Not far from the McDonald Brothers
pioneering burger stand, an unassuming Mexican eatery
in San Bernardino planted the seeds for not just one but two tortilla empires
Taco Bell and Del Taco. I joined Los Angeles Times columnist
Gustavo Arellano for a chat and a taco
at this local landmark Mitla Cafe. So before we go in, I got to see this sign
that you wrote about in your book, The Real Mexican Food. Right up here, little boy with
Mitla Cafe in his sombrero, the serape, ‘Real Mexican Food’,
but the ‘Real’ is underlined, and it's looking right across the street. That was Glen Bell's
original burger place. He would come back to Mitla,
get the tacos and go try to reverse engineer. And he kept doing that again and again
until the owner one day is like, Look, I know what you're trying to do. Let me just teach you
how to make those tacos. And they invited him in the kitchen. He invited me in the kitchen, taught him
Glen Bell stayed there about a year, goes about a mile and a half a year later
to open up his first taco chain. And the rest is history.
A lot going on here. Let's go inside. Yeah. No, cause I'm hungry. So let's go. Yeah. So Taco Bell introduced
much of the world to Mexican food, but how many people realized that its started
right here at Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino? Only the people who read my book. Not that many people, sadly,
but especially the people who grew up here in the West Side of San Bernardino,
where Mitla Cafe is. This is the historic barrio
in San Bernardino. This is a place where
there is a lot of civil rights struggles to place up resilience,
but it's also a place of damn good food. So what is the Glen Bell story? So he comes back from World War II. He wants to make money,
but he can't make money selling burgers because the McDonald brothers
are literally right up Mount Vernon already on their way to become,
you know, McDonald's. So then he says, well,
maybe I'll make tacos. And his wife at the time and others like,
that's ridiculous. No one's going to buy tacos
from a white man. So he sets up his Bell's burger,
a small little restaurant, which is right across the street, sells burgers during the day, at night,
he comes and eats the tacos. Then he tries to reverse engineer that. He says that his innovation
he never claimed to have invented the taco, the hard shell taco,
but that his innovation was pre-fabricating
the shells to make it easier. Because here at Mitla Cafe they still sell those hard
shell tacos recipe almost unchanged since their opening in 1937,
but they fry them fresh. That's the key. People come out here
to make pilgrimages for this taco. It is the good food are. These are tacos that I grew up eating? No. Are these are tacos that I will drive
out of my way in order to eat a couple? Absolutely. Salud. Yeah, cheers. And this is not something that I'm used to seeing on the menu
at at a Mexican restaurant, right? Like a hard shell taco. You don't see those anymore? Yeah. This is a recipe that the founders of Mitla
Cafe brought from Jalisco. So people say Mexicans don't eat hard shell
tacos. That's
absolutely not true. Very authentic. It absolutely is. Not only that, it's a time capsule
to when this restaurant opened in 1937, In his autobiography, Taco Time,
The Glen Bell Story, he gave the address of the restaurant where he got,
quote unquote, inspired to make tacos. But when I read it,
when I was doing the research for Taco USA, my book, I'm like, I wonder
if that restaurant is still even here. And I had never heard of Mitla Cafe
before I started doing Taco USA. So I remember on an afternoon
driving out here, I get off the 215,
I come up here, I come in the diner. I'm like, I cannot believe this
restaurant is still here. Let's try the food. And I've been coming here
and telling its story ever since. Glen Bell, not only the founder
of Taco Bell, but has connections to the origins of, of course,
Taco Bell's main competitor, Del Taco. But then also Wienerschnitzel. Glen Bell was really the Johnny Appleseed
because one of his employees right across the street Ed Hackbar. He ended up founding Del Taco like, Yermo of all places,
all the way out there in the desert. Glen just thinks of the idea
randomly for Der Wienerschnitzel, gives it to his employee, opens it up,
and he didn't want any credit for it. It’s like, go for it.
Here in San Bernardino. It's just this interesting nexus
of ambition, of potential
and of transportation from here. So much of fast food
culture spread across the United States. So, you know, not too far away in Baldwin, Baldwin Park,
that's where in and out is on Route 66. Exactly. Here in the West Side,
this was segregated. Mitla Cafe was sort of an entry point for white folks
to feel comfortable with Mexicans. But it was also a place
for the Mexican community to meet and unite
with the Black community, because San Bernardino historically
has been a Black city and a Mexican city. And then, of course, with white folks
ruling it and coming out of here, like in the late 1940s,
that's when you have Lopez v. Seccombe, which is the
the case that desegregated swimming pools right here in San Bernardino
for the rest of Southern California. And then, of course,
later on in the United States. So it's easy to talk about
how delicious the food is. But what makes Mitla that much more special is its role in civil rights. Nothing against Taco Bell,
nothing against McDonald's or Del Taco. They did not play that role. They never played that role. They introduced Mexican food to a wider
audience, Sure. But they were not giving sustenance
to people who needed the sustenance to be able to fight bigger battles. And that happened right here
in this very dining. Room in this dining room, in that banquet
hall, in the little bar right there. And it's still happening to this day. They really care about their community,
whereas other people might have left. They're like,
no, we're staying here. This is our town. We're going to make it to what it was
and really make it better. Route
66 is almost an afterthought to them. It's like, okay, maybe the rest of the United States forgot about us
because it's not Route 66 anymore. That's okay. We're not leaving. You know.
