North Long Beach will soon be home to acclaimed Orange County birria restaurant La Super Birria.
The restaurant specializes in birria, a traditional Mexican dish served in a bowl that consists of consome (hot broth flavored with tomatoes, garlic, and other spices) and, in this case, beef swimming in the concentrated stew. Variations of the dish appear throughout Mexico.
Owners Rosie and Edgar Navarrete—a wife and husband duo—are excited to cross county lines with their eatery for the first time with the upcoming Uptown Commons opening, projected to open in the next few weeks, according to Rosie.
“We’ve been in Orange County, we’re known in Orange County, this is going to be our introduction to LA,” Rosie said.
La Super Birria also has two other locations slated to open in Orange County—in Orange and Stanton. Rosie noted that COVID has stalled their opening dates.
La Super Birria has become an Orange County staple, born in Santa Ana in the summer of 2015. However, it wasn’t always a birrieria—first opening as a candy, party supply and ice cream shop, a business the family ran for 20 years.
“My husband has an obsession for birria,” Rosie said, noting that both traveled to different regions of Mexico trying different recipes of the dish.
Edgar, also the cook at La Super Birria, learned how to make the dish from watching different people simmer the stew in kitchens across Mexico, including Michoacán—where he’s from. He arrived at today’s menu through trial and error, Rosie said.
La Super Birria doesn’t just stick to the traditional form of birria served in a bowl, also serving birria tacos and the patron favorite “quesabirria”—tacos on homemade tortillas served with a mountain of oozing cheese melted onto beef birria.
The latter dish has seen a social media boom in the last few years across Californian restaurants—something La Super Birria has joined in on with its active TikTok account. To stay up to date with current trends, the Navarrete’s turn to their teenage children and patrons to ask for feedback on what they’d like to see at the restaurant.
One of the dishes that stands out is the birria ramen, served in a paper cup with ramen noodles.
The dish came about after a local Vietnamese newspaper wrote about La Super Birria, prompting more Vietnamese patrons to visit the eatery, and left the Navarrete’s wondering, “Are there similarities between birria and pho?”
“[People] started bringing in their grandparents, the older generation, and they really liked the birria, so we started talking with them and my husband came up with the idea [of birria ramen],” Rosie said.
She noted that her husband’s palette and willingness to try different things in the kitchen sets them apart as a restaurant.
“At first, people are like ‘Oh, that’s disgusting, why do you want to put birria with cheese or why would you want to do ramen?’” Rosie said of past comments. “They don’t know that we’re catering to different communities.”
Rosie noted that her family is excited to open their restaurant in North Long Beach, a diverse area where approximately 58% of the population is Hispanic or Latinx and 20% are Black, according to City data from 2018.
“We’re super excited to be a part of this community,” Rosie said. “We know the diversity, this is exactly our demographic. We cater to anybody. I think we’ve all heard about birria, and we’re excited to bring an amazing dish for an awesome community.”
Uptown Commons is located at 6600 Atlantic Ave.
For updates and to keep up with La Super Birria, follow them on Instagram at @super_birria.
