<i> Jugo’s </i> There

This time of year, the first thing you might want to know about the Mexican restaurant Valenzuela’s is that it serves what may be the coldest beer in town, chilled to a temperature somewhere around freezing, then served in mugs blast-cooled to the point that sometimes a little fog forms around them, and the puck of ice frozen into the mug’s base doesn’t fall out until halfway through the meal. We’ve all seen beer cold enough to form little ice crystals on top; at Valenzuela’s, the frozen layer at the top of your Bohemia is almost firm enough to skate on.

Valenzuela’s is a roadhouse toward the eastern edge of El Monte, past the mall, past the car dealerships, past the miniature Statue of Liberty that sits in front of the civic center. Inside, when the band isn’t playing, the action is around the big TV screens at either end of the room; Raider games, boxing matches, the Mexican soap operas called novelas. One Wednesday, I was sure the three burly Stetsoned dudes in the corner were playing a high-stakes game of poker, but as the novela “La Duen~a” rolled its closing credits overhead, they sighed--jilted at the altar!--and went out into the night.

On a board near the door are inked the daily specials, which often as not consist solely of six bottles of Corona in a bucket and an admonition to try one of the house’s tasty seafood cocktails.

But though the fried mojarra is fine, and the garlicky shrimp decent enough, seafood isn’t really the thing here. As you go to a birrieria for the birria , to Ciro’s for the flautas and to El Tepeyac for the giant burritos, Valenzuela’s is almost synonymous with Jalisco-style carne asada en su jugo, beef roasted in its own juices--a regional dish as good as menudo or birria , which is good enough to justify hopping on the I-10 from just about anywhere.

The regular carne asada here is just a boring small steak; carne asada en su jugo consists of a massively heaped confetti of browned beef, flavored with bits of bacon, filled out with soupy beans, garnished with chopped onion and a handful of cilantro, sopping in a spicy puddle of juice. On the side, a plate holds sugary roasted onions, grilled scallions, hot chiles that have been charred to an elusive sweetness, radishes and limes. It’s a classically compelling dish, each spoonful subtly different--smoky, meaty, spicy, tart--with the promise of carnivorous nirvana in every bite, and I have seen small, hungry people demolish giant piles of this stuff in just a couple of minutes.

You’d think it would be an obvious thing, carne asada en su jugo, and I’m sure it’s a popular dish in Mexican homes, but I’ve never before seen it on a restaurant menu, and there is no recipe for it in the dozen or so cookbooks I checked. I suspect the dish is usually, like hot turkey sandwiches or roast-beef hash, a tasty way to use up leftovers, and no recipes exist because it never occurs to authors that anybody has to be told how to make something like this.

Oddly enough, most of the customers here seem to order the parrilladas , small charcoal braziers brought to the table heaped with small steaks, grilled slabs of chicken, crunchy little sections of intestine, oily grilled seafood ... OK, but nothing you couldn’t get better across town.

Better to try the proper Sinaloa-style machaca --made with true dried beef rather than the stewed beef you usually find in restaurant machaca --pounded to almost a powder with a mortar and pestle, and fried crisp with peppers and onions. The machaca here is a dense, powerfully salty dish that all but screams for another bottle of Valenzuela’s cryogenically correct Mexican beer.

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Where to Go

Valenzuela’s Mexican Restaurant, 11721 E. Valley Blvd., El Monte, (818) 579-5384. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Beer and wine. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Lot parking. Dinner for two, food only, $12-$24.

What to Get

Carne asada en su jugo, machaca estilo Sinaloa