EL PARIAN WILL GET YOUR GOAT

In a restaurant famous for the dish, I tried carne en su jugo, a mix of beans, bacon and pulverized beef shoulder served in a broth, but I found myself yearning for the version at La Barca back in El Monte; at the seafood restaurant El Negro, I had grilled shrimp and a sevichelike aguachile that were even a little better than their equivalents at Mariscos Chente in Mar Vista. (I also liked the aguachile at the wonderfully named Barra del Moron stall in the huge downtown mercado.)

Birria is a personal matter in Guadalajara — every man of a certain age will tell you about an astonishing version of the dish, prepared in one village or another, two or three hours out of town. I had birria almost every day I was there: stewy birria and crunchy birria, boiled birria and birria that tasted like a Sunday roast. In Guadalajara, you are never far from a kid.

Anne Fishbein

Taco goes well with birria.

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El Parian

1528 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Category: Restaurant > Latin American

Region: Downtown

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More About

• Guadalajara
• Huntington Park
• Tlaquepaque
• North-American Food and Cooking
• Mexican Food and Cooking

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Still, the Las Nueve Esquinas neighborhood is a goat-lover’s dream; the pretty square is south of downtown with a tinkling fountain, a statue of a poet and a phalanx of birria specialists, all bursting with customers on a crisp Sunday morning. In Las Nueve Esquinas you shall know a birria joint by the charred billy goat skulls in the window. Birriera Las 9 Esquinas had by far the most handsome arrangement of blackened skulls, a horror-show pile that would have been at home on a Gorgoroth album cover. What is birria? Preparations vary, but Las 9 Esquinas’ was close to the platonic ideal: chile-rubbed, fire-roasted goat-dampened at the last second with a clear, concentrated broth flavored with cloves, tomatoes and a dozen other things. It was swooningly good — even if the waitress bearing the plate of miscellaneous snouts and ears passed me by.

The day I got back to Los Angeles, I went to El Parian on Pico, to try the birria while the taste of 9 Esquinas lingered on my tongue, to see if what I had once called the single best Mexican dish in L.A. measured up to the best of Guadalajara. It came pretty close. The tortillas were thick and fresh; the chile-smeared rib meat was crisp on its bones. The broth sang with garlic and spice but mostly with a strong, goaty essence, a barnyard smack that could as well have come from the Jalisco mountains instead of from a restaurant a few blocks from the convention center. It tasted of Guadalajara. And of home.

EL PARIAN, 1528 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. (213) 386-7361. Open daily, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Cash only. Beer. Lot parking in rear. Takeout. Recommended dish: birria.