The secret is out.
Ray’s BBQ, one of L.A.’s de facto authorities in Texas-style smoked meats, also makes pupusas packed with tender brisket.
The pupusas are only offered on Saturdays at the Huntington Park restaurant and can only be made by the hands of Anabell Ramirez, matriarch of the family-run business, which she launched in 2014 with her late husband, Rene Ramirez.
“This is a special item that we kind of gate-kept,” says Sebastian Ramirez, the family’s eldest son, who now runs the business alongside his mom and brother, Raul. “At the moment, only she knows how to do it because it's not as easy as it may seem to make pupusas. The consistency, the ingredient ratio, all matters. You just can't really go out anywhere and get a good pupusa.”
These fat frisbees of Masaeca-based masa have a thin, crisp outer shell, splitting easily into an extremely hot mess of stretchy mozzarella, creamy Salvadoran frijoles de seda, soft corn dough, and hand-chopped brisket that’s been smoked for 16-18 hours on post oak in the bellies of Ray’s two behemoth J&R Smoke-Masters.
Brisket and the smoky flavors of barbecued meat stand out in every bite. The restaurant also offers a version with jalapeño, a rarity among typically mild Salvadoran recipes that was inspired by a meal the family had during a recent trip to El Salvador. A big bite of pupusa, topped with the restaurant's curtido, delivers a sensation not too far removed from the pleasures of pairing hot galbi with the fermented notes of kimchi.
While the once-a-week appearance of brisket pupusas is a deviation from Ray’s usual menu of Memphis-style spare ribs, North Carolina pulled pork, Texas brisket, and links, they are not some thirsty stab at online Frankenfood fame but a full-circle callback to the very roots of the restaurant, which Sebastian, Raul, and Anabell laboriously upheld following Rene’s death at the age of 47 in 2022.
“Since I was a little kid, about five through ten years, my dad really just worked with my mom doing a catering business on the side, which was pupusas,” Sebastian tells L.A. TACO. “So she would do pupusa parties. We would buy ads on El Clasificado, those little newspapers you put in the mail, and she would advertise her catering. We would have people come to our little apartment, try it once, and if they liked it, almost every single time, they said, ‘Yeah, let's do 300, 200, 400 pupusas for a party.’ And that's how we made a living at first.”
The Saturday before Mother’s Day, I attempted to stay out of the way in Ray’s kitchen, as hulking, black-crusted briskets and impeccable slabs of pork ribs came out of the oven.
Anabell, working alongside meat slicer Laura Rodezno and line cook Sofia Sanchez, would surgically vivisect the brisket, saving one half to be shredded with a sharp knife into the meat." Lean meat taken from the flat and fatty meat from the point blur into a mash of meat, a large handful of which Anabell folds into each pupusa, hand-forming them before placing each one on a hot griddle to sputter and congeal for about ten minutes.
Ray's is one-third of a holy trinity that forms L.A.’s best modern barbecue places, along with Heritage Barbecue and Moo’s Craft Barbecue. All three take their foundational cues from Texas and are led by L.A.-raised Latinos who infuse their cultural backgrounds into dishes like sausages spiked with chile poblano and beans upgraded with brisket. Ray’s serves a spectacular burrito with brisket and jalapeno-cheddar sausage.
But selling pupusas with brisket is a direct nod to the family’s Salvadoran heritage. They’d naturally experimented with this item before, but they needed time before introducing it to their guests.
“My dad had tried [making brisket pupusas] with my mom a while back once and, yeah, it was awesome,” Sebastian says. “It wasn't an item that we really wanted to do because of a capacity thing, and my mom was really just burnt out. So after a few years of not doing them, I saw online that one of our Salvadoran friends in the D.C. area started doing brisket pupusas.”
“I was like, ‘man, why aren't we doing this right now?’” he continues. “People here will go crazy in L.A. They’re very simple, but super complex. It's not just simple red beans. It takes a long time to make the beans. Brisket is a whole different process. But just those few ingredients, it creates a burst of flavor that's pretty awesome”.
In over 20 years of covering food in L.A., I’ve noticed that few things draw more commenter outrage than a chef making pupusas that fall outside the bounds of traditional recipes. None of which is about to stop the Ramirez family.
“I think it's normal for people to act like that at first because, unlike tacos, where people really don't care, they'll make a taco of any style,” Sebastian says. “So why can't we do it with pupusas? We're not against any kind of tradition or anything, we're not reinventing it. We're just doing my mom's pupusas that we grew up with, with brisket.”
Ray’s sells its Saturday-only special at $18 for two pupusas. We recommend getting there early.
Ray’s BBQ ~ 6038 Santa Fe Ave. Huntington Park, CA 90255
