Some Real Mexican Tastes on L.A.’s Pico

The big burrito I’m eating is stuffed with pork cubes and beans and topped with melted Jack cheese. It sits in an ocean of tomatillo sauce.

At El Farolito, it’s known as Father John’s Special, after the Very Rev. John Bakas, dean of Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral across Pico Boulevard, a frequent customer. El Farolito has been serving simple home-style Mexican dishes for more than 25 years in this handsome and interesting neighborhood, now known as the Byzantine Latino Quarter.

Francisca “Panchita” Rodriguez does the cooking and daughter Yolanda waits on tables. You can sometimes glimpse Francisca through the bricked arch that separates the front counter from the kitchen. Yolanda wears a T-shirt with the restaurant logo, a jaunty street lamp (“farolito” in Spanish).

Usually music is playing on an enormous jukebox in the corner. Arched windows filled with flowery black grillwork separate the two small rooms, decorated with family photographs and mirrors with beer brand logos. Customers sit in tan-upholstered booths or a tiny tiled counter.

A Big Frosty Mug of Jamaica or Tamarindo

I always start with a frosty mug of jamaica or tamarindo, because these refreshing aguas frescas are homemade. A few dried red jamaica blossoms float in the mug, and the tamarindo contains some pulpy tamarind seeds. Chips and jalapeno-tomato salsa appear quickly, and I study the bright pink menu, although I know it almost by heart.

Daily specials are written on a Miller beer mirror. One Sunday, there was menudo. The Friday before, Francisca Rodriguez had made cocido in the style of Acasico, the ranch area in the state of Jalisco that she and her husband left more than 40 years ago. In Francisca’s cocido, beef is boiled with carrots, zucchini, chayote, cabbage, a chunk of corn cob and big chunks of potato, and you can doctor it to your taste with salsa, lemon juice, cilantro and chopped onion. It’s as soul-soothing as chicken soup.

The real specialty of the restaurant, though, is Jalisco-style birria, goat stewed in red chile sauce. I can hardly remember the birria I ate years ago in a market in Guadalajara, so I brought along a friend who’d recently gone deep into Mexico. Her eyes lit up as she tackled the dish. “Just like I ate in Paracho,” she said. Now, Paracho is in the state of Michoacan, not Jalisco, but this is good birria, the sauce light, rather than heavily spiced. The goat comes from a market near the family home in East Los Angeles.

Another praiseworthy dish is carne en chile rojo--finely cut beef in pasilla chile sauce. Its pure, uncomplicated flavor puts to shame today’s overworked chilis that labor to incorporate exotic ingredients.

Steak ranchero combines bits of steak with a tomato and bell pepper sauce that contains enough jalapeno to give it attitude. Like the other main dishes, the steak comes with rice, beans and salad. There are French and Italian dressings on each table (in bottles that once contained Tapatio hot sauce).

The enchiladas are bathed in a light tomato sauce without chile heat, a pleasant change. The mirror that announces daily specialties often promotes chile rellenos. They’re made with fresh poblano chiles, but I think there was an oversight with the ones I had, because they were full of chile seeds, not cheese.

Seafood dishes include fish soups, seafood cocktails, fried snapper (mojarra) and several shrimp dishes. Yolanda warned me that the deviled shrimp (camarones endiablados) would be terribly hot, but they weren’t beyond tolerance; the sauce is partly flavored (and colored) by Tapatio sauce.

The menu includes tacos, tostadas, carne asada, carnitas and other basic Mexican dishes. El Farolito serves breakfast too. The most popular morning dish is huevos rancheros, two eggs fried over easy, served on a crisp tortilla and topped with mild salsa ranchera.

The restaurant closes fairly early. In the past, dance clubs nearby provided a steady flow of customers until as late as 4 a.m. The clubs are long gone, but Yolanda Rodriguez hopes that redevelopment will make the area popular again, and the restaurant will then extend its hours.

BE THERE

El Farolito, 2737 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 731-4329. Open from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Beer only. Parking lot behind the restaurant, also street parking. Cash only. Dinner for two, food only, $9 to $18.

What to Get: birria de chivo, carne en chile rojo, steak ranchero, green chile burrito, enchiladas, jamaica, tamarindo.