Juan’s Restaurante: Where Nopales, Health And Yummy Meet

There has been but one time in my life where I relished the opportunity to drink a mouthful of seeds and eat weird-looking green food, and that was last week at Juan’s Restaurante in Baldwin Park. The seeds were chia seeds in lemonade (yummy) and the green food was a tamal, empanada and flan made with nopales (cactus, super yum). Juan Mondragon is an unassming culinary genius who has managed to take one of the most healthy foods out there — nopales — make everything from them, and then make them taste amazing.

NewsTaco contributing editor Renée Saldaña and I recently visited Mondragon at his beautiful restaurant, complete with different color walls with corners reserved for calacas (out of papier-mâché by the chef himself), nopales and Oaxaca. The place has a great atmosphere, great menu and the food is fantasic. That’s not even the best part!

Mondragon’s story about becoming a chef and restaurant owner is just about the best I’ve ever heard. He grew up watching and learning about food from hus grandmother from Guerrero, Mexico. He always wanted to cook. When his sister became ill from cancer, the family turned to nopales as a cure for what ailed her. But Mondragon found his sister exasperated one day, tired of eating nopales the same way every day: nopal con huevo, nopal asado, nopal licuado.

So he decided to improvise.

Years later, he has a special nopal menu that he shared with us. The menu on a recent Tuesday night included: chia lemonade and horchata made with pumpkin seeds, nopal empanadas de huitlacoche and flor de calabaza, tamal de nopal in a nopal mole sace, enchiladas the pollo in nopal sauce with nopal flan with prickly pear sauce for dessert. Let me tell you: this meal was one of my most delicious in memory. The fact that I consumed a ton of nopales in the process didn’t enter my mind until after I was happily stuffed. These are just a few of hundreds of nopal recipes he’s created.

Mondragon’s explanation for the deliciousness?

“I did it with my heart. Everything was with my heart. Everyday I would promise, ‘If my sister gets better, I will open my own restaurant.’ So the cactus recipes I did with extra love. That’s why it’s so good.” But the story gets even better. In a true American Dream-type story, Mondragon drives from Orange County to his Baldwin Park restaurant (60 mile-ish roundtrip) daily to make it happen. On top of that, he’s twice put on La Fera del Nopal in order to highlight the benefits of nopales, which is to say, he talks the talk but also walks the walk.

Check out Renée’s video below and for more info about Juan’s Restaurante, click here.