet music and bright paint. If you drive down the street at dinner time, delicious cooking smells float over the street, as they do in Chinatown. And you can go anywhere--I’ve never had a bad meal in Pacoima, even at the chain carnitas stand.

Somehow though, four out of five times I make it up there, I end up at Cafe San Juan.

Cafe San Juan is what everybody thinks a Mexican restaurant should be, a clean, mom-run family cafe in a working-class Mexican neighborhood, with ruffled curtains on the windows and battered stewpots on the walls, a portrait of Emilio Zapata glaring down from the back of the room and photographs of cows. At least a few customers wear straw cowboy hats at any given time; toward lunchtime most of them do. You can get spicy huevos rancheros at 5 in the morning and wash it down with strong coffee. (Cafe San Juan sells no alcohol--the most intoxicating beverage on the menu is probably the thick milkshake made with platanos and chocolate.) Mexican telenovelas blare on the television, and sad Spanish-language ballads from the jukebox. Small children pop up their heads and stare at you over the banquettes.

At the front of the cafe, behind a counter just inside the door, women fry chiles and heat tortillas, ladle stews and sauces from big, glazed crocks, grab handfuls of hard candy to give people who’ve just paid their checks. What the place serves is Northern-style Mexican food, the kind of rural, hearty ranch-style grub you might expect to be served in a Mexican home where somebody really knows her beans. It’s not fancy in the least. Salsas are fiery hot, both the smoky, brick-red salsa that comes with tacos and the thick green one that comes with everything else.

Chile verde is probably the most delicious thing on the small menu, chunks of pork stewed in a salty, tart sauce of green chile and tomatillo until they almost fall apart--scented with garlic, the sort of food you can’t stop eating until the plate is shiny clean, the best chile verde in town. It’s much better than the somewhat bitter chile colorado .

There’s decent carne asada , tough but tasty from long marination, and good, garlicky pork chops. Tongue stew, cooked with tomatoes, onions and chiles, is tender as an hour of the Care Bears. Chiles rellenos are freshly fried, spicier than you’d expect under their crisp egg batter and bursting with Mexican cheese. The chicken ranchero , stewed in a tomato sauce studded with whole serrano chiles, is spicier still . . . probably the most rustic stuff you can eat within 15 minutes of Encino.

Cafe San Juan, 13324 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima, (818) 897-6144. Open daily, 5 a.m.-9 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $9-$15.

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