Coyote Calls

One sign of a native Angeleno, I think, is a relationship with the restaurant El Coyote, a relationship that often begins just a few weeks after birth. Half the kids in Los Angeles grow up desiring the tacky toys and souvenirs displayed in a locked glass case in the lobby, spending hours waiting in line for a table, craving the warm sweetness of corn tortillas thickly spread with butter and sprinkled with salt.

Then it becomes something of a rite of passage when you begin going there as a young teenager, possibly your first time in a restaurant without your parents. You go because it was, as it still is, the cheapest respectable place to eat dinner out and because you could order the No. 2 dinner without fear of mispronouncing anything or using the wrong fork.

Slightly later in life, the Angeleno learns that El Coyote’s margaritas, though next to impossible to obtain if you happen to be underage--not only have these guys have seen many generations of fake IDs, but they also have seen you come in since you were a baby--are among the quickest and cheapest ways to nirvana, especially if the way down is lubricated with a nacho-equivalent “Mexican pizza” or two.

By the time you reach your mid-20s, you have learned to point out the booth in the back where Sharon Tate was reputed to have eaten her last meal, discuss the evolution of the El Coyote waitress petticoats and discern the possible ingredients of the sweet, intermittently powerful margaritas. (A reliable source, who was a bartender at El Coyote for a couple of years, swears that the ingredient that makes El Coyote margaritas taste different from everyone else’s is a healthy slug of pineapple juice.)

El Coyote is 65 years old, a fact that is advertised on the side of the restaurant in Las Vegas-style flashing lights, and if the two-hour lines on weeknights are any indication, it will be around for 65 more.

I haven’t been a regular at El Coyote for almost a decade, but I have eaten more meals there than at any restaurant on Earth. When I was growing up, my family used to go to El Coyote every week or so, partly, I suspect, because it was one of the few places on the Westside where a family of five could eat out and get change back from a ten or possibly because my father was fond of a Carta Blanca or two--come to think of it, El Coyote was about the only place we ever saw him drink--and my mother was fond of the enchiladas rancheras blanketed in sour cream. The furtive, salty sips of margaritas briefly filched from across the table were probably the first liquor my brothers and I tasted.

My wife, who grew up on the Eastside, has never really gotten the point of El Coyote; guys from out of town point out that Mexica, across the street, is better, which may be true but beside the point.

You don’t even really have to like the watery soft chiles rellenos, dominated by the thick egg batter, to be an El Coyote fan, or the sugary green-corn tamales vaguely flavored with the mildest chiles, or the fried tacos, crisp at the edges and pleasantly toughened where the tortilla bulged out with meat, or the giant tostadas that seemed to contain an entire No. 8 can of peas.

El Coyote food has a specific taste, a gestalt that transcends cuisine: the slightly acrid pungency of chopped green onion tops and the milky funk of inexpensive cheese broiled until most of the fat has separated out; grainy enchilada fillings and the not unpleasant reek of overheated beans; an abundance of sour cream where it doesn’t really belong; chile salsa mild as Cocoa Puffs; guacamole that coats the chips a little too smoothly. You could probably turn an enchilada combo upside down without incident, because almost everything on it is welded to the plate with great leathery straps of molten cheese.

Many restaurants vaguely resemble this place, from the cheap margaritas to the walls decorated with broken mirrors, from the guacamole dinners to the ersatz tostadas, but I could pick an El Coyote combination plate blindfolded out of a hundred others and most of the regular customers could too. This isn’t really Mexican food--or, heaven forbid, the “Spanish” food alluded to in the restaurant’s name. It’s El Coyote food, as cheerfully inauthentic as the Laguna Beach Pageant of the Masters, “Ramona” or the thousands of tiny tile-roofed bungalows that line the streets of the restaurant’s neighborhood.

El Coyote may indeed be the worst Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, but the city is unimaginable without it.

El Coyote Spanish Restaurant, 7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 939-2255. Open daily for lunch and dinner. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Full bar. Valet parking. Dinner for two, food only, $9-$15.

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WHERE TO GO

El Coyote Spanish Cafe

7313 Beverly Blvd. Los Angeles

(213) 939-2255

Open daily for lunch and dinner

MasterCard and Visa Accepted. Full bar. Valet parking

Dinner for two, food only, $9-$15.

What to get: enchiladas rancheras, beef tacos.