6 Questions with Ray Garcia
How would you describe Broken Spanish’s brand of Mexican food?
It’s Mexican food as seen through an Angeleno lens, and I think we’re leaving ourselves a little bit of wiggle room for ingredients and technique to make their way in there.
Was it a surprise to you that your first restaurant resonates so much with people?
You know, that was always the goal. When we first started, I was just thinking ‘make good food, get people coming in,’ but then after we started serving them, and seeing how we were really connecting with people was probably the biggest accomplishment for me and my team.
Of all the books you could’ve learned from, why did you pick Cooking for Dummies?
I think back then, this was the early nineties, you walked into a bookstore and there’d be a wall of yellow books screaming at you with titles from everything like ‘Plumbing’ to ‘What is the Internet?’ to ‘How to Cook.’ My college roommate had been cooking in restaurants his whole life, and was a sushi chef. And I was warming up canned tomato sauce and pasta and boiling ramen six days a week. So I just decided I need to learn this and take it upon myself.
Where does the name Broken Spanish come from?
I feel that the name Broken Spanish reflects my relationship with and approach to Mexican food and cooking. It challenges many people’s preconceptions of the cuisine. It’s authentically-inauthentic.
How did you decide to choose to become a chef over going to law school?
I think there was a moment. The career I was thinking of going into was the FBI, by way of law school, and then I got interested in cooking. It wasn’t really a conscious decision—at no point did I map out the pros and cons. I just fell in love with the restaurant business. I started out in the front of the house as a busser at a Mexican restaurant handing out chips and salsa, and paid my way through college. And I just got sucked into it until I went into the back of the house, picked up a knife and never walked out.
What’s your favorite recipe your grandma used to make, or that you’ve been inspired by?
I love to eat, and when I was a kid I didn’t think, ‘This is going to be something I could do professionally.’ It was just something I enjoyed, drinking, cooking, something that brought the family together. I enjoyed walking to her house after school and smelling beans cooking, or that choking smell of the chile that’s roasting in the summertime. I didn’t take a whole lot away in the early years. It was when I went to college trying to make my own food when I really started calling her up picking her brain. They were simple things, really fundamental techniques to a very soulful food. There aren’t specific recipes I’ve translated, but it’s more ideas and special moments we’ve shared.