For Bricia Lopez, Real Change Starts Small (Patreon)

I visited Bricia Lopez at her home in Los Angeles to cook memelas and talk about Oaxaca, restaurants, and the ways food connects culture and community.

I recently spent an afternoon with Bricia Lopez at her home in Los Angeles. Bricia is the co-owner of the legendary Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza, as well as the co-author of the cookbooks Oaxaca: Home Cooking from the Heart of Mexico and Asada: The Art of Mexican-Style Grilling. Her family’s story—moving from Oaxaca to Los Angeles and building a restaurant that would become a cultural landmark—has played a huge role in shaping how Oaxacan food is understood in the U.S. today. She’s also become one of the most thoughtful voices talking about Mexican food, culture, and community in America.

While making memelas together, we talked about her childhood in Oaxaca, her father’s early days selling mole door-to-door in L.A., the influence of Jonathan Gold, and what it means to run a restaurant that’s deeply rooted in a specific immigrant community. We also got into the realities of running a restaurant today, the challenges and opportunities of bringing traditional flavors into consumer packaged foods, and the responsibilities that come with having a platform. It was a wide-ranging conversation about food, family, identity, and what it means to carry culture forward.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

On Memelas, masa, and technique

Kenji: [Cooking] I’ve heard people describe memelas as a tortilla variant. Would you think of it as a tortilla, or is it its own thing?

Bricia: I would not think of it as a tortilla. It has tortilla qualities, but it’s thicker—similar to a sope. Sopes are very uniform with thicker edges; memelas are pinched and almost thin, almost like a tortilla. But you don’t really use them as a tortilla. It’s topped—almost like a little flatbread.

Kenji: The place I went to, they’d press it, put it on the comal, cook one side, flip, then pinch around the edges to make a little rim.

Bricia: Exactly.

Kenji: Is this masa ground fresh for you?

Bricia: This is where I cheat—I get it from my restaurant. I don’t do my own nixtamalization at home, and I don’t have a machine here, because I have a restaurant. I don’t think today you can open a Mexican restaurant without nixtamalizing your own corn. You cannot get away with it. You’ll be fine if you’re trying to do fine—but you’re not going to win. You’re not going to be the best. In 2026, if you want to show you understand Mexican cooking, you can’t not have fresh masa.

Bricia: Okay—this is really important. This is where the memela comes together. You’ve got to find where it’s really hot. Here’s asiento—it’s basically fat. We put it on the masa.

Kenji: Are you rendering this like pork belly—cook it until caramelized?

Bricia: Yes—caramelize the pork belly and the beautiful fat, and salt. Then black bean puree with avocado leaf. And chorizo with potato. The thing about memelas is everything cooks together, so the flavors combine. With a taco you have tortilla, beans, toppings—everything stays separate. Here, you’re cooking the fat into the masa.

Family, migration, and the restaurant

Kenji: Your dad opened the restaurant the year before the rest of the family followed here. What were your parents’ roles in the restaurant and in life once you arrived?

Bricia: My dad was a mezcal maker in Oaxaca—he still makes mezcal to this day. He had a mezcal brand with his brother. He moved to L.A. because he felt like there wasn’t much opportunity there—he was basically giving up on mezcal to figure something out in the U.S.

Kenji: Was there a large Oaxacan community in L.A. at the time?

Bricia: Yes—there’s still a large community.

Bricia: My mom and I would go to the mercado once a week and buy chiles, mole paste, chocolate—everything. We’d ship it to Tijuana. Then my dad would drive from L.A. to Tijuana, pick it up, and drive it back.

Bricia: He’d find neighborhoods and knock on doors. People knew him, kids would come out like, “the guy with the mole is here,” and he’d sell everything.

Bricia: Then he opened a little shop on the corner of Eighth and [unclear], making street tlayudas, paying cholos for protection. One time someone tried to run without paying, he called them, and they handled it.

Bricia: He found a restaurant for lease nearby and kept coming back until he got it. Our original location was on Eighth Street. Within six months, Jonathan Gold visited and wrote about it—at the time he was exploring Pico-Union, wanting to bring forward immigrant stories and the food being cooked. He was ahead of his time writing about Oaxacan cooking then.

Kenji: Did it make a material change to the business when Jonathan Gold wrote about it?

Bricia: It did. But my dad was cooking food for Oaxacans, by Oaxacans. People told him to sell hamburgers or add burritos because “no one’s gonna know what mole is.” He said, “I’m not interested in selling to everyone. I’m only interested in feeding my community.”

Bricia: So: tamales de mole wrapped in banana leaves, mole with chicken—things that weren’t being served back then.

Kenji: Do you feel that same responsibility now—responsibility to your community, roots, family?

Bricia: Yes. We still fly our clay comales from Oaxaca. They’re made by a group of women who’ve worked with us for years who solely make them for us. And we ship ingredients—poleo, hoja santa, chiles—all those things.

Jonathan Gold and cultural storytelling

Kenji: Jonathan Gold has almost a folk-hero status in L.A. He was writing for the LA Times—mostly a white audience—while celebrating immigrant cuisines. It feels complicated—like he was acting as a translator or ambassador. How do you think about that?

Bricia: I was lucky enough to know him. He loved culture—music, food, everything. He happened to work in traditional media, and he wrote about what truly interested him. He wanted to taste something different, found it, and fell in love with the flavors immigrant communities were bringing to L.A.

Kenji: Who’s doing the work he was doing now— or is it a completely different landscape?

Bricia: It’s a different world today. What I love seeing now is young people taking ownership of their own culture. You always need someone to write about culture, but the most beautiful thing for us is educating the new Mexican American generation—people who don’t fully know the culture from Mexico or the importance of Oaxaca.

Bricia: When our own people start appreciating what we have and placing value on ourselves, that’s when others recognize that value too. You don’t need to be validated by someone else.

Immigration, responsibility, and social media

Kenji: For someone seeing the escalation of inequality and the way immigrants are being treated as official policy—what are the ways people with an audience and a voice can help? What’s the most important way to communicate?

Bricia: Honestly: be kind. Be authentic. I think about responsibility as an immigrant woman who now has the privilege of being a U.S. citizen—what is my responsibility on social media?

Bricia: My responsibility is to raise two children proud of their culture so no one can make them feel less than—so they have agency.

Bricia: In my business, it’s treating people with respect, guiding them, arming them with knowledge about their rights, protecting them. My job as their employer—and we’re family at this point—is to make sure they’re safe, the way I make sure my children are safe.

Bricia: A lot of the community being affected works in our industry. People ask, “what is your responsibility in the restaurant industry?” and I ask back: “what is everyone’s responsibility toward the industry?” We’ve taken care of our people for a long time. Now people are just more aware.

Joy, fear, and showing up

Kenji: At this difficult moment in American history and politics, what do you do to ground yourself and maintain your joy?

Bricia: Last year was one of the most difficult years we endured as a family and as a team—L.A. in general. When the raids began, we had one of the biggest festivals already slated. We didn’t know what to do—“the world is on fire, are we really going to throw a party?”

Bricia: Then I realized: I’m not going to let people take my agency, my joy, my livelihood, my legacy. I have a duty to be there for those who cannot. That doesn’t mean I’m oblivious—just doing my part.

We did the event. It was one of the most beautiful nights we’ve ever had. People said, “thank you—I couldn’t be home scared, I needed community, I needed to feel we’re not alone.”

Bricia: Since then I realized: I can’t sit angry too long. I can only do what I can for myself, my family, the people I’m responsible for. People count on us for their livelihood. I just don’t want people to take my joy away.

Kenji: It starts small—family, employees, community.

Bricia: If one little brown girl—if another little Oaxacan girl—can see something I posted, come to an event, eat one of our products, cook one of my recipes, read one of my books—I want her to feel seen, and feel she can do it too.

Bricia: That’s how you make real change.

Zack Morris, McDonald’s, and food systems

Kenji: Growing up in Oaxaca—say nine-year-old Bricia—what did you think you were going to find when you came to the U.S.?

Bricia: Zack Morris. One hundred percent.

Kenji: Did you ever meet him?

Bricia: No, but I did meet Mario Lopez later—and I ended up going to the same school that Bayside High was based out of.

Bricia: And no joke: I had only had McDonald’s twice in my life as a ten-year-old girl. First time was Mexico City with my dad. He ordered a Happy Meal but substituted a Big Mac because he wanted me to eat. First time I had a Big Mac and I was like—oh.

Kenji: What was it about it—flavor, packaging?

Bricia: It’s engineered to taste delicious. People in labs with the perfect sugar/salt ratio—your brain knows it’s delicious. And you’re sold this idea of America—Disneyland, the story of America.

Bricia: Crossing at San Ysidro, the first thing you see is McDonald’s—the golden arches—and I thought, “I’ve made it.”

Kenji: How do you feel about McDonald’s now?

Bricia: My responsibility now as a mom is making sure my kids are eating actual food. If I lived in Oaxaca and went to the mercado every day like my parents, I’d be more lenient. But in the U.S., food supply and food policy—how ingredients are grown, transported, distributed—it blows my mind.

Bricia: We love In-N-Out—that’s fine—but it’s processed at scale for consistency. And because I’m in the CPG world, I know too much. It’s embedded in everyday life here, so I have to be careful not to let go.

Bricia: It’s crazy—my parents left Mexico for a better life, but Oaxaca was full of real food. My kids don’t automatically have access to better food here.

What you want guests to take away

Kenji: When people come to your restaurant or your home and experience the food you grew up eating—the food you’re trying to pass on to your kids—what do you hope they take away from it? Beyond “it’s delicious.”

Bricia: Every restaurant owner asks, “why am I doing this?” It’s definitely not for the money. If you’re opening a Mexican restaurant today, you have zero excuse not to be doing your own tortillas and nixtamalizing your own corn. If you care about it, that’s what you need to do to push the culture and the food forward.

CPG, michelada mix, and scale

Kenji: You’ve been in consumer packaged goods for a while—which I’m curious about. How have you found that world? Is it satisfying? What are the challenges expanding your business in that direction?

Bricia: I love creating experiences—bringing people together, championing my culture, introducing new flavors. But I had a moment: how can I be on everyone’s table? I can only host so many people in a restaurant—how do I take Oaxaca to them?

Bricia: My other brand—I Love Micheladas—is Michelada mix you add to beer. It's a celebration of Mexican American culture—the best our culture has given to this country—all in a in a pouch.

Kenji: So what’s in it?

Bricia: Spices. Imagine adding lemon and chili—acid, salt, and umami.

Bricia: We launched our michelada mix. We started doing pop-ups at breweries around L.A. After a year, we took production in-house. It became like opening a second restaurant, only open once a month. We have a venue in South L.A. where we host 5,000 people every month—two stages, multiple DJs, live bands—representing that Mexican American lifestyle in L.A.

Kenji: For me, CPG is a really interesting problem set. It’s one thing to cook at home—it’s another to do it at scale: packaging, consistency, pricing. And it opens you up to more criticism.

Bricia: I’ve been hearing “your food is too expensive” for 30 years. I had an epiphany at Starbucks: I paid $5.49 for a coffee. Nobody complains. People line up.

Kenji: In restaurants, labor is the big cost. Even here, we started with chorizo already cooked, beans already cooked and pureed, asiento already rendered—hours of work before we even got to the comal.

Bricia: Before you even got to the line.

Kenji: Do you think people just don’t value the labor of—

Bricia: People just don’t value our culture. It’s value perception. People don’t understand what it takes to make great Mexican food great. That’s why I go back to: it’s the responsibility of people opening restaurants—if you’re not going to do a good job, go find another thing.