Birria Mi Casita

🇲🇽 MICHOACÁN, MÉXICO / HISTORICAL: The Sun Valley business that blew up during the pandemic as a takeaway favorite is still going strong each weekend.

🇲🇽 MÉXICO (Michoacán)
📍 7757 Ferncola Avenue,
Sun Valley, San Fernando Valley
🅿️ Street parking
💲 Cash Only
🥤 No Alcohol

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was written in the worst of the pandemic, dine-in is also available now. The vendor reached out to me on 23 May 2024 to say they are only cooking beef birria now.

📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los Angeles

HISTORICAL ARTICLES are brought over from eattheworldla.com to make sure our Substack content is constantly growing and as full of depth as possible. These will never be behind the paywall.
📆 Original Article 29 January 2021

As the pandemic has taken a wide toll on the restaurant industry, many home-based businesses have been taking to Instagram and Facebook and growing their operations. Of course they offer good solutions locally for neighbors, but home pickups with orders placed over social media or by text have never been more desirable, making them good options for those coming from afar as well.

In sprawling Sun Valley, the home of Chef Don Javier and La Jefa Ninnette exists on an arm of the neighborhood that reaches out between the north end of the Burbank Airport and the 5. They were first open for business in 2018, where presumably word of mouth in the area kept them busy on weekends. To reach a wider audience, their Instagram and Facebook pages were created in April and May of last year, respectively, and now their business is offered to anyone in the city.

Down a residential street packed with double-parked pickup trucks and plenty of ranchera music audible from houses during good weather, small signs in front announce both birria and carnitas available on weekends. The style here is from Michoacán, but it is also estilo Sun Valley. A bull in their logo shows that they originally specialized in beef birria, but now they also offer goat.

You can order both for $15/lb, or get a plate with rice and beans. The birria de res plate ($13, above) like its goat equivalent is good value especially because of their outstanding beans, so full of fatty umami. Large chunks of beef swim in delicious birria broth and should be blanketed by the included cilantro and onions. It already contains some citrus flavor so give it a taste before squirting more in.

Despite that bull on the logo, their birria de chivo is even tastier. Enjoy it and its consomé with a quesotaco plate ($15, above), which is also served with all the fix-ins. Quesotacos deserve to be eaten immediately off the grill for maximum crispiness, so grab at least one or two of them before throwing them in the trunk.

The goat meat to cheese ratio of these small tacos is perfect, and the deeply flavorful consomé is perfect for dunking or drinking, or both. The spicy chile de árbol salsa can really bring the heat so use it with caution at first.

On a next visit, the carnitas will have to be tried and that report will be updated here.

🇲🇽 🇲🇽 🇲🇽