Great chorizo is a thing of beauty. And here, in greater Los Angeles, some of the best chorizo comes from a shop in San Pedro called The Chori-Man. The man behind the meat is Humberto Raygoza. He is our guest on this latest installment of In The Weeds.
Humberto Raygoza: My name is Humberto Raygoza, the Chori Man. I am the founder of The Chori-Man. I grew up in the Antelope Valley up in the Palmdale area, in the desert, and I'm a first-generation born Mexican American. Usually, typical dinners at our house was my mom always cooking homemade chilaquiles or chile rellenos with arroz and frijoles. My dad usually cooked on Saturdays and Sundays, which was always either grilled carne asadas, barbacoas, birrias, menudos and stuff like that.
My parents are from a little town named Calera Zacatecas. It's a very small town, and my great grandfather, who's the one that actually started making chorizo, they were all small farmers. To make ends meet, they started to get into buying cattle and animals to raise. So that's where it all started. Through that, my grandfather later started his own meat operation out of the house. And then all my uncles and cousins from my grandpa, they all got into the cattle business and butcher shops in Mexico.
"There was curtains of chorizo inside my apartment," says Humberto Raygoza, who quit school to start his chorizo business. Photo courtesy of The Chori-Man.
I learned how to make chorizo from my dad, because in the '80s, when work was scarce, he's always been in construction, and to make ends meet, he would make chorizo and birria on the weekends. So when I was a little boy, my sister and I would have to help clean chile guajillo, grind the spices while my mom and dad ground the meat and mixed the meat and all that. Later down the line, this was in 2012, I was in school, and I took a break. I went to Mexico for a couple months to help my dad with construction of his property, I got to spend time in my uncle's butcher shops. At that time, I would help cut meat and make chorizo. That's where I started honing down the craft.
I came back, and I asked my dad, "Hey, can you give me the chorizo recipe?" He thought I was going to have a barbecue. I was like, "No, I'm going to make chorizo as a business." He couldn't believe it. He's like, "Really?" That's when the real apprenticeship started, after coming back from Mexico. I would drive from Culver City all the way to Riverside, where he lived, and I would stay up all night making chorizo parsley with my dad, and then my mom would take over until I got the hang of it.
So I started back in 2013. I had come back from my trip to Mexico in 2012 with the idea of maybe starting the chorizo business. By the end of 2012 I had made up my mind not to go back to school, because I was taking prerequisites and stuff like that at the college. I lived in Culver City, and I never looked back. I sold everything I owned and whatever I couldn't get money for, I just donated, gutted my apartment and made it into a little kitchen with a stainless steel table, a meat grinder, spices. I would hang links of chorizo. There was curtains of chorizo inside my apartment.
I started doing the old way where I'd make chorizo at night, I'd hang it all. The rest of the morning, I'd go to work as a line cook from eight to two. Then, when I'd get home at three, I'd get all the chorizo that was hanging for the last 8 to 10 hours. I'd weigh it, bag it, and then I put it in a little cooler and a little cart, and I'd push that cart all around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, going to businesses, and just promoting, saying, "Hey, I sell chorizo for a living. This is my business card." A lot of people would look at me like, "Chorizo?" I'd pull out a bag and be like, "This is chorizo. It's sausage. It's Mexican, spicy sausage." I think they were more in shock that this guy's selling chorizo out of a cooler, that they would buy a bag of chorizo. That's how I did it.
Sonoratown, the Federal bars, and Salazar have all used the Chori-Man's chorizo on their menus. Photo courtesy of The Chori-Man.
I'd walk into, like, all the little neighborhoods on Venice Boulevard and stuff like that. From then, with that same cooler and the same cart, I would go to all the restaurants and walk in through the back door and be like, "Hey, can I talk to the chef or the sous chef?" And they're like, "Who are you?" And I'd be like, "I'm the chorizo man. This is my product. Here's a card. Take a sample and let me know if I can sell you some." That's how I started.
One of the very first restaurants were The Federal bars of North Hollywood and Long Beach and Del Rey Deli in Marina Del Rey. At the time, I was a line cook there. And as I was practicing different styles of chorizo, I would take chorizo out of the deli where I worked at, and I was like, "Hey, chef, can we make something with this for special?" He's like, "Yeah." And after a while, they were like, "Where are you getting all this stuff?" I told the owner and the chef in charge, "After I leave here, I have a little business. I make chorizo." They were the first ones to carry it on their weekend menu.
Shortly after that, when I was standing on a corner, Sonoratown, Teo and Jen came up to me, and they're like, "Hey, we hear you make the best chorizo in the area." I'm like, yeah. That's when they were just starting off. They're like, "We're opening up a restaurant. Can we buy chorizo from you?" I'm like, "Of course." Slowly but surely, after the Federal Bar and Del Rey Deli and Sonoratown, then after that, Salazar and a multitude of other restaurants.
I got to the point where I needed to find a spot, and at that time, I did an event down here in San Pedro. I happened to walk by this shop that I am now. It had just come up for lease, and I signed a 10 year lease within that moment that I came and looked at it.
My store, the Chori-Man is a small, small shop right on the corner of 23rd and Alma in San Pedro. It's a to-go window. Also, we do a lot of retail. You can walk in and we have our retail fridge where you can buy a pound of chorizo or a specialty sausage or chorizo that we're making for the month. My number one chorizo, the Zacatecano red chorizo, is made a lot with guajillo, garlic, vinegar, and spices that makes it very spicy and smoky. A lot of other sausages or chorizos, they're less spicy, non-spicy. They use more wine, just different flavor profiles from the regions where I'm from.
Humberto and his wife, Vanessa, say their five-year-old son, Emiliano, is obsessed with the shop and they foresee him carrying on the family business. Photo courtesy of The Chori-Man.
At the Chori Man, we have the Zacatecano red, the maple habanero, the Tolucan green, and the Argentinean chorizos. They're all very good chorizos. The maple habanero, we're using real Vermont sugar and roasted habaneros. In the Tolucan green, we have a lot of poblanos and coriander, so it gives it its color and its flavor. The Argentinean, it's slightly like an Italian. It has fennel, wine, garlic.
Our number one selling burrito is our breakfast burrito with your choice of chorizo. We have the red, green, maple, habanero. We sell that all day. When I used to set up outside of the breweries and different markets, people would look at me. They're like, "You're just selling a breakfast burrito?" I'm like, "Yeah, with chorizo, yeah." And they're like, "No, I'll pass." But one person would buy it, they'd see it, then come back, and were like, "We want that breakfast burrito." And it's still the same burrito that we've been selling since I first started.
We have a bean and cheese burrito that we make the beans with chorizo seasoning. They're vegan but they're seasoned with chorizo spice. We have chilaquiles that you can add any of your choice of the chorizos with an egg and sour cream and avocado. Most people don't know this but we have a vegan option menu, because our soyrizo that we make in house is vegan, and then our beans and rice are vegan, our salsas are vegan. So we have a really good array of options for a multitude of people.
My dad and my uncles think it's unbelievable what I've managed to do with the recipe that they gave me because they always thought, yeah, we make money, we have a business on chorizo or meats but I guess they're most proud and astonished is that I just cemented the chorizo business with one chorizo and then just took on the rest with just that recipe.