At El Cholo restaurant, the emphasis has always been on trying to collect stories, said Ron Salisbury, the owner of the small Mexican chain and grandson of its founders.
As it celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2023 – the same year as Warner Bros. Studios, The Walt Disney Co., the Los Angeles Coliseum and the Hollywood sign – El Cholo’s focused on the memories it created for 100 years.
“I always get up every morning and look forward. It was one of the first times in my life that I looked back and soaked in all the memories and all the people we have worked with some of them 30, 40, 50 years,” Salisbury said. “All the relationships we’ve had with people, with guests and how people have responded to that and the fact that (El Cholo is) still in the family. We care as much as ever seeing the next 100 years.”
Started in 1923 by Alejandro and Rosa Borquez, El Cholo has grown from a single location on Western Avenue at 11th Street near Koreatown to five others throughout Southern California, in downtown L.A, Santa Monica, La Habra, Corona del Mar and Anaheim Hills. During its 100th anniversary year, the chain expanded into Salt Lake City.
El Cholo is owned by Salisbury’s company, The Restaurant Business Inc. He also owns three other restaurants – The Cannery Seafood of the Pacific and Louie’s by the Bay – both located in Newport Beach, and Il Gatto Trattoria in La Habra.
Getting its start
In the early 1920s in Los Angeles, there were no chain restaurants and if someone wanted to open a restaurant, they just did because it provided a good life for them, Salisbury told the Business Journal at the time of El Cholo’s anniversary.
“That was what my grandparents did,” he said. “They were trying to figure out in the 1920s how to create a decent lifestyle.”
The origin story of El Cholo harkens back to a night when Alejandro Borquez pushed back from the table after finishing a meal and telling Rosa Borquez that she was a great cook, and they ought to start a restaurant.
“That is how it started,” Salisbury said. “Lucky for me she was a good cook. If he had been lying, we wouldn’t be here.”
To honor the couple who started it all, the city designated the intersection of Western and 11th as “Alejandro and Rosa Borquez Square” in the spring of 2023.
“That was pretty moving,” Salisbury said in the recent interview. “And I think of this young couple who came from the territory of Arizona, if they only knew what the city had done for them. Unfortunately, they are not here to see it.”
Salisbury, who turns 92 this month, said he is often asked by people what life has been like for him. That was particularly heightened during the anniversary year, he said.
“There are some very emotional stories that are tied in over the years with people we have developed relationships with and have done things for them,” Salisbury said. “That’s what life should be is more great stories.”
