Discover The Simple Beauty of Spanish And Portuguese Cooking In Los Angeles

During the summer of 1999, when I was just 15, I moved with my family to Spain. I had never visited Europe before and I had only traveled outside the United States for trips to Mexico.

What took place over the year I spent living in the country’s capital of Madrid and traveling that country was life-altering. Not only did it leave an ever-lasting impression on how I viewed the world and culture, but my understanding of food and cooking also evolved drastically in ways I think I’m still grasping.

One of the first places that we visited in our new home after taking an overnight train from Paris (another first for me) was the legendary restaurant Casa Labra, which first opened its doors in 1860 (some 20 years before my hometown of Whittier would be incorporated) and was the site of the Spanish Socialist Party formation in 1879. My sleep-deprived teenage self wasn’t concerned with the history around me and instead sought sustenance and comfort in potato croquettes.

The small tubular-shaped fried fritters with slightly sweet-tasting outside batter and warm starchy inside arrived two to a plate.

Consumed with a Coke, it remains one of my life's simpler yet most satisfying dining experiences.

Coming full circle

I've noticed that simplicity in a new crop of restaurants and pop-ups that have begun to spring up around Los Angeles, experimenting with the same Spanish and Portuguese flavors that were a rite of passage for me.

The majority of the chefs whom I spoke to for this article were all around my age, all in our 40s, so I couldn’t help but wonder if we had all reached a similar conjecture in our life cycle, where we’d spent our 20-30s trying the most exotic foods we could get our hands out and are now coming full circle, seeking simple and well-executed dishes.

Some might view this as plain, almost even dull. But as I’ve had time to sit with the idea over the past 25+ years, it’s struck me as nearly anything but.

The Serrano Experience (pop up)

When Jorge Serrano, owner of the Spanish food pop-up concept The Serrano Experience, moved to Florida at the age of 8 from his native Spain, its food was already in his blood.

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Serrano grew up in Madrid. His father is from Galicia, just above the Portuguese border to the north, and his mother is from Granada, in the South. Both parents raised Serrano with a strong passion for food early on, often dining out and cooking at home as a family.

Serrano went to culinary school for a year but quickly realized the classroom wasn’t for him, but the food was. He started working at Nobu Malibu, tirelessly learning the ropes, eventually moving back to Europe to work at different Nobu properties, then later working for Spanish Chef Dani Garcia in the city Marbella in the south of Spain and David Muñoz at Street XO.

Yet despite all that culinary world-building Serrano had under his belt, he hadn’t had an opportunity to cook his version of Spanish food professionally. He decided to dive in after moving to Los Angeles to be closer to his two sons in Santa Barbara.

I spoke with Serrano at one of his recent pop-ups, this one at the Santa Monica wine bar Esters. The lively mood of the place was buzzing with diners, which matched Serrano’s panache when it came to his dishes. “It all started with a leg of ham,” Serrano said that night, delving into the story of his start in L.A. That leg of ham, pata negra, is the highest grade of Spanish cured ham. (The name refers to the animal's hoof.)

Serrano can often be found standing behind the bar during one of his pop-ups, with his long carving knife expertly slicing up perfectly symmetric squares of the cured meat, much to the delight of the hungry crowds who were there that night. Watching him move the blade back and forth while the sounds of the solo Spanish guitarist playing from the sidewalk, it was almost as if Serrano was conducting his symphony.

Gambas al ajillo, The Serrano Experience

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Courtesy of The Serrano Experience

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After several runs of popping up at Alma’s, a cider bar in East Hollywood, where he only served exquisite cuts of that leg of ham and nothing else, owner Lee Briante, who loved this cured meats concept so much, asked Serrano what else he could cook up for the hungry crowd that was showing up each night.

Next followed were dishes such as tortilla de patata, croquetas, gambas al ajillo, a dish made with head-on prawns bathed in a sauce made of garlic and olive oil. The menu is curated to what Serrano feels like that week, what’s fresh at the market, and his location. “We grew into more dishes, paellas, and pulpos; depending on different pop-up locations, we can do different dishes. So now I just keep playing around every week. I try to do a new dish,” Serrano explains. Diners usually order two to three items and enjoy them with a glass of wine.

That menu that evening at Ester’s featured this new a variety of tapas consisting of his Cadiz crudo, made with bluefin tuna belly, Japanese rice wine vinegar, nori, crispy shallots, and an arbequina extra virgin olive oil from Spain which makes for an onslaught of clean and exquisite flavors and textures as the fattiness of tunas pairs with the saltiness of the nori.

Another standout dish was Serrano’s pulpo Galleo, a Galician-style dish made with tender octopus over a bed of softly crushed potatoes sprinkled with smoked pimento that melts in your mouth.

Diners can finish their meal with a slice of burnt Basque cheesecake. Serrano’s version makes excellent strides to distinguish itself, upping the custard factor of the cake’s incredibly soft and creamy texture. His secret? Serrano takes things a step further, adding fio de ovos, threads of egg yolks boiled in sugar syrup, making them soft, almost noodle-like, an exquisite accompaniment to the richness of the cheesecake.

It looks burnt. But that's the magic of the Basque Cheesecake from The Serrano Experience: The inside is ethereal.

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Courtesy of The Serrano Experience

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For Serrano, the similarities between Spain and California in climate translate well for food and wine from an approachable and affordable perspective. “I'm very excited to do this kind of food. "I've worked at Michelin-rated restaurants my whole life as a chef, and I respect it, but I just want easy food from a cooking perspective that people enjoy and can afford," he said.

"It's like a happy medium for everyone. The future of food is going more casual, more rustic kinds of plates.”

Baserriko Peppers (pop up)

Gill Gonzalez of Baserriko Peppers, a Spanish Basque pop-up, started cooking Basque food because he couldn’t find it in Los Angeles. The Basque country is an autonomous region of Spain and France, known for influences from both cultures. Gonzalez had grown Basque peppers in his backyard in Walnut Park, near South Gate. His varietals included choricero (often used as the main spice component found in Basque-style chorizo) to piparas, the small yellow peppers usually found in tapas across Spain.

From his cultivation of these rare and exotic peppers, Gonzalez began cooking as a respite from his work as an engineer.

Bocadillo de Txuleton, tistorra caserra, y melted garrotxa — steak, sausage and melted goat cheese, heading for a plate.

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Courtesy of Baserriko Peppers

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The pepper is central to Gonzalez's pop-up concept, which is interesting given that he’s cooking a cuisine not generally known for containing a lot of heat. Hence, the name of his operation, Beserriko Peppers.

The Basque dishes that Gonzalez serves at his pop-up — pintxos and tapas, tortillas, and paella are excellent primer for folks with limited Spanish food exposure. However, the dish he's most proud of is his chistora, a cured sausage that he says isn’t found anywhere else in Los Angeles. It is known for its meaty and juicy flavor with just a hit of sweet, a dish often fried and served cut up into pieces as pintxo or in a bocadillo, a small sandwich made with Spanish bread and best enjoyed with a beer or cider. Gonzalez describes his dishes as “nothing elaborate, nothing too fancy. Just simple stuff you can enjoy around the table".

The paella at Otoño, now on the menu after so many requests for it.

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Courtesy of Otoño

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Otoño (Highland Park)

Chef Teresa Montano, the owner of Otoño, which opened in 2018 in Highland Park, fell in love with Spanish cooking after working for the Border Grill group, at Ciudad in downtown Los Angeles, known for its pan-Latin cuisine. Montano worked as a line cook a few nights a week, serving Spanish dishes such as paella and tapas.

For Montano, this marked a tipping point of sorts. “I just got turned on by those flavors, and I started traveling to Spain, and that was it,” she said.

Montano recalls gravitating to paella early on. Growing up in New Mexico, Montano’s mother made her version of Spanish rice, with tomato, garlic, onion, and other assorted spices. Immediately she saw the parallels between the dish she grew up eating at home and the yellow saffron rice featured in paella.

After being bit by the Spanish food bug, Montano remained transfixed by the straightforward cooking in her travels to Spain. “As I explored more, especially in Barcelona, it was the simple seafood, like razor clams, the fried croquetas, and things like that just kept piquing my interest,” Montano said.

Montano says the straightforward style of Spanish cooking forces you to emphasize the quality of the product: “If you just have three ingredients on the plate, they better be the best ingredients you can find.”

Let the flavors shine

She recalls attending a food talk featuring the late Los Angeles food critic Jonathan Gold, and asked him why there wasn’t more Spanish food in Los Angeles. She remembers Gold saying that was because Spanish food was plain. “I was like, 'What are you talking about?' I didn't want to argue with him, but that was his answer. And it could come off as plain, but I think just having those great ingredients and letting them shine is beautiful.”

Montano made it her mission to unlock the Spanish flavors she had experienced during her travels. Before opening Otoño, she had opened another restaurant in Pasadena called Ración. The menu at Ración had more of a fine-dining emphasis, with many seafood-inspired dishes that took influence from Spain's Basque and Catalan regions.

Paella, please!

Montano recalls that while she and her staff were trying to execute a higher-concept menu, customers often asked for paella. After her time at Ración ended in the summer of 2016, she traveled back to Spain to Valencia, the birthplace of paella in the south of Spain. What she discovered when it came to the dish was that a paella, in its natural environment, was more of a rustic dish, that field workers would eat with whatever they had on hand.

Armed with that knowledge cultivated in Spain, Montano wants her menu to remain approachable regarding the price point and execution of each dish. “I want to offer more raciones—more of the larger plates. And so our menu is going to trim down and become tighter on the tapas end.”

Serving dishes at good value remains an important principle for Montano, but it also serves comforting food. She describes the current menu at Otono as “about that sharing, and it's the conviviality.”

While in Valencia, she visited the neighborhood known as El Carmen. It’s an area known for its older architecture, with cathedrals built 500 years ago along cobblestone streets juxtaposed with large street art style murals.

“It's so stunning that they live parallel, and that was what I wanted to do here with the food,” she said. “It's classic and modern, and they're together on the same menu or sometimes on the same plate.

Bar Moruno in Silver Lake

Chris Feldmeier, the owner and chef of Bar Moruno in Silver Lake, wanted to fill a void for a cooking style he loved. That specific style of cuisine was a southern Spain style of cooking that he refers to as “Andalusian style cooking.” It’s food originating from an area most famously known for being conquered by the Moors in 700 A.D. It’s a style of cooking that takes heavily from Middle Eastern influences using spices — lots of turmeric, lots of coriander, cumin but using a lot of European techniques in cooking those things.”

The Tinned Fish plate at Bar Moruno

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Ann Fishbein

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Courtesy of Bar Murano

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Using the Andalusian concept as his North Star, Feldmeier knew he didn’t want his menu to consist solely of tapas. “We consciously wanted to expose more of what Spain has to offer than the usual, I don't know, a run-of-the-mill Spanish restaurant.”

At Bar Moruno, chef Feldmeier wants to expose his diners to new things. Tin fish is a central focus on the menu at Bar Moruno, which is found all over Spain and Portugal. (Pro tip: if traveling to either of these places, it makes excellent souvenirs to bring home.) Usually consisting of fish like sardines, mackerel, oysters, and mussels, all preserved in olive oil or different sauces.

When describing the menu, Feldmeier explains, “I advise people to come in, and I design the menu first and foremost so you can eat any way you'd like. It's supposed to show the flexibility of Spain and the entire region's food. And make it approachable for everybody in a different way.”

Barra Santos (Cypress Park)

When Mike Santos and Melissa Lopez first came up with the idea to open a Portuguese restaurant, they knew they didn’t want it to feel like L.A. Entering the small restaurant space in Cypress Park, with its blue and white tile bar and carved brick, with the small group of diners casually drinking glasses of wine and nibbling on Alorena olives that has been marinated with coriander and orange, it does manage to make you feel like you’ve been whisked away to another place.

The salt cod fritters at Barra Santos.

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Courtesy of Barra Santos

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Santos and his head chef, Melissa Lopez, wanted the food to showcase specific simple flavors representative of Portuguese cooking, an underrepresented cuisine in Los Angeles.

Seafood is a significant focus of the menu at Barra Santos, featuring standouts such as salt cod fritters that are ultra-savory and meaty.

Eating with a fork or just your hand after squeezing a bit of lemon juice over them is almost a meditative experience, allowing you to dial directly into the flavors. With each bite, all the other noise of your day seems to fall away.

“Specifically to Portuguese food, it's very low-key flavor. It's very flavorful, but you must source great ingredients and try not to do much with them. The bacalao (cod), we soak them for three days. We make caramelized onions. It takes three to four hours to get them nice and sweet. And that's it. I think it speaks for itself in the dish,” Lopez says.

When speaking to Santos, who was born in Portugal, about the reasoning behind the simple cooking style in Portuguese cooking, “It came out of necessity and using what you had. You couldn't access many gourmet products, so you just kept things simple.”

Santos' comments remind me of how many of us were cooking and eating based on what we had because of the pandemic.

Such staples, good bread, and olive oil felt essential in our kitchen; therefore, it makes sense why we, as diners, are increasingly seeking similar dining experiences when going out.