When San Juan native Rafael Rodriguez opened Se\u00f1or Big Ed in Cypress in the mid-90s, there were few Puerto Rican restaurants in Southern California.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of customers were driving long ways to come to eat at Se\u00f1or Big Ed,\u201d said restaurant manager Veronica Coronado. \u201cThey would get very emotional when they would eat the food, because it reminded them so much of their childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
While cities like New York and Miami have come to be veritable hubs for Puerto Rican cuisine, the food community here in Los Angeles \u2014 more than 3,000 miles away from the island \u2014 still remains relatively small.<\/p>\n
And yet, demand for Boricua cuisine is on the rise locally, due in part to a growing Puerto Rican population \u2014 about 47,000 residents, according to the Los Angeles Almanac<\/a> \u2014 and rapper Bad Bunny\u2019s recent Super Bowl halftime show<\/a> that paid homage to his homeland and made history as the most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance of all time<\/a>, with more than 4 billion views globally. <\/p>\n \u201cHis whole movement and everything that he\u2019s been doing for the island \u2026 has really been this big boost for global awareness of the Puerto Rican identity and culture,\u201d said Carmen DeLeon, the actor and chef behind Capicu, a Puerto Rican pop-up in L.A.<\/p>\n While longstanding restaurants like Se\u00f1or Big Ed have anchored communities for decades, newer spots like Ta\u00ednos in Woodland Hills and La Casa de Iris in Long Beach are expanding the Boricua food landscape in L.A.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone comes to look for this food because this is like gold,\u201d said Edwin Torres, chef at Ta\u00ednos in Woodland Hills.<\/p>\n In addition to traditional guisados, mofongo (mashed green plantains) and banana-leaf-wrapped pasteles, Ta\u00ednos shares Puerto Rican dishes rarely seen outside of home kitchens. Soon, co-owner Odessa Rodriguez plans to add guanimes con bacalao, boiled flour dumplings with salted cod, a Ta\u00edno dish that traces back centuries. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We are just trying to bring back essential plates that our ancestors ate,\u201d Rodriguez said. <\/p>\n