(Describer) Tortillas with cheese and meat cook on a griddle.

[upbeat music]

Oh my gosh! Look at, mine's too cheesy! Woo!

(Describer) They’re folded.

I'm taking care of the grill, everybody. Not to worry. Birria tacos. I mean, what's not to obsess over? You've got that charred tortilla, the consomme, the cheese. So much cheese. Hey everyone, it's Cecilia. So if you're here in California like me, you're living in this amazing post birria world where it's seemingly everywhere. There's tacos, quesa tacos, birria ramen, even birria pupusa pizza? Now north of Tijuana, birria is a relatively recent food trend, but once the team here started looking into it, we found a story that went way further back than we ever thought it would. Like we're talking thousands of years. So let's jump into it. But first, we need to make some tacos.

(Describer) Title: Beyond the Menu. Cecilia Phillip:

[upbeat music]

And for some of the best birria in the entire Bay Area, everyone knows you have to come here to El Garage in Richmond. Let's go.

(Describer) She walks inside.

My name is Viviana Montano. I am one of the co-founders for El Garage. I do a little bit of everything here.

(Cecilia) Viviana came up with the idea to start the restaurant with her sister while they were living in a converted garage, hence the name.

(Viviana) We were seeing in L.A. they were selling a lot of birria tacos, so she was just like, "I wonder how this would taste with Mom's birria?" And that was like, oh yeah, that's so true. We should try it with mom's birria. Mom's birria is just the best.

(Cecilia) While mom gets started cutting into this huge slab of beef, let's take a trip back to 1950's Tijuana, Mexico, to meet a legend, Guadalupe Zarate.

(Describer) On a tablet:

Guadalupe Zarate is the godfather of birria in Tijuana, and he's from Puebla, a place that's not known for their birria. My name is Bill Esparza, I'm a James Beard award-winning food writer, and author of "L.A. Mexicano." One thing that the birriaos, the guys that make the birria, what they all agree on in Tijuana is that Guadalupe Zarate is the guy that started the business. Now, if you hop on Google, you're not gonna get a lot more on Guadalupe Zarate. No pictures, no statue, no menus. But the legend is that when Guadalupe Zarate moved to Tijuana in the 1950s to sell birria, it was different than what we're making at El Garage today. -[gentle music] -[food sizzling]

(Describer) Tortillas are dipped in broth.

(Bill) Guadalupe Zarate was selling birria de chivo, goat, but you know, it's a northern Mexican town, Tijuana, and beef was more popular.

(Describer) Montaño:

So we're from a very small town, it's called El Tepehuaje in Michoacan. Growing up, we would go with Grandpa, we would pick a goat, we would come back. Grandpa would do what he had to do to the goat. We would be there helping. I'm so sorry, I feel emotional talking about Grandpa.

(Bill) Somewhere along the way, beef was being used, and this idea of making it more like a soup.

(Cecilia) And that switch-up from goat to beef was key to winning over his customers in Tijuana. Mexicans are super regional. They hate stuff from other places. Jalisciense from Jalisco, de chivo, it's respected everywhere, but not in Tijuana. They don't want anything to do with the goat. So the beef became popular, doing it more in a soup style, and it's making the Tijuana style birria de res, which everybody loves. Okay, so let's talk about goats. There was a lot of research that went into this episode, and one story that kept coming up over and over was one where the Spanish brought over too many goats from Europe, and then they became an invasive species. So in order to deal with this overpopulation, they gave the goats to the Mesoamericans, as they were considered "birria," or worthless. But then, the Indigenous Mexicans cooked them with chilies underground, and they were delicious. It's on Wikipedia and some other places around the internet, but here's the problem with that story. Let's start with just the word birria meaning worthless.

(Describer) The beef stewed in broth goes in the grilled taco.

[upbeat music]

(speaker) This is a very modern meaning. It doesn't look like "birria" had that meaning that early on, which could point to the fact that birria as a dish is more modern or just plain itself. I'm Daniela Gutierrez-Flores, and I'm an assistant professor of Hispanic Literature at the University of California-Davis. Now, to be fair, the goats were a problem. You see it across the literature, how they destroyed their local crops. And obviously, we have to think about how that transformed the diet and the local culture. I think with food, it is absolutely impossible to pin down a single origin.

(Cecilia) Okay, so if birria can be made with goat or beef, what makes birria, birria? Well, the secret is in the broth.

[smooth music]

(Describer) Susana Ponce puts chunks of beef in broth.

What this amazing looking and smelling concoction is inside. So what do you already have prepared in here?

(Viviana) She doesn't give out the recipe.

[both speaking in Spanish]

(Cecilia) Oh, man. Already starting with the secrets. Okay, I thought we knew each other better than that already. So I didn't get to know the exact ingredients, which always happens. But what I can say is what that mixture is. It's adobo. And it's the key to everything.

(Bill) So birria is a technique rubbing meat in adobo, roasting it originally underground. So the birria itself is the adobo in the dish. It doesn't matter what protein; it's the process that obviously comes from Indigenous people and what's today Mexico. It's a technique that you can find all across the continent, from the south of the United States to the Caribbean to South America. And if you look at literature and the written sources, you can find descriptions all the way from Venezuela to early writings of Columbus.

(Cecilia) So we're obviously not cooking our birria underground, but the vibe is the same. Adobo and time equals birria. All right, so while it's here, how long does it cook for?

(Viviana) Tres horas. Three hours. Three hours, okay. So while we wait for that, let's dig more into adobo, specifically the chilies.

[smooth music]

(Describer) Different colors and sizes are shown.

(Daniela) Chiles, just like maize, like corn, is one of the most ancient crops of Mesoamerica. It's estimated that they were domesticated around 9,000 years ago. Chilies are so important Mexican food, and they have always been. And if you look at 16th century sources, more than one author says the Indigenous peoples don't think they're eating if there aren't any chilies in their food. [laughs]

(Describer) Cecilia and Ponce carry a big tray of steaming beef to a table.

Oh my gosh. That's a lot of meat. Okay. Wow! Mm. So three hours, and now it's just incredibly tender. But you don't serve it like this. What's next?

[speaking in Spanish]

Yeah, so here, you're gonna cut everything up? So how did this taco version of birria become such a hit in the United States? Well, Bill told us that by the early 2000s, the mouthwatering mountain of slow-cooked beef had become a regional favorite in Tijuana.

[upbeat music]

(Describer) Ponce chops up the beef.

After 2010, people were going down to Tijuana more. And by then, birria was much more than just a soup.

(Bill) You can get tacos, you can get quesa tacos, and you can get consomme, but really the two people that made it popular here in Los Angeles are Teddy's Red Tacos, and around the same time is Birrieria Gonzalez. And from there, it really took off because of Instagram and now TikTok. And one of those people that saw birria tacos on social media-- We saw it and we're like, "We haven't tried it here, "so we need to make it "and show people how good our mom's birria is and bring the casa birria to the Bay Area," and that's what we did.

(Cecilia) So we've got the tortillas, and I am going to ask if I can help too. I'm always wanting to help.

(Describer) The tortillas dipped in broth go on the grill.

[smooth music]

So cilantro and onions go right on top of the cheese. Now, alongside all these ancient ingredients, little by little you have newer influences creeping in. And by newer we mean the 16th century, like cilantro.

[smooth music]

(Describer) Ponce dices the small green leaves.

(Daniela) Cilantro is not an American plant. However, if you look at Spanish food today, you are not going to find cilantro at all.

(Cecilia) So Daniela explained to us that this actually comes from cilantro being seen as a Jewish and Muslim food. 1492 was a year where not only Columbus shows up to the Americas, but Jews and Muslims were being expelled from the Iberian Peninsula and forced to convert to Christianity. They migrate to the Americas. They are able to keep some of their traditions alive because the policing wasn't as intense as it was back in Spain. If you look at Mexican food today, my mom hates parsley. No one eats parsley. Cilantro is the king.

(Describer) The beef goes on top of the cilantro and onions. Then everything is folded and grilled more.

[smooth music]

(Tom) So this cooking style and this method is unbroken. It still exists in Indigenous communities, so we know that it's been around a long time, and they're just passing this down from generation to generation to generation.

(Describer) They’re served.

Okay, I wanna see how Mom does this. All right, so we'll do it like Mom does it? -Yeah. Sounds good. -All right, let's go.

(Describer) Cecilia, Montano and Ponce each pick up a taco.

-[Viviana laughs] -(Cecilia) Oh my gosh. All right, so a little bit of salsa. -Yes. -And then in?

(Viviana) And then go ahead and dip it in.

(Describer) They dip it into a cup of the consommé.

-And then you bite. -Oh my gosh.

[smooth music]

(Describer) They eat.

(Viviana) So good. -For me. -Mm-hmm. -Is this. -Mm-hmm.

(Cecilia) The consomme. The sauce that has been cooking and cooking and cooking. -Yeah. -The flavor is so rich. It's so good. I see why people just drink this as a hangover cure. -Yeah. -There you go. That's how you make -a quesa birria taco. -Yes. Yes, a birria taco, yeah. -Salud. -Salud.

(Describer) They toast with the cups.

Gracias. -De nada. -Gracias a Ustedes. "Beyond the Menu" is made possible by KQED public media supporters like you. So thank you. To support KQED and shows like this one, check out the link in the description. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and tell us what dishes we should explore "beyond the menu" next.

(Describer) Accessibility provided by the US Department of Education.

Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.