WHEN I WAS rising up in Stockton, Calif., within the Seventies and ’80s, there have been best two special-occasion eating places applicable to my circle of relatives. They had been each at the south aspect of the town, within the barrio. My Mexican-born abuelo favored Mi Ranchito, and for my dad it used to be Arroyo’s Cafe. No topic which one we went to, my order used to be all the time the similar: rib steak ranchero with rice, refried beans and leaves of undressed iceberg lettuce wilted by means of soupy salsa. I’d pinch torn items of machine-pressed flour tortillas across the slices of steak and blend in the entire facets. It used to be a celebratory meal if there ever used to be one.
Today, Mexican eating places could also be ubiquitous in California however, in the ones days, even Chicano eating places, the place conventional recipes had been tailored for American substances and palates, had been infrequently discovered outdoor of Latino enclaves.
One notable exception is Casa Vega, which opened in 1956 in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, an upscale, predominantly white group within the San Fernando Valley. The founder, Rafael “Ray” Vega used to be born in National City, Calif., and raised in Tijuana and Burbank, drew from his mom’s recipes, serving, amongst different home-style Mexican American dishes, plates of chile colorado, a savory red meat stew, and mole rojo, roast hen in mole with its mix of dried chiles, peanut butter, plantains, raisins and different substances, viscous from floor tortilla chips. For many in the community, Casa Vega used to be their gateway to Mexican flavors.
By 1958, the eating place wanted a bigger house and moved into its present location, a squat white development with a pink tile roof two blocks away, at the nook of Ventura Boulevard and Fulton Avenue. At the time, Sherman Oaks, a brief power from film and tv studios, used to be domestic to a rising selection of leisure trade executives and actors. From early on, Casa Vega drew a celeb crowd. Marlon Brando, amongst many others, used to be an ordinary. “My dad went at least once a week or we’d pick up food to go, from before the ’60s to when he died in 2004,” says Miko Castaneda Brando, 63, one of the crucial actor’s sons. Brando’s favourite order: a Carta Blanca beer, corn-tortilla quesadilla and steak picado (a beef-and-vegetable stew).
In Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” which is ready in 1969 and contours iconic Hollywood haunts, a couple of scenes happen in Casa Vega’s brick-walled eating room, with Brad Pitt’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s characters ensconced in a leather-based sales space. During the filming, Christy Vega, 46, Ray Vega’s daughter, says Tarantino were given in the back of the bar to make margaritas “his way,” with Casamigos Añejo tequila, a mix of citrus juices and Stevia as a sweetener. “It’s now on the menu as the Tarantino,” she provides.
Christy’s grandparents Rafael Sr. and Maria “Mary” Vega moved to Los Angeles from Tijuana, Mexico, in 1930 after leaving their jobs at Agua Caliente Casino, a Prohibition-era scorching spot, to determine their very own eating place at the newly revitalized Olvera Street, reborn that very same 12 months as a Mexican-themed vacationer appeal. After 20 years of working Café Caliente, Rafael Sr. and Maria opened any other Mexican eating place, in Hollywood, however the reception used to be cool and it closed after 4 years.
“My dad opened Casa Vega so my grandparents could have something to do,” says Christy. Her grandparents would prep the eating place for dinner provider whilst Ray bought lifestyles insurance coverage all the way through the day, then labored night shifts on the eating place. After a couple of years, Ray shifted his consideration complete time to Casa Vega, turning it into one of the crucial town’s most well liked Mexican cantinas. Christy took over working the eating place in 2010 after Ray retired and sooner or later assumed possession. Ray died in 2021 at age 86.
THE DÉCOR OF Casa Vega hasn’t modified a lot in a long time. It’s a romantic throwback, impressed by means of the ones early days at Agua Caliente Casino, says Christy. The warmly lit eating room is composed most commonly of pink leather-based cubicles and tables for 2, all set with burgundy tablecloths. Paintings by means of the Western artist Lester Burton Hawks depict Mexican lifestyles and bullfighting tradition. The carpet, additionally deep pink, is from an overrun of rolls that Christy purchased from a cafe within Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. “Once a year we rip it up and paint the whole place,” she says. The adjacent barroom is coated with high-backed stools upholstered in the similar tufted leather-based because the cubicles. Above the bar hangs an considerable provide of wide-rimmed margarita glasses. “We are a Chicano restaurant, proudly,” says Christy.
Other touches, together with the more moderen Spanish Colonial-style picket door on the front, wrought-iron chandeliers and ceramic urns, had been handpicked by means of Vega members of the family and slowly added through the years. In 2022, a 100-seat outside patio opened within the outdated parking zone. Over the previous few years, Christy and the pinnacle chef, Braulio Arellano, who began at Casa Vega within the Nineteen Nineties, had been step by step updating the menu, too. The kitchen now seems shrimp ceviche, lobster enchiladas and a molcajete, a combined grill served in a volcanic-stone mortar. Bartenders depend extra on recent substances for his or her concoctions, moderately than old-fashioned mixes, and be offering craft mezcal, in addition to wine from Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe. But regardless of the few concessions to culinary tendencies, Casa Vega keeps the similar clubby, convivial spirit that Ray cultivated all the ones years in the past.
Last month, on a past due Friday afternoon, I stationed myself on the bar and watched Antonio Navarro, who has been shaking space margaritas at Casa Vega for the ultimate two decades and speaks mellifluous Spanglish, dote on a couple of locals. One lady ordered her standard: a frozen mango margarita and steak quesadilla. Don Armado, a long-retired server who had labored at Casa Vega for over 30 years, drank Coca-Cola at the rocks whilst Navarro gently cajoled him into accepting a replenish of heat tortilla chips and salsa.
By 5 p.m., the sound of whirring blenders and hovering mariachi trumpets at the playlist had crescendoed at the side of the chatter of the rising crowd. As I spooned up my oven-style chile verde burrito, I felt all of sudden nostalgic for the ones long-gone Sunday lunches with my grandparents. America has all the time cherished our meals, however no longer all the time our other people, an understatement that may well be misplaced on probably the most glamorous shoppers that experience walked in the course of the hacienda-style doorways of Casa Vega. I considered how Ray Vega lured the Hollywood elite to his Chicano eating place, incomes their loyalty with tequila photographs and combo plates of tacos, tamales and enchiladas, slyly paving the way in which for numerous different Mexican American restaurateurs to plant their very own flag way past Olvera Street.
