The Kitchen Cocido Built

If you don’t order cocido at Tila’s Kitchen, you’re missing the dish that has made this East Los Angeles restaurant a magnet for soup lovers.

One day I sat at the counter with men on both sides of me spooning up chunks of beef from bowls of broth piled high with cabbage, carrots, potatoes and chunks of corncob. Another man had driven many miles for two orders of cocido to go. A little girl sitting with her father was carefully plucking corn kernels, one by one, from a slice of cob. In the small, tiled kitchen I could see bowl after bowl of cocido being ladled out of steaming pots.

Cocido comes with rice, refried beans and tortillas. You can mix some rice into the soup; you can make bean or beef tacos with the tortillas. The broth is fine as it is, but you can also fire it up with lemon juice or the vibrant red salsa, which is mostly pureed chiles de arbol. Or you could bite off specks from a serrano pepper and let the heat that lingers in your mouth spice the cocido.

Tila’s other soups are good too. Tuesday’s special is sopa de albondigas, meatballs in beef broth along with potatoes, sliced carrots and cilantro. These are big, juicy meatballs, lightened with rice and aromatic with garlic. Substitute chicken for the meatballs and use chicken broth, and you have the Thursday special, caldo de pollo. Still, whatever the soup of the day, most people order cocido.

Tila’s is a modest place, only six tables and a few seats at a counter, but it has endured for 40 years by offering tasty, fresh, home-style Mexican food.

Take that simple plate of refried beans and rice. The beans are so flavorful they’re addictive. Tila’s refries them the traditional way, in lard; the customers wouldn’t stand for beans fried in oil. The rosy rice, seasoned with garlic, is fluffy and light, never mushy.

Aside from the soups, which include menudo on weekends, the menu offers plenty of other worthy dishes. The cheese enchiladas, for instance. The sauce, freshly made from dried California peppers, has a pure red-pepper flavor. The chile colorado--beef stewed in red sauce--testifies to how good chili can taste when not cloaked with extraneous seasonings.

Chile verde combines pork with a light salsa ranchera of tomatoes, with slices of fresh poblanos in the sauce. The big chunks of meat are so tender they separate easily into shreds.

Shredded Beef in Hot Sauce

The restaurant uses either poblanos or California (Anaheim) peppers for its chiles rellenos. They’re the usual sort, generously stuffed with cheese and topped with salsa ranchera. Ropa vieja is tender shredded beef in plenty of hot sauce, perfect to eat with rice or wrap in tortillas.

Along with standards like these, the menu has carne asada, steak picado, pork chops and fried fish. There are also burritos, quesadillas, tacos, gorditas, tortas and other sandwiches. One dish that appears less often on menus is pechuga de pollo con nopales (chicken breast with cactus). It’s boiled chicken torn into shreds, combined with long strips of cactus paddles (they look rather like green beans) and simmered in salsa ranchera along with big slices of green pepper.

If you hear the pat-pat-pat of masa being made, you know that someone has ordered pupusas. This Salvadoran griddled dumpling has earned a place among the Mexican dishes here.

Tila’s is open for breakfast and lunch only. Breakfast is served until the restaurant closes in mid-afternoon; choices include eggs cooked with nopales or chorizo, torta Mexicana (a large, round omelet topped with salsa ranchera), machaca (eggs and shredded beef) and huevos rancheros (fried and topped with salsa ranchera). Meat lovers can accompany their huevos rancheros with chile verde, pork chops, chicharrones, bacon or ham. Breakfast pupusas come with fried bananas.

Sometimes there is music here. The radio might be playing or itinerant musicians wander in from the street, perform a few numbers, collect some coins and depart.

Named for the original owner, Tila’s is now in the hands of the Herrera family, and Ana Herrera is usually in the kitchen. It’s a homey place, with a canister of lollipops on the counter for children and a menu that promises genuine Mexican food, “just like mother’s cooking.”

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* Tila’s Kitchen, 3909 Whittier Blvd., East Los Angeles. (323) 264-5513. Open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Tuesday; closed Wednesdays. Beer. Street parking. Cash only. Breakfast dishes $3.50 to $5.99, lunches $4.48 to $6.99.

What to get: Cocido, albondigas, enchiladas de queso, chile colorado, chile verde, pechuga de pollo con nopales.