User:Bigsleep/Esdras Ochoa

Esdras Fide Ochoa (born December 18, 1981) was born in Mexico City and grew up in the US/Mexico border towns of Mexicali and Calexico. After graduating from The Art Institute, Ochoa worked in Southern California's fashion industry and the casino business before starting a popular taco stand in downtown Los Angeles, cooking northern-Baja inspired al pastor tacos in 2009 (part of a movement of chefs "re-imagining the taco" ). Ochoa later opened his casual dining restaurant Mexicali Taco & Co., the Mexican barbecue restaurant Salazar, and appeared as a semi-finalist on the Netflix cooking show, Final Table.

Early Life and Career
Ochoa was born in Mexico City and grew up in the Mexican border town of Mexicali. In Mexicali, with its large population of ethnic Chinese in Mexico, Ochoa observed the use of soy sauce to marinade carne asada by the taqueros. A technique he would later incorporate into his Baja and Sonoran inspired dishes.

During the recession of 2009, Ochoa was laid off, and with a wife and two small children to support, he decided to open a taco stand on a parking lot on First and Beaudry at the edge downtown Los Angeles. Through early reviews on Yelp and food bloggers, Ochoa's taco stand became a hit and he would form relationships with customers that would lead to his later restaurants.

In 2009, Esdras started Mexicali Taco & Co. as a catering company before partnering with Paul Yoo in 2012 to open a brick and motor location in Los Angeles' Chinatown, before opening a second location in the San Gabriel Valley in 2020. Two years later, the original Chinatown location was included in The Los Angeles Time's 101 Best Restaurants list. Ochoa's next restaurant, Salazar with partner Billy Silverman, launched to critical acclaim when it opened in 2016 inside the revitalized Los Angeles River adjacent neighborhood of Frogtown. Inhabiting a former auto body shop, Salazar brought Sonoran-style desert barbecue, cooking vegetables and proteins on a giant Santa Maria-style grill, with a picturesque dining area mostly outside. The Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, Johnathan Gold, in his review of the restaurant, noted Ocha's use of flower tortilla verses the more well known corn tortilla, and the unusual choice of soy sauce as a marinade component in the carne asada.