Andrea Canales 7y

No Hablo Español: Chef Ray Garcia speaks L.A.'s language

Sports brings people together. Food brings people together. In Los Angeles, chef Ray Garcia is involved in both.

In Garcia's view, regional Mexican cooking doesn't stop at the border but extends north to encompass L.A. -- where it speaks a language all its own at Broken Spanish, his acclaimed restaurant. Garcia's creative menu at B.S. Taqueria and the B.S. Taqueria concession stand recently opened at Staples Center, also testifies to L.A. as a food region in its own right.

"Born and raised in L.A., went to school here, learned to cook here, have restaurants here," Garcia said. "L.A. is definitely my hometown."

Growing up in L.A.'s Cypress Park neighborhood, Garcia often attended Dodgers games or watched the postgame fireworks show from his family's front porch. His dream in childhood wasn’t to open a restaurant but to play basketball successfully like the "Showtime" Lakers. It was during his time at UCLA that Garcia first began to experiment with cooking, inspired partly by necessity but also by the culinary skills of his Japanese roommate.

Now Garcia and his trio of restaurants are part of a culinary scene that has contributed to the revival of the Los Angeles downtown area, especially in and around Staples Center. Menu items are quickly available to downtown patrons at B.S. Taqueria and the concession version while others plan a visit for dinner at Broken Spanish around their attendance of events at Staples.

"It's a vital and core part of our business," Garcia said. "I'd say 90 percent of the people who come in [to Broken Spanish] the first hour are on their way to [Staples] for a game or a concert."

The B.S. Taqueria outpost at Staples, with a limited menu of specialty tacos and churros, provides a taste of the food vision Garcia has tried to bring to his hometown.

"We took it on one dish at a time and really focused on nailing it," said Garcia. "We wanted to have something that fans could really get behind."

Broken Spanish doesn't just stand for the B and S in the name of Garcia's taquerias but also for the idea of Garcia's food showcasing a deconstructed and reimagined Mexican cuisine.

To have the lights go on in a restaurant of his in the same arena where the Los Angeles Lakers, Kings and Clippers play was for the chef a "surreal" moment. Though Garcia now lives with his family on the Westside of L.A., he marvels at how the downtown area has evolved since he was a child and his father worked there. "It's amazing to see what it's become."

The same could be said of what Garcia has done for Mexican food.

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