This Sunday at La Plaza downtown, Good Food host Evan Kleiman and a panel of judges will determine the winner of this year's Great Tortilla Tournament.
HomeState owner Briana Valdez will be there. Her restaurant, which has locations in Hollywood, Highland Park, and Playa Vista, is among the final five competitors. It won a stunning upset this week over Sonoratown, last year's winner.
Customers waiting in line to order food at HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Briana Valdez wants all her customers to feel at home. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Briana Valdez inside HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
When HomeState opened in 2013, it was the first time that a certain kind of Tex Mex came to L.A.
Valdez says she moved to LA in 2000 and started looking for food from her native Texas. "I couldn't find a taco in a flour tortilla, and I thought why is this a foreign object? I didn't know it was so special to the region until I left," she says.
To learn how to make the tortillas, Valdez first put a photo of her Grandma Lala in her kitchen. She blasted music and tried following recipes from her mom and grandma as closely as she could (though she substituted butter for lard).
Grandma Lala as a young woman. This is the picture Briana Valdez put up in her kitchen while she taught herself how to make tortillas. It's framed in each HomeState location. Photo courtesy of the Valdez family
Grandma Lala teaching her triplet granddaughters how to make capirotada. L to R: Andy Valdez, HomeState's marketing director; Corina Valdez, who still lives in the Austin area; Briana Valdez, HomeState owner. Photo courtesy of the Valdez family
"The flour tortilla represents my family's story. Because when we were children, Grandma Lala was always in the kitchen. She lived nearby, so we were able to visit her every weekend," Valdez says. "The sound of her rolling pin hitting the counter, and the smell of the tortillas cooking, and the image of her standing in the kitchen making meals for a very large family and their kids and their kids… to me symbolized a warmth and a love."
Valdez's special kind of Tex Mex flour tortilla
HomeState tortillas are pillowy, and not too big or too small. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Valdez defines her tortillas: "It's not too big, and it's not too small. And it's dusted in flour. It's very pillowy. It's not too thin, it's not too thick for me. I like a texture that has body and holds up, but it's not so overwhelming that it's all that you taste."
Every step of tortilla-making is done in-house. Valdez says the dough balls are hand-made. Each gets weighed for consistency. Then they're put inside a press from San Antonio.
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rays of dough balls at HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Hand-made flour balls. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
"We used to hand-roll every single tortilla. But we would run out every single day. So now we're making -- at Hollywood location -- almost 2000 tortillas a day," she says. "So we did have to move to a press a few years ago. It was a major moment for me to surrender to that because I thought it would make it less family-like. I always want you to feel like you're eating in our home at HomeState. So I wanted [it] to feel like your grandma was cooking for you. And I thought that would change. But it didn't change. It just allowed us to provide flour tortillas for everyone every day. And it made a more consistent product."
However, when the press is broken, as it was the day KCRW visited, the tortillas get hand-rolled.
Reina hand-rolling tortillas. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Valdez says there's a dedicated tortilla person at each HomeState location. "There is a familiarity and a deepening of understanding when you have that consistent relationship with the dough and how it feels. And so we wanted somebody to have that deep relationship, so they could really protect the quality and know when something's wrong… So being able to keep that quality control and oversight is important for me," she says.
She points out a few people who've been with the company since the beginning. "Reina, Paola, and Pati...they are the tortilla queens. They know that dough. It's like a second skin for them. So having them on our team is so important for me. And we honor them, and they keep the whole the whole machine rolling."
Workers in the kitchen making food. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Partially filled tacos. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Valdez says it's an honor of a lifetime to be able to share HomeState's tortillas with the public -- tortillas made with the same kind of love and nourishment that her Grandma Lala had for her family.
KCRW artwork at HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Wall of colorful artwork at HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
Briana Valdez outside HomeState. Photo by Amy Ta/KCRW
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Written by Amy Ta, produced by Nick Liao