February 23, 2023 • 23 mins
On this special episode of Hungry For History we celebrate two Afro-Mexican food establishments in Los Angeles, CA. One is a food truck in the city of Watts that has been around for almost 30 years called, Tamales Elena y Antojitos - the other is Pan Estilo Copala, a bakery tucked away in a garage and located in Compton. Plus, Ebony Bailey, a self-proclaimed Blaxican, joins Eva and Maite to talk about her work exploring cultural intersections, diaspora, and social movements.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My name is Eva Longoria and I am mate and
welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our
past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk
about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients,
and beverages. So make yourself at home, Eche. On today's
(00:23):
episode of Hungry for History, we are celebrating two local
Afro Mexican establishments. One is a food truck in the
city of Watts and the other is a bakery in Compton.
We are so excited to share those with you, but
before we do that, we've got a very special guest
that is joining us. That's right. I have followed Ebany
(00:44):
Bailey's work for a while. She's a filmmaker, a producer,
and a documentarian. As a self described Black Sican, Ebani
tells stories with the intention of representing her communities and
building spaces of empowerment between diverse populations. Ebony, welcome to
the show. Thank you so much for having me. I
(01:08):
love blacks Agan. You know Mike, I don't know Mike.
They've you call yours. I call myself a Texican. I
love Yami too. I started calling myself a Texican when
I heard you. I was just calling yourself and it's like,
wait a minute, I am too. I love that, Ebany.
What is a black Sican? To explain it to me,
A black Sican. I mean, there are many different ways
that people describe themselves as Black Sican, but the way
(01:28):
that I describe myself as a Black Sican is that
my mom is Mexican American and my dad is African American,
and growing up, I didn't really know what to like
call myself, if that makes sense, until I was probably
twelve thirteen, like around the age of starting like brows
on the Internet and stuff, and I found this food
truck in Atlanta that was called the Black Sican Food
(01:51):
Truck something like that, and I was like, yeah, that's me.
So it kind of just stuck. And I think it's
like a good at least me and a good identifier
of showing like this cross between blackness, Black American and
making any of that. So yeah, that's why I stick
to that identifier. I love it, me too, in me too. So, Ebony,
(02:13):
tell us about your journey and how you began your
work as a filmmaker exploring these cultural intersections and diaspora
and social movements. So I started off more in journalism,
I mean journalism and then digital journalism, and I kind
of fell into photography and videography because I liked the
mix between the techie side of playing with colors and
(02:36):
playing with composition, but also getting out and going and
meeting people and connecting with people and sharing people's stories.
And my first kind of intro to the cultural intersection
work that I focus heavily on now was doing my
first documentary that I did several years ago about Haitian
migrants in Tijuana and their experiences at what it's like
(02:57):
to be a black migrant in Tijuana. And I did
that because I was reading the newspaper in Mexico. I
was living into the Mexico at the time, and I
just saw a photo on the newspaper of migrants at
the border, and I noticed they were all black, and
at the time, I didn't know that many other black
people who were living in Mexico. So I kind of
just wanted to go deeper into that and I did
(03:18):
a short documentary about that issue, and from there I
really started connecting with a lot of like the Migraine
Afro diaspora and also kind of food community and Mexico
it all just kind of blended. So it was really
that documentary that helped me like get a lot of
these other connections and meet other people and tell other stories.
It was like a good launching point for me. You know,
(03:41):
you've discussed before that like being in La being black
or Mexican or being Blackxican. You know, you represent two
of the most aggrieved groups in Los Angeles, and talk
to me about that and the relevance of it today
because there's just this complex history that black and Latino
communities have with Los Angeles. You talk a lot about it. Yeah,
(04:04):
I mean that's that's like a that's a big topic
because there's so much history with both black communities and
Latin communities in Los Angeles. And it actually even goes
way back to the founding of Los Angeles, Like a
lot of people don't know, and I think it's on
all Varia Streets somewhere that most of the people that
founded Los Angeles were afrol Mistiso people, and so kind
(04:30):
of this like intersection of blackness in and Los Angeles
goes way back to then and just seeing how intertwined
the communities have been, like we've always live in the
same neighborhoods always gone to the same schools. Yet there's
also been a lot of conflict. There can be anti
blackness and the Latino side, there can be xenophobia on
the Black American side. So a lot of that conflict,
(04:53):
I feel like sometimes overshadows that the two groups have
really similar, like you said, agrevements and really similar histories,
especially in the Los Angeles context with police brutality, Like
this mission to reform police brutality has been going on
for decades. Even though there has been a lot of progress,
(05:13):
runnicking and all of that, there still is like a
lot more to be done, and there's still a lot
more healing. There's a lot more cross dialogue. And I'm
glad that we are having these conversations and we're talking
about how in our cultures, how in our foods, there
are these intersections, and there's always been these intersections. One
of the many things that's so wonderful about food that
it's such a great way in to have these conversations, right,
(05:35):
it's an accessible way into these conversations. I could talk
to to Ebity forever because this is so fascinating to me,
this intersectionality of cultures and race, But how did that
translate into food what we were memories of as a
child cooking with your family. It's funny because I actually
(05:56):
didn't realize how much ffro influence there is in food
until I got older, until I started researching for my
other documentary, Hamake Tamarno. And I always grew up drinking
I want the hamica and eating like the Tamarindo candies.
And I had no idea that La froda hamica and
the tamarin the food are originally from the continent of Africa,
(06:19):
and tamarin also has a lot of influence in South
Asia too, But but I didn't know that when I
was growing up, and I think now it almost feels
like it was like my ancestors talking to me whenever
I would drink I was the hamica and eat the
little Sam's kind of showing them subtly that this was
also my food and my two sides of lending together.
(06:40):
And there is like a connection between like ian a
hamica and red juice in African American communities, they're both
from like the hibiscus flower. So I think like growing
up and learning that has been like something that's really
special for me and it brings me back to my childhood.
Oh and I totally forgot about this, but I love
eating menudo growing up. I'm now, that's your favorite, that's
(07:05):
your favorite. That's my favorite. A girl eating menulo every Sunday.
It was like a family thinking that go to my
grandma's house and na menudo. It's like one of my
favorite things. I still really love the texture of tripe
and I try to find that with like mushrooms and
things like that that are plant based. But I also
learned as I was researching for this documentary and for
(07:26):
other things, that menudo also has African influence and it's
like a descendant. Yes, it's a descendant of mondongole that
is originally from Beracruz and Becruz. I actually still call
it monongo um and other. Yeah there my mind. You
have fascinating I have no idea what differentiates the menongo
(07:49):
from the menudo. Is it the Chile and it's the Chile.
The thing that keeps them similar is that they're both
made from like the stomach insights. But I think that
the way that they make the Chile like in Jalisco
and Norna Mexico, like the spices and the ingredients. Of
all the stories you've covered as a filmmaker, is there
(08:12):
one that has left a mark or hit a chord
with you. I think I would say my film Hamaka Merindo.
It's also a short film, and it was my thesis
film for my master's program at NA I'm in Mexico City,
and that one really stook a chord with me because
it kind of brought together all of my loves of
food and culture and meeting people in history, and it
(08:36):
was a way for me to learn about, as I
had mentioned before, the Afro influence in certain ingredients. But
it was also a way for me to connect with
Afro Mexican people that live in Mexico. And even though
we have like different experiences of growing up on different
sides of the porter, and they're Afro Mexican in the
sense that their ancestors were enslaved in Mexico, whereas my
(08:58):
ancestors were inslaved in the US and my mom is
the one who is a Mistisa Mexican, so in that sense,
we have different backgrounds. But I felt like through doing
this documentary and hearing their stories, especially about growing up
and about their relationship with food. I just felt this
like really strong kinship with them and like sharing this
like this connection of like common ancestors that I'll always
(09:21):
like take with me. After I did that documentary, it's beautiful.
I've seen it. It's a beautiful documentary. Your work is
so important. It's just so important, like I said, especially
right now with the relevance of this topic and the
anti black sentiment in some Latin X cultures. I think
it's an important conversation to have, and you're broadening the
(09:44):
mindset of a lot of people. So thank you, Yes,
thank you. Don't go anywhere. When we come back. Hungry
for History visits the first Afro Mexican food establishment in
Los Angeles. It's been around for almost thirty years and
you don't want to miss it. Welcome back. I visited
(10:15):
the city of Watts, California, to try some amazing banana lefamals,
which I have to say were some of the best
I've ever had. I interviewed one of the women who
helps runs that it was originally started by Elena Lorenzo
and after Latina, who immigrated to the US from La
Costa Chica in Mexico. Her daughter Maria sat down to
(10:36):
chat with us. Take a listen here with Madia outside
of the truck of the Melisa. So tell us a
little bit about one originally Islena. That's how we started off,
maybe like around twenty nine years ago. My mom migrated
(10:57):
to the United States from like a Pulco Guerrero, and
the first day that she got here, there was no
like greet men or anything like you would imagine her
family would greet her. My mom took I guess lessons
of how to make the malice from my grandma. My
dad got here a little bit after her, and he
(11:18):
started selling out of his chunk of his car, and
they just became a power, do you know. Like he
used to be the one that used to go grocery
shopping and do all the hard labor. And my mom
used to be the one that put as a son
and everything because y'all knew that she had she had
it in her. It's like you were born with it
or you're not. And so she went ahead and that
(11:42):
the prepping and my dad didn't that the maalets with her.
It was just them too. And then we came along,
we came to age. They never did ask us to
help them. We used to see them work very hard,
and we used to get back from school and we're like,
can we help, And that's and we started working. We
all started working, like at the average of like twelve
(12:03):
years old. Everybody started learning how to do Now we
can do it with our oars close. It's a story
of the ultimate immigrants story. That's amazing. So do you
and your sisters have the sasm some of us do.
I cannot say for all of them. How does it
(12:25):
feel to be able to do this, to carry the
torch that your parents felt? You know what, I've never
been ashamed of it. I've always been proud of what
my parents did. I've always been conscious of the fact
that we are doing something special that unfortunately here and wants.
There's not a lot of food vendors. We've been here,
(12:46):
this spot, this block for the past twenty nine years.
People have tried and come and put. We're always welcoming
other vendors. We want other company here with us, but
unfortunately people don't make it. And for me to be
able to say that we have been, you know, a
life for that long, it's it's you know, it's I
(13:10):
talked to my husband about it and He's like, I
can see it every time you talk to me about it.
It's like your eyes light up, like you know, because
you you they are able to carry what your parents,
your parents dream and somehow it became ours, not forcibly,
it grew on us. And we know that food is whatever,
(13:31):
there is, pandemic, recession, anything people want to eat. And
what a better way to to just carry this off
harry on their story, their legacy through through food. It's
the way to people's hearts, right way into other peoples,
other cultures. About your mom's recipes, Well, my mom has
(13:53):
a lot of recipes that she has come up with
because it's a fusion because my dad is from there.
Both my dad is from Acapulco and my mom is
from La Cosa, Chica, but his mom is indigenous from
Mexico Native so she brings cuisine from from Naciera. My
(14:17):
mom meets my dad and she brings cuisine from Nasa Chica,
which is the majority of them to live off the sea.
You know, it's a fishing community and they have a
lot of sea food. But his mom was from the Sierraso.
There was a lot of like veal, you know, and
stuff like that and a carne meat and vegetables. That's
what his dad was based on. But she got married
(14:39):
with my mom my dad, so she had to you know,
come to an agreement like how to make his food,
you know, with her her sason. So that's where everything
else came in, which is catfish ala mihicana um. We
have lengua coma macho. We also have a pole. If
(15:04):
you are looking for sola, you have to go to Geo.
There's nowhere else. We offered a white red green seafood
elo sole and all its toppings. It's a sole mesh
meat out of vegetables. Traditionally it's red and then all
of the toppings. We have CuO fresco, Ravano's gold, the castle,
(15:30):
thenmost chios wo. Before you serve the posla, you crack
an egg. You serve the posolo boiling hot, so it
cooks in there and it's just a whole bunch of stuff.
Sardines a stoppings for poles sole is one of our
main like the volume structure of of course, right here
(15:56):
we introduced them with shredded meat. Traditionally for us is
whole pork rips or a whole chicken wing. Inside themal
we also have tchina, which is our muscles, river muscles
in make it a shrim and a whole bunch of stuff.
(16:23):
Other people come and ask us, They're like, what do
what makes this? This a from Mexican? I wish I
can tell them that it's a second ingredient. You know
that we can tell them. M I explained to them
there is no second ingredient. One makes it Afro Mexican
as the cook. It's us as a culture behind it,
(16:44):
the people who makes it where we come from. After
the break, Mighty tries some fandul from an Afro Mexican
bakery in Compton, California. Don't go anywhere, Welcome back to
(17:14):
Hungry for history. I had a chance to check out
an Afro Latino bakery in Compton, California that runs out
of a garage serving some of the most delicious band
I have ever tried. In Los Angeles. Fan Estila is
run by Annie Polanco and his wife. No I just
(17:37):
arrived to fan Estia in Compton, and this is a site.
It's amazing. You walk in. It's in somebody's garage. There's
a whole line of Apico chairs of every single different
color for adults and for children. As you walk in
along a white wall and then you walk into to
(18:00):
the garage, and first of all, the smell is intoxicating.
It's just smells like yeast and and sugar and butter,
and it's just unindebevable. So many different types of bread,
breads that I've never actually seen before, the ball very artisanal.
(18:25):
I just had the most amazing experience. Well, I shared
that my grandmother was a baker, and they're like, oh
wait a minute, let me see, let me see if
you you have her skills. Put an apron on me,
put a net on my head, and had me roll
the little balls of dough of corn chest she said,
(18:55):
And of course I did not do such a great job,
and they were making fun of me picking a yeah. Yeah,
it felt I felt like I was home, I was family.
(19:16):
And really they're so welcoming and the breads are so
delicious and so unique, different than any pandus I've ever had.
And I've had a lot of band in my life.
And they were sharing that they get all of the
ingredients from Mexico. They go Totio, they get the Mexican vanilla. Okay,
(19:39):
they get the fresh yeast. Everything is fresh. They use
no preservatives, and they say that their secret ingredient is love,
which you could totally taste. It's a wonderful atmosphere. The
breads are amazing that I feel so lucky that I
(20:09):
that I've been supported. Wife is the one that started
baking when she was a child, and all of the
recipes are her grandmother's recipes or recipes that she grew
up with. And people from the neighborhood that are from
(20:31):
that may not have been back moved to the US
and maybe haven't been able to go back to get
they taste this and it transports them to home. Also
(20:56):
here ye are all breads that you could find in
La Costa Chica in so they're all flavors from that
region and it's very unique. They're very unique, different than
anything I've ever had. Everything is much more rustic. You
could see that it's in artisanal bakery. There's no this
(21:18):
is all, you know, made from from scratch. This is
a family affair. In their backyard and back bay and
Uncinto's garage in their backyard and in the bakery in
the back is for him and his wife and their
son and then a couple of friends who have been
(21:38):
working with them for since twenty sixteen is when they
started this bakery, but she has started many years before,
just making bread from a little kitchen aid blender that
she's had for thirty years in that same kitchen. Uh huh.
(22:10):
So she had a full time job and then she
would come home and make breads, call her friends, and
that's how it started. It's all five people that are
making all of these breads, friends and family. They were
so welcoming they busted out the coffee maker. Wouldn't let
(22:33):
us sleep without drinking some coffee and tasting all of
the bread. M m hm. You guys, yes when you
see mom um, Really, I've never felt more at home
in the bakery in my life. Yes you're not. Yeah,
(22:53):
yeah you don't. Thank you so much for listening to
this very special and relevant episode. You know, Mike and
I wanted to do this podcast to really fully explore
(23:14):
our culture, and this is a side of it that
I think we don't talk enough about. So thank you
so much for listening. Thank you. Hungry for History is
an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership with Ihearts Michael Bura
podcast Network. For more of your favorite shows, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My name is Eva Longoria and I am mate and
welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our
past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk
about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients,
and beverages. So make yourself at home, Eche. On today's
(00:23):
episode of Hungry for History, we are celebrating two local
Afro Mexican establishments. One is a food truck in the
city of Watts and the other is a bakery in Compton.
We are so excited to share those with you, but
before we do that, we've got a very special guest
that is joining us. That's right. I have followed Ebany
(00:44):
Bailey's work for a while. She's a filmmaker, a producer,
and a documentarian. As a self described Black Sican, Ebani
tells stories with the intention of representing her communities and
building spaces of empowerment between diverse populations. Ebony, welcome to
the show. Thank you so much for having me. I
(01:08):
love blacks Agan. You know Mike, I don't know Mike.
They've you call yours. I call myself a Texican. I
love Yami too. I started calling myself a Texican when
I heard you. I was just calling yourself and it's like,
wait a minute, I am too. I love that, Ebany.
What is a black Sican? To explain it to me,
A black Sican. I mean, there are many different ways
that people describe themselves as Black Sican, but the way
(01:28):
that I describe myself as a Black Sican is that
my mom is Mexican American and my dad is African American,
and growing up, I didn't really know what to like
call myself, if that makes sense, until I was probably
twelve thirteen, like around the age of starting like brows
on the Internet and stuff, and I found this food
truck in Atlanta that was called the Black Sican Food
(01:51):
Truck something like that, and I was like, yeah, that's me.
So it kind of just stuck. And I think it's
like a good at least me and a good identifier
of showing like this cross between blackness, Black American and
making any of that. So yeah, that's why I stick
to that identifier. I love it, me too, in me too. So, Ebony,
(02:13):
tell us about your journey and how you began your
work as a filmmaker exploring these cultural intersections and diaspora
and social movements. So I started off more in journalism,
I mean journalism and then digital journalism, and I kind
of fell into photography and videography because I liked the
mix between the techie side of playing with colors and
(02:36):
playing with composition, but also getting out and going and
meeting people and connecting with people and sharing people's stories.
And my first kind of intro to the cultural intersection
work that I focus heavily on now was doing my
first documentary that I did several years ago about Haitian
migrants in Tijuana and their experiences at what it's like
(02:57):
to be a black migrant in Tijuana. And I did
that because I was reading the newspaper in Mexico. I
was living into the Mexico at the time, and I
just saw a photo on the newspaper of migrants at
the border, and I noticed they were all black, and
at the time, I didn't know that many other black
people who were living in Mexico. So I kind of
just wanted to go deeper into that and I did
(03:18):
a short documentary about that issue, and from there I
really started connecting with a lot of like the Migraine
Afro diaspora and also kind of food community and Mexico
it all just kind of blended. So it was really
that documentary that helped me like get a lot of
these other connections and meet other people and tell other stories.
It was like a good launching point for me. You know,
(03:41):
you've discussed before that like being in La being black
or Mexican or being Blackxican. You know, you represent two
of the most aggrieved groups in Los Angeles, and talk
to me about that and the relevance of it today
because there's just this complex history that black and Latino
communities have with Los Angeles. You talk a lot about it. Yeah,
(04:04):
I mean that's that's like a that's a big topic
because there's so much history with both black communities and
Latin communities in Los Angeles. And it actually even goes
way back to the founding of Los Angeles, Like a
lot of people don't know, and I think it's on
all Varia Streets somewhere that most of the people that
founded Los Angeles were afrol Mistiso people, and so kind
(04:30):
of this like intersection of blackness in and Los Angeles
goes way back to then and just seeing how intertwined
the communities have been, like we've always live in the
same neighborhoods always gone to the same schools. Yet there's
also been a lot of conflict. There can be anti
blackness and the Latino side, there can be xenophobia on
the Black American side. So a lot of that conflict,
(04:53):
I feel like sometimes overshadows that the two groups have
really similar, like you said, agrevements and really similar histories,
especially in the Los Angeles context with police brutality, Like
this mission to reform police brutality has been going on
for decades. Even though there has been a lot of progress,
(05:13):
runnicking and all of that, there still is like a
lot more to be done, and there's still a lot
more healing. There's a lot more cross dialogue. And I'm
glad that we are having these conversations and we're talking
about how in our cultures, how in our foods, there
are these intersections, and there's always been these intersections. One
of the many things that's so wonderful about food that
it's such a great way in to have these conversations, right,
(05:35):
it's an accessible way into these conversations. I could talk
to to Ebity forever because this is so fascinating to me,
this intersectionality of cultures and race, But how did that
translate into food what we were memories of as a
child cooking with your family. It's funny because I actually
(05:56):
didn't realize how much ffro influence there is in food
until I got older, until I started researching for my
other documentary, Hamake Tamarno. And I always grew up drinking
I want the hamica and eating like the Tamarindo candies.
And I had no idea that La froda hamica and
the tamarin the food are originally from the continent of Africa,
(06:19):
and tamarin also has a lot of influence in South
Asia too, But but I didn't know that when I
was growing up, and I think now it almost feels
like it was like my ancestors talking to me whenever
I would drink I was the hamica and eat the
little Sam's kind of showing them subtly that this was
also my food and my two sides of lending together.
(06:40):
And there is like a connection between like ian a
hamica and red juice in African American communities, they're both
from like the hibiscus flower. So I think like growing
up and learning that has been like something that's really
special for me and it brings me back to my childhood.
Oh and I totally forgot about this, but I love
eating menudo growing up. I'm now, that's your favorite, that's
(07:05):
your favorite. That's my favorite. A girl eating menulo every Sunday.
It was like a family thinking that go to my
grandma's house and na menudo. It's like one of my
favorite things. I still really love the texture of tripe
and I try to find that with like mushrooms and
things like that that are plant based. But I also
learned as I was researching for this documentary and for
(07:26):
other things, that menudo also has African influence and it's
like a descendant. Yes, it's a descendant of mondongole that
is originally from Beracruz and Becruz. I actually still call
it monongo um and other. Yeah there my mind. You
have fascinating I have no idea what differentiates the menongo
(07:49):
from the menudo. Is it the Chile and it's the Chile.
The thing that keeps them similar is that they're both
made from like the stomach insights. But I think that
the way that they make the Chile like in Jalisco
and Norna Mexico, like the spices and the ingredients. Of
all the stories you've covered as a filmmaker, is there
(08:12):
one that has left a mark or hit a chord
with you. I think I would say my film Hamaka Merindo.
It's also a short film, and it was my thesis
film for my master's program at NA I'm in Mexico City,
and that one really stook a chord with me because
it kind of brought together all of my loves of
food and culture and meeting people in history, and it
(08:36):
was a way for me to learn about, as I
had mentioned before, the Afro influence in certain ingredients. But
it was also a way for me to connect with
Afro Mexican people that live in Mexico. And even though
we have like different experiences of growing up on different
sides of the porter, and they're Afro Mexican in the
sense that their ancestors were enslaved in Mexico, whereas my
(08:58):
ancestors were inslaved in the US and my mom is
the one who is a Mistisa Mexican, so in that sense,
we have different backgrounds. But I felt like through doing
this documentary and hearing their stories, especially about growing up
and about their relationship with food. I just felt this
like really strong kinship with them and like sharing this
like this connection of like common ancestors that I'll always
(09:21):
like take with me. After I did that documentary, it's beautiful.
I've seen it. It's a beautiful documentary. Your work is
so important. It's just so important, like I said, especially
right now with the relevance of this topic and the
anti black sentiment in some Latin X cultures. I think
it's an important conversation to have, and you're broadening the
(09:44):
mindset of a lot of people. So thank you, Yes,
thank you. Don't go anywhere. When we come back. Hungry
for History visits the first Afro Mexican food establishment in
Los Angeles. It's been around for almost thirty years and
you don't want to miss it. Welcome back. I visited
(10:15):
the city of Watts, California, to try some amazing banana lefamals,
which I have to say were some of the best
I've ever had. I interviewed one of the women who
helps runs that it was originally started by Elena Lorenzo
and after Latina, who immigrated to the US from La
Costa Chica in Mexico. Her daughter Maria sat down to
(10:36):
chat with us. Take a listen here with Madia outside
of the truck of the Melisa. So tell us a
little bit about one originally Islena. That's how we started off,
maybe like around twenty nine years ago. My mom migrated
(10:57):
to the United States from like a Pulco Guerrero, and
the first day that she got here, there was no
like greet men or anything like you would imagine her
family would greet her. My mom took I guess lessons
of how to make the malice from my grandma. My
dad got here a little bit after her, and he
(11:18):
started selling out of his chunk of his car, and
they just became a power, do you know. Like he
used to be the one that used to go grocery
shopping and do all the hard labor. And my mom
used to be the one that put as a son
and everything because y'all knew that she had she had
it in her. It's like you were born with it
or you're not. And so she went ahead and that
(11:42):
the prepping and my dad didn't that the maalets with her.
It was just them too. And then we came along,
we came to age. They never did ask us to
help them. We used to see them work very hard,
and we used to get back from school and we're like,
can we help, And that's and we started working. We
all started working, like at the average of like twelve
(12:03):
years old. Everybody started learning how to do Now we
can do it with our oars close. It's a story
of the ultimate immigrants story. That's amazing. So do you
and your sisters have the sasm some of us do.
I cannot say for all of them. How does it
(12:25):
feel to be able to do this, to carry the
torch that your parents felt? You know what, I've never
been ashamed of it. I've always been proud of what
my parents did. I've always been conscious of the fact
that we are doing something special that unfortunately here and wants.
There's not a lot of food vendors. We've been here,
(12:46):
this spot, this block for the past twenty nine years.
People have tried and come and put. We're always welcoming
other vendors. We want other company here with us, but
unfortunately people don't make it. And for me to be
able to say that we have been, you know, a
life for that long, it's it's you know, it's I
(13:10):
talked to my husband about it and He's like, I
can see it every time you talk to me about it.
It's like your eyes light up, like you know, because
you you they are able to carry what your parents,
your parents dream and somehow it became ours, not forcibly,
it grew on us. And we know that food is whatever,
(13:31):
there is, pandemic, recession, anything people want to eat. And
what a better way to to just carry this off
harry on their story, their legacy through through food. It's
the way to people's hearts, right way into other peoples,
other cultures. About your mom's recipes, Well, my mom has
(13:53):
a lot of recipes that she has come up with
because it's a fusion because my dad is from there.
Both my dad is from Acapulco and my mom is
from La Cosa, Chica, but his mom is indigenous from
Mexico Native so she brings cuisine from from Naciera. My
(14:17):
mom meets my dad and she brings cuisine from Nasa Chica,
which is the majority of them to live off the sea.
You know, it's a fishing community and they have a
lot of sea food. But his mom was from the Sierraso.
There was a lot of like veal, you know, and
stuff like that and a carne meat and vegetables. That's
what his dad was based on. But she got married
(14:39):
with my mom my dad, so she had to you know,
come to an agreement like how to make his food,
you know, with her her sason. So that's where everything
else came in, which is catfish ala mihicana um. We
have lengua coma macho. We also have a pole. If
(15:04):
you are looking for sola, you have to go to Geo.
There's nowhere else. We offered a white red green seafood
elo sole and all its toppings. It's a sole mesh
meat out of vegetables. Traditionally it's red and then all
of the toppings. We have CuO fresco, Ravano's gold, the castle,
(15:30):
thenmost chios wo. Before you serve the posla, you crack
an egg. You serve the posolo boiling hot, so it
cooks in there and it's just a whole bunch of stuff.
Sardines a stoppings for poles sole is one of our
main like the volume structure of of course, right here
(15:56):
we introduced them with shredded meat. Traditionally for us is
whole pork rips or a whole chicken wing. Inside themal
we also have tchina, which is our muscles, river muscles
in make it a shrim and a whole bunch of stuff.
(16:23):
Other people come and ask us, They're like, what do
what makes this? This a from Mexican? I wish I
can tell them that it's a second ingredient. You know
that we can tell them. M I explained to them
there is no second ingredient. One makes it Afro Mexican
as the cook. It's us as a culture behind it,
(16:44):
the people who makes it where we come from. After
the break, Mighty tries some fandul from an Afro Mexican
bakery in Compton, California. Don't go anywhere, Welcome back to
(17:14):
Hungry for history. I had a chance to check out
an Afro Latino bakery in Compton, California that runs out
of a garage serving some of the most delicious band
I have ever tried. In Los Angeles. Fan Estila is
run by Annie Polanco and his wife. No I just
(17:37):
arrived to fan Estia in Compton, and this is a site.
It's amazing. You walk in. It's in somebody's garage. There's
a whole line of Apico chairs of every single different
color for adults and for children. As you walk in
along a white wall and then you walk into to
(18:00):
the garage, and first of all, the smell is intoxicating.
It's just smells like yeast and and sugar and butter,
and it's just unindebevable. So many different types of bread,
breads that I've never actually seen before, the ball very artisanal.
(18:25):
I just had the most amazing experience. Well, I shared
that my grandmother was a baker, and they're like, oh
wait a minute, let me see, let me see if
you you have her skills. Put an apron on me,
put a net on my head, and had me roll
the little balls of dough of corn chest she said,
(18:55):
And of course I did not do such a great job,
and they were making fun of me picking a yeah. Yeah,
it felt I felt like I was home, I was family.
(19:16):
And really they're so welcoming and the breads are so
delicious and so unique, different than any pandus I've ever had.
And I've had a lot of band in my life.
And they were sharing that they get all of the
ingredients from Mexico. They go Totio, they get the Mexican vanilla. Okay,
(19:39):
they get the fresh yeast. Everything is fresh. They use
no preservatives, and they say that their secret ingredient is love,
which you could totally taste. It's a wonderful atmosphere. The
breads are amazing that I feel so lucky that I
(20:09):
that I've been supported. Wife is the one that started
baking when she was a child, and all of the
recipes are her grandmother's recipes or recipes that she grew
up with. And people from the neighborhood that are from
(20:31):
that may not have been back moved to the US
and maybe haven't been able to go back to get
they taste this and it transports them to home. Also
(20:56):
here ye are all breads that you could find in
La Costa Chica in so they're all flavors from that
region and it's very unique. They're very unique, different than
anything I've ever had. Everything is much more rustic. You
could see that it's in artisanal bakery. There's no this
(21:18):
is all, you know, made from from scratch. This is
a family affair. In their backyard and back bay and
Uncinto's garage in their backyard and in the bakery in
the back is for him and his wife and their
son and then a couple of friends who have been
(21:38):
working with them for since twenty sixteen is when they
started this bakery, but she has started many years before,
just making bread from a little kitchen aid blender that
she's had for thirty years in that same kitchen. Uh huh.
(22:10):
So she had a full time job and then she
would come home and make breads, call her friends, and
that's how it started. It's all five people that are
making all of these breads, friends and family. They were
so welcoming they busted out the coffee maker. Wouldn't let
(22:33):
us sleep without drinking some coffee and tasting all of
the bread. M m hm. You guys, yes when you
see mom um, Really, I've never felt more at home
in the bakery in my life. Yes you're not. Yeah,
(22:53):
yeah you don't. Thank you so much for listening to
this very special and relevant episode. You know, Mike and
I wanted to do this podcast to really fully explore
(23:14):
our culture, and this is a side of it that
I think we don't talk enough about. So thank you
so much for listening. Thank you. Hungry for History is
an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership with Ihearts Michael Bura
podcast Network. For more of your favorite shows, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
MAITE GOMEZ-REJÓN
Eva Longoria
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