by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As the 1880s dawned, and with the local economy, in the context of the national Long Depression spanning most of the Seventies, still in the doldrums, business activity broadly was still in straitened circumstances, but matters improved slowly in the new decade. Hilario Preciado’s Mexican Restaurant, this appearing to be its name, was in operation in conjunction with the Hotel de Paris owned by Felix Signoret and situated almost directly across Main Street from the Pico House hotel and neighboring Merced Theater and Masonic Lodge buildings, all three of which still stand just south of the Plaza.
As Gustavo Arrellano wrote in 2019, Preciado took out an ad in the inaugural edition of the Los Angeles Times, which became a media powerhouse in subsequent decades, of 4 December 1881. Accompanied by images of a chicken and a duck, the notice informed readers of the new paper that there were available,
Meals at all hours of the day and night in every style. Spanish, French and American cooking. The favorite Mexican dishes, Tamales, Enchilades, Carne Con Chile, Albundigas, etc., etc., to be got at all hours.
We know that the eatery had a Chinese cook, this being a common profession in public and private settings in those days, as the Los Angeles Herald of 12 April 1882 reported that “Ah Gum [other names, not an uncommon situation, were later used], a Chinaman, was arrested by officer [William] Sands yesterday on the charge of stealing two butcher knives from the Spanish restaurant adjoining Dr. Hughes’ Russian bath house. The Chinaman says the restaurant keeper owed him four dollars and he took the knives to get even.”
The Times added that the cook was fired the prior weekend and Ah Chung was arraigned, pled not guilty and posted $50 bail. In its edition of the 15th, the paper, in its “Police Pickings” column, informed readers that “Ah Kim, or Gum, who stole some knives from the Mexican restaurant to square an account in his favor as cook, settled the matter between him and the proprietor, and paid the costs.”
Another less-than-desirable piece of publicity for Preciado’s place appeared in the 9 May issue, in which it was briefly recorded that “quite a lively rough-and-tumble fight occurred at the Mexican restaurant” on the previous Sunday “when peaceable citizens and newspaper men,” it appearing that a Times journalist happened to be driving or walking by, “wend their way to church, resulting in several black eyes, and bloody noses.”
By mid-August, there was a bit of an ownership change, as the restaurant’s ad in the Los Angeles Telegram of the 19th showed that the proprietor was HILARIO PRECIADO & CO., this indicating that he had at least one partner. This followed a brief notice in the Times of 14 July that, in addition to the Hughes bath house “being treated to a very handsome coat of paint” to enhance its appearance, “the Mexican Restaurant and Signoret buildings adjoining are to receive a similar sprucing up.”
In a feature about the city, which was experiencing some modest growth after years of stagnation, in the Times of 18 November called “The Land We Live In” and excerpting from an article in the popular national publication, Harper’s Magazine, by William H. Bishop on southern California, a section was far from flattering about the Angel City’s Latino quarter of Sonoratown, which was north of the Plaza. Bishop wrote of “dingy little adobe shops . . . swarthy, lantern-jawed old timers [who] hang about the corners, gossiping in bad patois” and his impression that
“much of the quarter is in a ruinous condition.”
Bishop added,
There is a very respectable-looking Mexican restaurant—a vine-embowered cottage—opposite the Pico House, where the familiar tortillas, or pancakes, and frijoles, or stewed beans may be had. Alongside it is an adobe church, quaint in pattern, but modern and devoid of interest, with a belfry, from which chimes jangle several times a day in true Mexican fashion. Out of Sonora, too, emerges on the 15th of every September a military company, the Juarez Guard . . . the whole proceed to celebrate with appropriate ardor the anniversary of Mexican independence.
The “adobe church” is actually the stone Plaza Church, which was six decades old that year, but it is interesting to read his description of Preciado’s place as well as the reference to the celebration of Mexican independence, the date of which was actually the 16th, though it may not be surprising that the gringo magazine writer from the East got the date wrong in his article, which we’ll look to feature in a post in mid-November this year.
Just six days after the Times printed this brief description of the restaurant, however, the paper concisely informed its readers that, “the glory of the old ‘Restaurant Mejicana’ has departed” and “it will hereafter be known as the ‘Restaurant de Paris.'” That new eatery, however, also proved to be short-lived as, in July 1883, it was reported that it was shuttered in favor of a Russian baths, probably an expansion or removal to the new quarters of the establishment of Dr. Hughes.
Preciado, however, continued a decades-long career in the restaurant industry, including operating restaurants in the early 20th century operating a place on Marchessault Street in the Plaza area. He was alive as late as 1910 with the federal census recording his occupation as “cook” and the fact that he lived with his second wife, a native of France, in the area where Keck Hospital of USC is today between Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.
The next located references to Mexican restaurants in this area were found in 1886, with La Crónica (soon to be owned by Thomas W. Temple, the eldest child of Antonia Margarita Workman and F.P.F. Temple) running an ad for a “Restaurant Español” operated by woman proprietor D.R. de Olivier in an Upper Main Street location northwest of the Plaza. Señora de Olivier briefly informed prospective customers that her place offered “meals of all styles; Mexican meals a specialty” with “cleanliness and service, diligently attended to.”
It was likely at this place where, as reported by the Herald of 15 December, a deputy constable named Lugo (likely a member of the prominent Californio family going back to the Spanish period) arrested a Latino waiter “in the Mexican restaurant on Upper Main street on a charge of robbery.” Nothing further was said about the eatery, however, as the matter concerned an alleged crime at a card game and involved the purported stealing of money that was being gambled.
The first known Mexican eatery outside of the Angel City was possibly in Pomona, where a Times article of 13 August printed correspondence from that burg at the east end of the county which reported,
The fire laddies were called out, yesterday, for a run to the Mexican restaurant, on Main street, which was found to be on fire. Several of the citizens got a stream of water from a garden hose on the burning building, and had the fire extinguished before any water had come through the fire hose.
Unfortunately, nothing else could be discovered about this establishment, save perhaps for a brief reference in the Herald of 28 August 1887 from a special report from Pomona which included mention of a fight between two men, one of which “was eating dinner in a Spanish restaurant,” this is where, by the way, we start seeing the interchange of “Spanish” and “Mexican” when it came to how Latinos were generally described and referred to during the era, when the conflict erupted in the back of the eatery. The man who was dining killed his brother-in-law with three pistol shots and was stabbed eight times before death ended the conflict.
A reflection of the gradual growing interest and understanding of Mexican food in Los Angeles, particularly as the Boom of the Eighties, which took place between 1886 and 1888 brought so many migrants from the central part of the United States that it was commented that the Angel City was more Midwestern than Western, was in full ferment, is found in an article in the Herald of 3 December 1887. Titled “Eatables in Mexico,” the piece, reprinted from a Sacramento newspaper, noted how the tortilla was “the Mexican ‘staff of life’ and staple article of food,” with some detail about how it was made.
Also mentioned was the pucharo (puchero), a stew called a “boiled conglomeration” with a great deal of ingredients, involving meat, vegetables and fruit, which the writer said included “every other seed, root and vegetable known to man, all boiled together . . . and a sauce of herbs, tomatoes and red-hot chili poured over it.” This followed a soup course and the article remarked that “at every Mexican dinner, 365 days in the year,” another course was a “stew of rice, vermicelli or macaroni, mixed with tomatoes, cheese or sour milk.” Other common foods discussed were mole, tamales, enchiladas, nopales (prickly pear cactus pads) and frijoles.
A notable commentary concerned upper-class Mexicans , who were deemed “exceedingly dainty in their diet, and look upon the average American as a barbarian of the first water, because he can make a meal without wine and divide his dinner into only two courses.” Each dish, it was added, was a separate course and it was remarked “wine is always served with the substantials and coffee and cigarettes after dessert.” Sweets abounded and it was stated that there were no cakes, other than in French bakeries, but we have seen, earlier in this post, items sold in Mexican bakeries in Los Angeles.
The writer, whose name was not provided, mentioned struggling in their first year in México with “accustomed edibles” but praised a family of “wealth and education, exceedingly kind-hearted, hospitable,” even as American food was badly missed. Even when a German baker made a cake such as found at home, the hosts were sickened by the excessive sugar and the lady of the house offered the opinion that “‘American pan dulce’ (sweetened bread) [is] not so wholesome as Mexican food!”
The Times of 11 July 1888 included a brief ad that G. (Guillermo) Moreno, on Upper Main Street at High Street, this being northwest of the Plaza in Sonoratown, opened a “First-Class Spanish Restaurant” with “nothing but first-class meals served at reasonable prices.” The next part of this post will include further reference to his establishment. Early the following year, another notice in that paper for the St. Elmo Hotel, situated on Main Street just south of where U.S. 101 cuts through downtown today, offered “a Spanish and French restaurant attached.”
The 21 August 1889 number of the Los Angeles Tribune briefly alluded to “a Spanish restaurant on Los Angeles street” in what was likely just southeast of the Plaza, formerly where the Calle de los Negros was situated before redevelopment brought Los Angeles further north into Chinatown, as it discussed a police pursuit of a trio of Anglo suspects. Lastly, as the decade came to an end, the Herald of 27 July 1890 covered an event for an office-seeker, recording,
At a banquet given at Ismael’s Spanish restaurant last night in honor of Ed. Gibson, Democratic candidate for sheriff, R.F. Sepulveda toasted the next sheriff, Mr. Ed. Gibson of El Monte. Mr. Robert Dominguez responded in an eloquent speech, in which he said the general estimate is that eighty-five per cent. of the Spanish vote is for Ed. Gibson for sheriff . . . After most pleasant remarks by Mr. Ed. Gibson, Y[gnacio] Bilderrain, W.R. Lewis and Spanish Democrats who were present, the jovial party adjourned with three cheers for Ed. Gibson for sheriff of Los Angeles county.
Gibson (1854-1935) was a son of Fielding W. Gibson, an El Monte farmer and broom maker who was a partner with F.P.F. Temple in a cut-off road from Los Angeles eastward to modern Pomona as well as in the founding of a new town on the northern edge of Rancho San Pedro between Los Angeles and the harbor that became Compton. Gibson served as sheriff from 1890 to 1892 and went on to work in mining—this account is an interesting example of an Anglo candidate soliciting Latino votes and doing so in a setting like “Ismael’s Spanish restaurant” that involved working in the community in which support was sought.
As for the proprietor, we’ll get more into Ismael Durazo’s enterprise in part three of this post, which takes us into the 1890s, so be sure to check back with us for that tomorrow!