Keeping the culture of tamales alive: In line at La Palma

Melissa

“I had to hustle all week to make sure I could get off early to do this,” says Melissa S. of Santa Clara. She left her job doing compliance early today just to stand in line at La Palma — it’s already been 45 minutes, and she’s just approaching the corner, which signifies she’s  almost at the door. “And that’s just to order,” she says. 

But it’s worth the effort. Melissa, 44, is a sixth-generation Mexican-American in California. Her grandmother taught her how to make their family’s style of tamales. 

“I’m probably the last one that learned before she passed away,” she says. This far down the generational line, she says the preparation of tamales has a Californian flavor, as well as one unique to her family tree. “Every family is a little bit different, how they craft it.” 

She is passing along that fluidity to her kids, too, and indulges her daughters’ “crazy ideas” about new, inventive fillings. 

“One of my daughters likes the quesabirria tacos, so she told me to make birria beef, and she wants cheese to be put in there. So we’re trying that,” she says. One year, when they had too much leftover turkey, they made an unconventional turkey mole filling. 

Her three daughters, 11, 12, and 17, will help her roll some 20 pounds of masa into 15 dozen tamales.  

“We’ll do one crazy one, or different than the traditional … it just adds to the work,” Melissa says fondly. “It gives them an opportunity to be involved, and pick something and help out.”  

Cesar

“This is my first time here,” says Cesar Palancares, one of a few people standing in line at La Palma alone. “I heard that they make the best masa for tamales, so my wife sent me here.” 

When he arrived, Palancares, 40, told his wife about the long, slow-moving line. Stay, she said, and so he is here, sun shining in his eyes. 

“The kids like them. It’s a tradition for us,” Palancares says. His 4-year-old likes to help make the tamales, and his 15-year-old mainly likes to eat them. 

He has been in the Bay Area since he moved from Mexico City at age 19, and now works as a union organizer with gig workers. 

When Christmas rolls around in a couple of days, Palancares is also prepared with games he knows are hits with the kids. 

“They could be like rock-paper-scissors, those kind of games, and then whoever loses maybe gets some whipped cream splashed on their face,” he says. “Maybe with a ball, trying to hit inside the cups, and each cup has a different prize.” 

And of course, his 4-year-old has been asking about gifts from Santa. “So we got Santa in the car, waiting.”  

Graciela

For Graciela Munoz, the December holidays mean it’s time to feast. On Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, her many families converge. 

“Make tamales, pozole, everyone gets together, and everyone brings something,” Munoz, 49, says in Spanish. 

Though she’s been getting masa for her tamales from La Palma for more than 10 years, she’s never actually had to come herself. 

“There’s always such a long line, someone else always comes,” she says with a smile. But she knew the masa here is “muy buena,” even before moving to the Mission seven years ago. 

Food is a big part of her life: She works at Tortas Boos Voni in the Excelsior. Her addition of “adobo picante” — she’s originally from Jalisco, Mexico — makes her tamales different from those made in Central or South America. 

I ask her daughter, 10, what part of the Christmas dinner she’s looking forward to. 

“Chicken!” she says, glancing up from her game. 

“Tamales de pollo,” Munoz corrects gently.

Munoz said her children, 10 and 14, don’t share her interest in Mexican food. “She wants chicken tamales,” Munoz shrugs. 

Other times of the year, she’ll accommodate the kids and make an alternate meal. 

But not on Christmas. “On that day, they must eat what there is.” 

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Gonzalez is in line the Friday before Christmas with three generations of her family, including her niece and her mother. 

“We discovered this place, like, 40 years ago,” she says. 

 — They do a mental count — 

“Well I’m 35,” says her niece, Ashley Dixon in Spanish. 

“We moved from Chicago, like, 42 years ago, and we discovered this place, like, 40 years ago,” Gonzalez says. “Now we don’t live here, we are in the East Bay, and we still come here.” 

Her only gripe: Shouldn’t they expand into a bigger place?

Gonzalez said she will only get 12 pounds of masa this year, because they will have other food, too. She confers with her niece on the quantity, and then decides it is best to go up to 15.

“We use her recipe,” Dixon says, nodding toward her grandmother, who is there, but stays quiet. “Her recipe” means Mexican style, with pork cooked in red salsa. And some years they’ll make buñuelos, flattening fried dough with a potato masher and sprinkling it with sugar.  

But the actual cooking still comes down to grandma, who looks around the intersection at 24th and Florida streets absentmindedly while her progeny do the talking. 

When they first began coming to La Palma, Gonzalez was young and still lived in the Excelsior, but they’ve all since moved away. 

“The city was just getting too much,” said Gonzalez, who works as a medical assistant. “Foot traffic, car traffic.” She bemoans the lack of parking. 

“Grandma’s house used to be the central hub where everybody would always be there,” Dixon says. “And I think Grandma just finally wanted some peace and quiet.” 

The whole family has shifted to a quieter part of the bay, but they keep coming back to the Mission for their masa. 

Dina

Dina Madrid, 37, is the third generation of her family in the Mission, and the third generation of her family buying masa for tamales at La Palma. The masa is great, but the service is what keeps her coming back year after year: “They get it done,” she says. 

For her, culture and tradition are important. She knows what it’s like to miss a piece. 

“I am third-generation Mission District, first and second speak Spanish; they did not teach the third generation to speak Spanish,” she says almost incredulously. 

But she’s got the Mission’s unique cultural mashup right: Madrid does Aztec dance at the Mission Cultural Center, painted with Precita Eyes as a child, and even worked on the McDonalds mural at 24th and Mission streets. For Christmas, she’ll make Mexican wedding cookies. 

And she’s dressed like a true Mission girl, sporting a red 49ers hoodie, matching red sneakers, and gold hoops. 

Over the years, she’s seen the neighborhood change — she herself was priced out and moved to the East Bay — but appreciates the efforts to keep Latinx culture alive along 24th Street. 

“I love how, on 24th Street, they make it very cultural, more so now than before,” she said. “They didn’t have all that before. It gives it a nice touch.” 

Madrid works in the Bayview, and still comes around the Mission to see her mother, but she is forging a new path with her four kids. She’ll be hosting Christmas festivities at her house this year, and that means she’ll be doing the tamale prep. 

“I’m the leader now,” Madrid says. “I invite the older generations over, and try to keep this thing going.”   

Ofelia

Ofelia Ruiz knows how to play the game at La Palma. This year, she’s here at 1 p.m., and has been in line for 15 minutes. More than a dozen people have lined up behind her and her daughter, but only three people at the front have gone in. Still, she’s unfazed. 

If the line is too long one day, Ruiz says, “I just go home, I don’t stay.” She’s been coming here for 30 years, some years showing up at 7:30 a.m., before the store even opens — “So you’ll be the first one in,” she explains. 

No matter that she hasn’t lived in the Mission for 30 years and now resides in Richmond with her family — La Palma does masa best, she says.

“The thing tastes more original, more authentic,” Ruiz, 54 says. “This is the one that I like.”  

I ask if she’s ever tried another place.

“She’ll try other places, but I’ll know the difference in the taste,” her daughter chimes in. 

“We make [them] all the time but this is the day that you cannot miss it,” she says. Throughout the year she comes here for her tamale needs, she’s already in the city for work at Laguna Honda Hospital. 

She occasionally goes to visit Jalisco, her home state, but she prefers it in the Bay Area now, where she’s lived since 1982. 

“It doesn’t feel the same, I feel more comfortable here now,” says Ruiz. “Most of the people that I knew, a lot of the people are dead.” 

Instead, Ruiz says, Christmas is the time she brings a little of Mexico here. That means tamales and family. Her sister, in town from Jalisco, is waiting patiently a couple of feet away, joining in the La Palma tradition — the line, and then the masa. 

The tradition at La Palma