The news was met with barely a whimper. Despite its long and prominent role as one of the chief arbiters of U.S. Mexican food tastes, when El Torito (or, more precisely, its Cypress-based parent company) declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this month, no one seemed to care. Why? Probably because today’s Californians were too busy eating tacos de lengua and sipping horchata at the taqueria down the street. El Torito? If people thought about it at all these days, it was usually as that place they went for the company Christmas party.
The fall of Real Mex Foods symbolizes more than just another victim of our Great Recession, though. El Torito played a major role in one of California’s most influential exports: Cal-Mex cuisine, the galaxy of Mexican dishes that end up combined and numbered on menus, long derided by purists as somehow not being authentic.