Outside the restaurant, a tattooed man securing his bike to the rail is on the phone telling the other line he “remembers that man from prison.” Inside, a man in ripped clothes steps up to order a pupusa, a quesadilla-like creation distinct to El Salvador. Around him, three small families sit on royal chairs around royal blue rectangular tables, the colors ripped off the Salvadoran flag. This restaurant is a central part of the Jefferson Park community, where families come to bond, friends come to reconnect, and everybody comes to cheer up.
La Flor Blanca has been situated on Jefferson Boulevard since 1999, but it wasn’t until the El Salvador Community Corridor was established along Vermont Avenue in 2012 that Salvadorans really started to connect here.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants fled El Salvador when a Civil War erupted in the 1980s. The 2010 census places over 381,000 of Salvadorans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, the largest population in the country, but some estimates place that number closer to 1 million. Even so, there was never really a designated community for them until 2012.
“When it comes to Salvadorians, we’re barely starting our story in the United States. A lot of Salvadorians that come to this restaurant are either recently coming from El Salvador, or they’ve been here twenty-plus years since the eighties due to the Civil War that occurred in that country.” Alexis Navarette, or Alex for short, wasn’t alive during the Civil War that tore through his native country, but his father, the owner, knows what it’s like to struggle as a refugee.
“When my dad came when he was twenty-two years old, he already had a kid, and he came to this country knowing he had to come up with money in less than a year for my older brother’s eye surgery. He was working literally 24/7, 365 days a year, and he got the money in time.” Now, Alex and his brother are repaying their father by using their skills to make La Flor Blanca a home for all.
Alexis graduated with a software engineering degree from a school in Denver at only 20 years old. With that degree, Alexis has boosted his restaurant’s presence on the Internet, but he doesn’t plan to stop there. “This restaurant and what this community has provided to my family shows me that I need to give back as well, but in a bigger scale, through software engineering.” He’s not sure exactly what he’s going to do next, but he knows just his degree has been inspiring enough.
“A lot of people look at us and say, ‘Look what the owner’s sons have become – software engineers.’ Now it’s on us to give the helping hand with our skills,” Alex says as he cuts through his pupusa. The cheese melts on to the plate, and the customer at the register walks back with three more.
Jordan Chauvaria, a cashier at the restaurant, credits the restaurant’s quality food for bringing the community together. “Our customers love our food,” he says in Spanish, “and they’re always coming back with friends.”
Alex believes La Flor Blanca has also become an integral part for the community. He references providing food for recent immigrants, helping with job hunts, and even helping some immigrants contact their family back home. “There are so many people who come to this restaurant not knowing where else to go, and we’re the first place they call home.”
At the end of the day, Alex just wants a united Salvadoran community. “There’s a lot of envy between Latino communities, and a lot of envy because of our family business, but I don’t see why we can’t just help each other.” Sometimes, it just starts with a little step. Other times, it’s a bite… of a good ol’ pupusa.