Back in my first semester at college, just like any other freshman, I took a boring and unnecessary seminar course for first-year students, which was a complete waste of time. However, that silly little course has stuck with me almost three years later because of a stupid assignment I had to do—a vision board.
In this vision board, I set four different goals I wanted to achieve by the time I graduated from Temple; one of those was to find the best, most authentic Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia.
So, looking back on this anecdote, two things are very clear to me about what I was feeling when I set this goal. First, since I turned in this assignment at 12:44 a.m., I am sure I was very hungry and could only think of eating some tacos. But also, I missed home.
At this point in time, being three thousand y cacho kilometers (I still won’t use miles) away from home was weighing heavy on me. I was trying to find that same homey feeling in Philadelphia by attending meetings for Latino organizations and going to Mexican restaurants and food trucks—I even tried Chipotle for the first time ever at this point. However, I think these attempts at finding a community only made me feel more alienated.
The restaurants I ate at were okay to good-ish in taste, but they certainly were not authentic for a variety of reasons. Even just the atmosphere of the Mexican restaurants felt off from the moment I stepped inside.
And at the Latino organizations I went to, barely anyone could speak or understand Spanish, and most of them were born in the U.S. I know that none of these things are the fault of my fellow Latinos on campus, but their life experiences were so different from mine in so many ways that I couldn’t relate to them at all.
Both these experiences made me feel like an outsider even inside of what was supposed to be my community.
This quest for delicious tacos and community plagued me for the entirety of my first year of college. I was able to make it better by traveling back home during fall and winter break and by having the chance to speak in Spanish more often through the job I got as a Spanish tutor at the library.
However, that was like taking an Advil to make the pain of a broken bone go away. Sure, it helps soothe the pain a bit, but the broken bone is still there needing much more to be fixed—although, admittedly, this is a wild exaggeration because my soul wasn’t broken, it was just slightly injured at most… or at least that’s what I tell myself.
My second year rolled around, and surprisingly, things went a bit better. This year I found out about a festival in Penn’s Landing that celebrated the Mexican Independence, which was a better cultural experience than the other ones I’d had in Philly. However, this might have also been because of who I was accompanied by.
That day I went on an unofficial date with my current girlfriend, whom I had met on the first weekend of my sophomore year. That’s a cute story and all, but it’s not relevant at all, right? Finding a romantic partner didn’t make me feel at home or find a community in Philadelphia. Therefore, it certainly couldn’t help me find the most delicious tacos… right?
Surprisingly, it did.
My girlfriend isn’t the Latino community I wanted to find because she’s not even Latina, and she can’t cook amazing tacos either. However, she still technically helped me because of her dad. Her dad is a big fanatic of Mexican food, and he recommended I go to this one Mexican restaurant called South Philly Barbacoa.
I had never heard of it before, and based on the name, I thought it’d just be another white-washed Mexican restaurant (possibly not even owned by a Mexican person) that would stomp on my soul just like all the other ones that came before it. Still, I had a small glimmer of hope because my girlfriend’s dad has gone to Mexico and had authentic Mexican food in the past, and he said this was the real deal in terms of authenticity.
Nonetheless, I was also a bit scared because if this restaurant, which was recommended by a professional chef who studied in Paris, was bad or did not live up to my high standards, then I would probably die because that would guarantee that no place in Philadelphia could ever feel like home and that good tacos aren’t available here.
On December 3rd, 2022, I finally took the leap of faith and visited South Philly Barbacoa with my girlfriend.
I had heard before that in South Philadelphia there were a lot of Mexican people, but I was surprised by my surroundings when the Uber dropped us in the corner across from the restaurant where Ellsworth Street and South 9th Street meet. As I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by a blast of colors and Spanish words that made me feel disoriented because I couldn’t believe I was still in Philadelphia.
There was a meat market or carnicería called “El Pueblo,” which had the colors of the Mexican flag in its sign, on the block across from South Philly Barbacoa’s entrance.
There was a paletería called “La Guerrerense” with a vibrant pink wall and some green highlights facing the carnicería.
And there was another business called “Paletas y Helados Bambino” facing “La Guerrerense.” It was a paletería too, but they also sold chamoyadas, malteadas, and crepas according to their white and navy, striped front.
South Philly Barbacoa also welcomed me to this intersection with their yellow wall and a sign that reminded me of a baby chicken’s feathers.
The outsides of the restaurant didn’t tell me much about what to expect; they actually prompted me to expect the unexpected given that they casually had a wooden wheelbarrow as a decoration to the right of the entrance—you know, just like any other Mexican restaurant does.
This made me believe for a moment that, despite all the sense of familiarity and community I felt when seeing the neighborhood for the first time, I was not going to find a sense of belonging inside this restaurant, and even less some good food.
However, the unexpected was exactly what I received because once I stepped inside South Philly Barbacoa, I was home. I hadn’t even seen, ordered, or tasted my food yet, but just by seeing how the tables and chairs (or in this case, plastic stools) were laid out, by seeing some cazuelas for the first time ever in the U.S., by seeing the nochebuenas around the restaurant, and by seeing that it was a cash-only (or Venmo) establishment, I knew I was in the right place.
After waiting for a bit in line with my girlfriend, we finally got the chance to order our food, and even though it wasn’t needed, I obviously asked for my food in Spanish—“¿Me puede dar tres de barbacoa y un agua de horchata, por favor?” The cashier yelled out my order to the people in the kitchen, and in a matter of seconds, I had my tacos in hand. I put all the toppings I wanted on them for free, just as it should be, and I finally got to eat.
The first bite I took out of my taco de barbacoa had me on the verge of tears. I had tried barbacoa very few times in the past and liked it on all those limited occasions, but I wouldn’t even say that it cracked the top 5 of my favorite tacos. So, you can imagine how good this taco de barbacoa had to be to make my eyes water after only one bite. But what about the sense of community I craved?
Well, the main thing that made me feel like I was back in my community was being bullied by the cashier. He made fun of me and teased me because I had to ask my girlfriend to pay for my food, for a second time that morning, when I went to order my extra round of tacos because I had no cash on me and my Venmo wasn’t working at all.
This simple act of banter brought me back to the comidas familiares at my grandpa’s house every Sunday, where if you did or said the wrong thing, any uncle, aunt, cousin, or even nephew would immediately tease you and not let you live it down until you said or did something dumber.
And I know that every person that goes to South Philly Barbacoa has a unique experience that makes them feel the same way—and by that I mean feel at home of course, not humiliated—because that is the reason why this restaurant even exists in the first place.
Way back before South Philly Barbacoa was a proper restaurant, its owner, Chef Cristina Martínez, used to cook and sell her delicious barbacoa inside her house as a way to earn money to send to her daughter in Mexico. She would advertise her food to the locals through business cards and word of mouth, telling them to come to her apartment at 7 a.m. on the weekends to get some barbacoa and consomé.
People obviously went to try the food because I don’t think many people could resist the offer of such delicious dishes, but they would all keep coming back and telling other people to go try Chef Cristina’s food as well. This all happened because most of the people who went to eat her food were all immigrants, just like her.
So, just like her as well, they all needed a place to feel at home, and the early morning barbacoa at Chef Cristina’s house was just the thing they were all looking for. According to Chef Cristina, a community formed around all the people who frequented her house, and this community was so big and strong that she earned enough money to be able to open South Philly Barbacoa in 2015.
This community Chef Cristina built is still going strong to this day. Currently, South Philly Barbacoa is no longer in the same location as when I went there back in 2022 because according to the owner, their lease for the original spot I knew has expired. However, her community has followed her to the new location—although it wasn’t hard to do so considering it’s only a few meters away from the original one.
South Philly Barbacoa now shares a venue with Chef Cristina’s other restaurant, Casa Mexico, which is another great restaurant. This might be discouraging to those of you who wanted to visit the original venue based on my description of it, but I can confidently say that the homey feeling that the restaurant emanates is still the same. That is because for Chef Cristina, just like for her clients, South Philly Barbacoa is so much more than a restaurant.
In every person that comes to her restaurant—in every man, every woman, every child—Chef Cristina sees her family. Being in the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant for nearly 15 years, Chef Cristina knows as well as anyone the toll that it can take on someone to be far away from home, from their community, and their family. However, she also believes that we are all one big family, and through her food, Chef Cristina wants to make this big family come together.
Through her food, she wants us to engage in more communication to be more understanding of each other. Through her food, she wants to reach every single one of us until no heart is left untouched. Through her food, she gives the world the same love that she wishes she could give every day to her daughter who is back in Mexico. And through her food, she has achieved this and much more because South Philly Barbacoa is not just a restaurant; it is our home away from home.
