For authentic Mexican food, this is where you go

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

If there’s one reason why Brite Spot rules your small intestine—and a half-dozen bustling branches across San Pedro, Long Beach, and South Gate all owned by one man—it’s the Mexican food. You probably don’t come here for the atmosphere (Vicente Fernandez, Etta James, and Los Tigres del Norte on the jukebox)—although you could. The art on the mural-covered walls isn’t technically great—paintings of Frida Kahlo and helper monkeys mounted onto giant murals of food and country—even if it makes you hungry.

But the food is the real deal: some of the most authentic in Long Beach, and it’s almost uniformly great—with a few weaknesses, which you would never order in an authentic Mexican restaurant, anyway. You won’t get an authentic Caesar salad or a mesclun salad or a veggie burger. This is where you eat meat—and they probably cook some of it in lard.

Here, as in Mexico, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day—and so your hash browns may not be browned to perfection. (Breakfast burritos and fresh-squeezed orange juice are what you should have ordered.) You don’t come for the hash browns; you come here for lunch and especially dinner—when it’s officially okay to chase your carne asada with a Tecate (and not a Tecate Light).

Tecate is exactly what you should use to wash down a well-done but juicy wafer of flank steak (the one true cut) that arrives flame-seared. Depending on your luck, it’ll be either done to perfection or—the way I like it—taken one step beyond, until the edges nearly catch on fire. Charred food is bad for you, but so is everything.

Your side of creamy refried beans arrives dotted with a layer of melted cheese; you’ll probably get some sliced vegetables on the side—tomato, shredded lettuce, maybe avocado—and your choice of corn or flour tortillas. And Mexican rice, the bane of restaurant critics everywhere—but here it varies from good (probably the chicken stock) to excellent (punctuated with lima beans, corn kernels, and the occasional morsel of tomato). The beans, rice, tortillas, and mini-salad come with most entrees.

Another good main dish that’s slightly less artery-clogging is the camarones costa azul: a peeled shrimp and a chunk of crab wrapped in bacon and cooked until it’s done—times six or seven. Delicious—but I’m partial to pork products. Which is why I also like the occasionally fatty chunks of carnitas—rich with porky goodness—and the chile verde, which is chunks of pork simmered in a green chili that tastes like it’s seen a tomatillo or five.

I recall once seeing some flan in the cooler—Mexican custard, for dessert—but I’m fairly indifferent to the concept of flan. Have another beer. There’s a shrimp cocktail worth trying, especially once you juice it with some Tapatio; the fried fish is flakey and delicious; the ceviche tostadas here are liberally laced with lime juice, as they should be. And the burritos eat like a meal—which indeed they are. They come wet or dry (dry is easier in the hand), and the shrimp burrito is probably the best of the lot. The light seafood taste contrasts nicely with the dark flavor of the beans, unfettered by cheese. With rice and the periodic piece of shredded cabbage, you’ll leave happy.

And perhaps best of all, now that her responsibility to you has ended, the waitress will probably say goodbye in that distracted manner that lets you know you’re just a customer. You’ll realize this isn’t about you anymore, or the service (which is usually attentive); or about the gaudy murals, the trumpets on the jukebox, or the Mexican soap operas on the flat screen TVs.

It’s about the food, of which seminal Mexican balladeer Vicente Fernandez said it best in his classic “El Rey,” which is about him—but also about Bud Light (which quoted it on a billboard) and everything and everyone in between.

“No tengo trono ni reina / Ni nadie que me comprenda / Pero sigo siendo el rey,” he sang (and anyone else would have been guilty of whining):

“I don’t have a throne or a queen / Or anyone who understands me / But I am still the king.”

And Brite Spot is still—and may it always be—king of Mexican food in Long Beach.

BRITE SPOT 412 W PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY | LONG BEACH 90806 | 562.591.9016 | 1614 E ANAHEIM ST | LONG BEACH 90813 | 562.591.8060 | 3721 E ANAHEIM ST | LONG BEACH 90804 | 562.494.4903 | DINNER FOR TWO, $20-$40

Tags: brite spot, Long Beach, mexican