When Tony Barragan worked at his family's Mexican restaurant in the 1970s, he regularly listened to customers of a lifetime to tell the newcomers about his father's history.
How Ramón Barragán arrived in Los Angeles as a 16 -year -old immigrant. How it went from dishwasher to Chief of Kitchen in a restaurant led by someone from his small hometown of Tecuala, Nayarit. How Barragan opened a place with his last name in 1961 in an old cafeteria that only sat 24. How he saved enough money to buy six shop windows and expanded to Barragan to become an expanding palace that could accommodate 300 in his two bars, banquet room and patio.
“Customers would offer as a guided tour in a museum, because it wasn't just a restaurant for them, it was a human phenomenon,” Tony said. “They would talk about how they loved food, and then they point us out. 'Look, this is the son! That is Ramón!'”
Barragan's was part of a group of Mexican restaurants in Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park and Silver Lake led by Nayarit immigrants who introduced traditional Mexican dishes such as cooked and thick to Angels in sitting environments beyond the east side. Ramón and his children finally opened Barragan's in Burbank and Glendale, but it was the original that became part of the culinary landscape of Los Angeles, which a review of 1983 Times praised for offering “very, very, very good … Mexican dishes not commonly seen in restaurants instead of being confined to the usual combinations of Taco-Archilada.”
At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, Echo Park Barragán attracted long lines, regular famous such as Jackson Browne and even a visit by Prince Philip of England, who arrived a night with certainty to eat “a lot of guacamole and shmoe [sic] With the waiter on green cards, “according to a weekly history of the 1984 And maybe the tomatoes and perhaps the leaves, the helmets.
Barragan's in Glendale on Thursday, August 8, 2019.
(Tim Berger / Glendale News Press)
Barragan's patriarch died on April 13, natural causes at his home in Duarte, surrounded by family. He was 94 years old.
He was born in 1930 from a father who was an itinerant seller and a mother who directed a small store. Barragan inherited his business streak, selling cheese in the surrounding villages for a cheese When I was 12 years old. But Life in Tecuala was difficult, and Ramón had aspirations to move to the United States to work for Natalia Barraza, a friend of her parents who operated a successful Mexican restaurant in downtown Los Angeles called Nayarit.
“I had the vision that this Lady of Nayarit had come [to the U.S.] And he built something, “said Tony.” I wanted to take advantage of that. “
Ramón helped Barraza open a second Nayarit in Echo Park in 1951 and finally became the kitchen chief. He also convinced a niece of starting his own Mexican restaurant in Sunset, Villa Taxco, who finally became his own successful chain and his beloved Institution of Los Angeles. Shortly after, he opened Bargan just a few blocks from the Nayarit with money from Barraza seed and borrowing against his home, which was a mile away.
Slebelto but hard, makes the menu transition from the menu of a mixture of American and Mexico -American classics in favor of the stews (stews) and soups that attracted the growing Mexican and Chicana community of Echo Park. Working double shifts in a restaurant that was open six days a week in the first years from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, Tony and his brothers remember a father dedicated to his restaurant and customers.
“When you saw him cooking, he looked at the flame to make sure it was perfect,” he said. “There was a service mentality for my father. I was here to serve humanity, and it was to serve the delicious hot food.”
“I wanted their waitresses to have their lipstick and their shoes shone,” Carmen said. “I wanted the perfection of its employees and their children.”
But she and her brothers also remember a tender side of her father, someone who enrolled in Catholic schools for a better education, tried to treat them in donuts every morning or slipped on shopping trips “so that we could have two pairs of shoes instead of one,” according to Carmen. Ramón also encouraged his workers to move forward in Barragan's or advised them on how to branch on his own.
The History Professor of the USC was told by the History professor of the USC, Natalia Molina, in her 2022 book “a place in the Nayarit: how a Mexican restaurant fed a community.” Natalia Barraza's granddaughter, Molina and her family frequented Barragan's original as a child. As an adult, Barragan was a favorite place for drinks before or after a game at Dodger Stadium, just a few blocks to the east. MacArthur's partner had good memories of the man whom he called Uncle Ramon sitting in a stool between the kitchen and counteracting to “watch [keep watch]”Like his grandmother he taught him.
“We assume the cultural work that my grandmother and Ramón did so that Mexican food has a seat on the table” in Los Angeles, Molina told The Times, referring to their places in their book as “urban anchors” where immigrants could create and foster a community in their new country. She and others were disconsolate when the Original Bargan's closed in 2013, the last of the original Mexican restaurants at sunset led by former Nayarit students.
“If it were food, you would say: 'Ok, I can go to another Barran,'” said Molina. “But he represented: 'We are here, see you'. For that to leave, he felt like a real loss.”
The last remaining of Barragan is in Burbank and led by Ramón's son, Armando. In his last years, Ramon liked to spend to talk with the workers, many of those who had worked with their family for decades, and enjoyed their birthdays with the meals that earned the Barragans their American dream.
“We have customers who ate in the original location 40 years ago and know the same food, and they are very happy,” Armando said. “And all the credit is for my dad insisting that we never change any of his recipes.”
Ramon Barragan survives his second wife, Josie; his children Frank, Tony, Armando, Carmen, Grace Douglass and Rita Hiller; 17 grandchildren; and multiple great -grandchildren. The services were private.
