Boyle Heights contains flurry of enticing ethnic cuisine

If there’s ever a place that best defines the spirit of Los Angeles, it’s not the glitzy Hollywood theaters, the pale sands of Venice Beach or the celebrity mansions in Beverly Hills.

Cultural eats · Boyle Heights, known for its rich blend of cultural history and food — including Jewish, Japanese and Latino eateries — is still home to a delectable assortment of restaurants, such as Otomisan and Guisados Tacos. - Sophia Lee | Daily Trojan

It’s Boyle Heights, a not-so-quiet neighborhood teeming with rich cultural history and food — everything from Jewish delis to Japanese izakayas and Mexican restaurants.

Once a sparse piece of muddy land, this 6.5-square-mile area on the east bank of the Los Angeles River became the Jewish center of Los Angeles in the ’20s.

Boyle Heights’ rudimentary streets were lined with Kosher delis and markets selling lox and hearty rye bread, and bar mitzvahs filled synagogues and community centers with plenty of festive noises.

The original location of Canters Deli, famed for its fist-sized matzo balls and pastrami sandwiches, was in Boyle Heights until it moved to the Fairfax District with most of the Jewish community. Left today are just a sprinkling of old Jewish folks and a faded shul on Breed Street.

As the Jewish population dispersed in droves, Boyle Heights saw an influx of Japanese Americans who flooded into the east downtown area to escape real estate issues and racial discrimination.

These Japanese newcomers found a place where they could dine in public and integrate comfortably into the community in Boyle Heights.

One restaurant called Otomisan still remains exactly the way it was 55 years ago.

Inconspicuously stitched into the corner of a street dotted with al pastor taquerías and Latino insurance businesses, this home-style mom-and-pop diner is a curious blend of a ’50s ice cream parlor and an izakaya (Japanese drinking establishment).

The antiquated décor — brightly painted Japanese masks and lucky cat statues of all sizes — is worn and dusty, and the dining area is cramped with three booths and five bar stools. The customers are a mix of old Japanese regulars and curious Latino neighbors who don’t mind the longer wait, especially when the cook’s toddler son patters out to serve hot tea.

Otomisan’s menu is simple with basic home-style cooking like oyako-don (steamed rice bowl topped with tender chicken and a blanket of velvety, barely-cooked egg) and sukiyaki (beef slices, vegetables and udon noodles dipped into sweet soy sauce-based broth). All dishes are homemade and fresh; pork dumplings are hand-pleated and steam-fried, shrimp tempura is lightly battered and crisp-fried on the spot and everything tastes wholesome, domestic and delicious.

Though Boyle Heights doesn’t have the esteemed culinary reputation of Culver City or Santa Monica, it’s actually home to some of the best Mexican fare in Los Angeles.

Hole-in-the-wall restaurants with wall-painted signs sell all sorts of non-Americanized antojitos (informal Mexican street food) on every street, and jubilant Mexican music streams out from the plentiful take-out counters late into the night.

Guisados Tacos on E. Cesar Chavez Avenue is one of the newer and more popular places for its guisados — slow-braised meats and simmering stews served on hand-pressed tortillas. The menu focuses mainly on the braised toppings and changes periodically, but popular options like chicharron (crackly pork rinds soaked in zesty salsa verde) and tinga de pollo (spicy, smoky chicken stewed with cabbage, chorizo and chipotle and topped with slices of raw onion and avocado) are indispensable for good reason.

Down the same street is the more historical Antojitos Carmen, a street vendor turned brick-and-mortar. Once a hot-selling cart at the now-shuttered Breed Street food fair for more than 20 years, the family business has moved indoors but still serves the same mouth-watering Mexico City-style dishes.

Antojitos is known for its selection of its masa-heavy snacks, from earthy, inky huitlacoche-stuffed (corn fungus) fried quesadillas to ovular, griddled masa disks called huaraches, which are loaded with guisado toppings like cooked squash blossoms.

Meat isn’t the only protein cooked right at Boyle Heights. Mexican-style seafood is also immensely popular; El Siete Mares on E. Cesar Chavez Avenue and El Rinconcito del Mar on E. 1st Street have been serving seafood for 43 years.

Other than the typical ceviches (raw seafood salad “cooked” in lime juice), make sure to try caldo for a surprisingly light and refreshing tomato-based seafood stew bloated with chunks of white fish and shrimp. El Siete Mares also makes a particularly wonderful dish called molcajete de mares: fat, tail-on shrimp, grilled cactus and panela cheese doused in a red, onion-rich spicy sauce that is still bubbling inside a volcanic rock basin.

Boyle Heights is a true historical treasure. The lights might gleam as just a backdrop from the downtown skyscrapers, but Boyle Heights is a vibrant, colorful town that has served as a faithful refuge and gateway for generations of new Angelenos.

Sophia Lee is a junior majoring in print and digital journalism and East Asian languages and cultures. Her column “Cross Bites” runs Mondays.