Guelaguetza and beyond: Meet Bricia and Fernando Lopez

If you run with a certain crowd of culinary fans, then you might already know Bricia and her younger brother, Fernando. They're the scions of the family that owns the Guelaguetza restaurant empire, built over 17 years on the ambitions of an immigrant patriarch and the deft spicing of his wife's Oaxacan moles.

The daughter-and-son duo are reinvigorating the family business with all the fervent vision of the young and tapped-in. Bricia, 25, and Fernando, who just turned 23, opened Cemitas y Clayudas Pal Cabron last year in Huntington Park, their brash celebration of fat Puebla-style sandwiches and those Oaxacan disks of thin tortillas as big as stop signs, smeared with beans, string cheese and meat. Last month they debuted NaturaBar, a juice bar next to the original Guelaguetza on 8th Street — a rainbow store of licuados (smoothies), raspados (shaved ice) and family-recipe ice creams such as flor de pina (pineapple blossom) and leche quemada (burnt milk).

And now they're the new faces of the Guelaguetza restaurants. Read more about Bricia and Fernando Lopez here.

Photo: Bricia Lopez at Cemitas y Clayudas Pal Cabron. Credit: Kirk McCoy/Los Angeles Times.