Susanna MacManus was educating Spanish at Occidental School in 1997 when the household enterprise got here calling.
She had grown up serving to out at Cielito Lindo, typically falling asleep within the cubicles of the tiny restaurant whereas her mom, Ana Natalia Guerrero Robertson, and grandmother, founder Aurora Guerrero, prepped for an additional day on the Olvera Avenue traditional.
MacManus initially embraced her mom’s admonition that schooling was the way in which to get forward and didn’t make a profession out of Cielito Lindo.
She earned a grasp’s diploma in medieval Spanish at UCLA earlier than touchdown at Occidental, the place generations of scholars loved her lessons as a lot for her humor as for the works of Latin American literary greats reminiscent of Borges, García Márquez and Fuentes.
However when her mom retired and the way forward for Cielito Lindo appeared doubtful, MacManus and her sisters took over.
“She understood the legacy — all of us did — however she was the one able to preserving it,” stated her niece, Jacquie Goodman. “She was at all times the chief of the household, the fearless one. I grew up with my aunt being the one you’re purported to emulate.”
MacManus died June 25 of cardiac arrest in Pasadena. She was 82.
The vivacious MacManus grew to become Cielito Lindo’s co-manager and public face at the same time as she continued to lecture at Occidental. Blessed with a palate that would catch even the slightest tweak, she made certain that the restaurant’s hallmark meal — beef taquitos in a small paper boat or plate, two to an order and floating in steaming, piquant avocado sauce — at all times got here out crunchy but supple. She introduced the restaurant into the twenty first century by taking part in meals festivals and panels that launched Cielito Lindo to a brand new technology of eaters.
MacManus favored to greet prospects as they stood in traces that recurrently stretched out to the sidewalk of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue. Vacationers took selfies; regulars hugged her. Folks handled their grandchildren to a Cielito Lindo lunch the way in which their very own grandparents as soon as did for them. Newcomers often supplied rapid reward, amongst them Anthony Bourdain. In a 2017 episode of his CNN present “Components Unknown,” Bourdain proclaimed that he was “loving the sauce already” inside his first chew of a taquito.
“She felt it was such an iconic L.A. establishment,” stated Viviana MacManus, Susanna’s daughter and chair of Occidental’s Essential Principle and Social Justice division. “It wasn’t simply a part of the tapestry of our household, however the tapestry of L.A. and the nation.”
In 2020, Susanna MacManus informed L.A. Taco that Cielito Lindo was “a logo of immigrants’ contribution to this vibrant metropolis.”
“It’s the magic of simplicity,” she stated. “There’s nothing synthetic. No preservatives. Even the corn is non-GMO. Simply easy, contemporary and produced each day.”
Beef taquitos in avocado sauce at Cielito Lindo on Olvera Avenue.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Instances)
MacManus was born and raised in Lincoln Heights, on a avenue stuffed with relations and household buddies — principally ladies — from Zacatecas. Her grandmother had introduced them over to work at her companies, which included a warehouse the place the taquitos have been prepped and Las Anitas, a sit-down restaurant throughout the way in which from Cielito Lindo. Each stay within the household.
“We have been at all times reminded as youngsters, ‘No, we weren’t simply pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps,’” stated Viviana, who remembered her mom asking her and her brother to wrap presents for immigrant youngsters each Christmas. “These ladies have been their assist system that made our household’s success potential. All of them struggled. My mother remembered that. So she taught us you at all times have to present again — at all times, at all times, at all times.”
MacManus met her husband of 51 years, Carlos MacManus, quickly after he migrated to the U.S. from Mexico within the Seventies with aspirations to make simple cash.
“She introduced me down from my cloud quick and stated, ‘Nicely, you’re going to should proceed your schooling if you need that,’” he stated. They have been driving by Los Angeles Metropolis School when “she slowed down and stated, ‘That’s your subsequent college.’”
At Occidental, the place she labored for 34 years earlier than retiring in 2011, Spanish professor Salvador Perez described MacManus because the “anchor” of their division. She particularly liked to show Spanish lessons tailor-made to native audio system, seeding her classes with tales from the Chicano motion that she had witnessed in actual time.
“Her love was actually meals and storytelling, however behind the love was a real mental particular person,” stated Perez, who stated that when his spouse was pregnant with their first baby, the meals she craved above all was Cielito Lindo’s avocado sauce. “Susanna inculcated the worth of custom and heritage to everybody she knew.”
Even earlier than she and her sisters took over for his or her mom, MacManus helped out at any time when potential. One 12 months, she observed {that a} nightclub up the road from Cielito Lindo was at all times busy on weekends. She volunteered to remain open late and beckon the group for a late-night snack, bringing in additional income in a number of hours than that they had earned the entire remainder of the day.
“She felt a terrific duty to her household, but additionally to town at giant and what it meant to everybody,” stated her son, Carlos Eduardo MacManus, an legal professional.
In her spare time, MacManus favored to journey with household and lift funds for Sacred Coronary heart Excessive Faculty in Lincoln Heights, the all-girls academy she attended. Although a proud torchbearer for what her mom and grandmother had created, MacManus didn’t enable custom to overwhelm Cielito Lindo, as did too a lot of its Cal-Mex contemporaries.
She “was extra hip to new eating places and cafes than we have been,” Viviana stated, at all times trying out tendencies round city to see if they may match her household’s stall.
Carlos Eduardo remembers chuckling when his mom launched soyrizo to enchantment to vegetarians — it’s nonetheless out there in Cielito Lindo’s burritos. When Viviana was ending grad college at UC San Diego, her mother and father took her to an area Mexican restaurant, making an attempt carne asada fries for the primary time.
“She stated, ‘What is that this abomination-slash-delicious factor?’” Viviana stated. “And he or she put it on the menu.”
MacManus is survived by her husband, Carlos MacManus; youngsters Carlos Eduardo MacManus and Viviana MacManus; one grandchild; and sisters Gloria Calderon Goodman and Mariana Robertson.
