At Austin’s El Naranjo, a Nuanced Mexican Legacy Gets to Shine

Consider her mole — the benchmark for any Oaxacan chef — a labor of love made with more than 30 ingredients, and requiring multiple days of rest before it’s ready to eat. Or her pork shank pibil, slow-roasted for 24 hours until it falls off the bone. Tortas come on house baked birote bread, a Guadalajara-style sourdough. These are small details, not flashy ones, but they help to explain why diners flock not just from across Austin but across Texas and around the country to enjoy El Naranjo’s flavors.

We sat down with  de la Vega to talk about the traditions she’s carried from Mexico to Austin, and why El Naranjo remains a full-service destination, with a packed dining room, in a casual taco town.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Resy: Tell us about your personal journey. How did you get your start cooking?

Iliana de la Vega: I was born in Mexico City. My mother and her family are from Oaxaca. My father is from Guanajuato, but they actually lived more in Mexico City than anywhere else. I was raised in there, and it is one of the most interesting capitals in the world with influences from everywhere.

Oaxaca was an isolated area, surrounded by mountains with difficult access to the cities, so the traditions were more safeguarded. The food is untouched in a way, with a mix of Spanish heritage and the Mexican Hispanic traditions. Oaxaca also has a biodiversity that is the second largest in Mexico. You’ll find herbs, plants, and flora — everything is very different.

I grew up around food, but not in a restaurant. I studied and then had five different careers, but never finished one. I wanted to be a cook, but my mom was a chemist. So to her, cooking was a step back. It was not a fancy career when I started doing this. I started my own path, learning on my own, and from my mother, experiencing, and also teaching others [in Mexico City]. That’s the way I started cooking more professionally, if you will. It was very informal. I [taught] five or six different classes every week with different groups. I learned a lot on the way.

How did you learn about different regional styles?

My dad liked to travel for food, so we went even to the smallest towns in Mexico. They put us in the back of the station wagon and we’d drive all night, get there in the morning, eat whatever, and then come back. Sometimes we went for picadas in Veracruz, or gorditas in Tlaxcala. Whatever he had the whim for. It could be fancy restaurants or hole in the wall places. And every vacation we went to Oaxaca, where nobody went back in the day. My friends would ask why I went there saying, “it’s kind of boring,” or, “there’s nothing there.” But there are plenty of things, especially food.

How did you meet your husband and end up opening a restaurant in Oaxaca?

We met in high school, but we were just friends. Ten years later, we met again and began to date, got married, and had two daughters. We moved to Oaxaca when they were very little and opened the restaurant there without knowing anything about restaurants. My daughters were there every day after school. It was a tough time for them because we were working, and they were hanging there, doing homework until we’d close the restaurant in the evenings. When they were a little bit older, they would help us with different tasks. My older daughter, Ana, helped us bake the bread, and Isabel helped me with my cooking classes.

At first, I didn’t even know what the concept of the restaurant would be. My husband was more on the business side, and I just wanted to cook and present food like the food I grew up with at home. It was really tough at the beginning, and then we were very, very successful. Unfortunately, there was a social turmoil in Oaxaca in 2006 and the economy collapsed and we just had to close it one day. We had that restaurant for almost 10 years, and it was very successful. We offered the first fine dining in Oaxaca. We were doing something different that people really liked.

What drew you to Austin?

We were invited to come to the States after we lost everything in Oaxaca. It was super rough. We had the future perfectly planned. Ana was 17 and Isabel was 16, so it was not easy for them. We moved to New Mexico and got everyone the papers to work, but things just didn’t happen there. I got a phone call from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) — I had met some of those people when I was in Oaxaca. So, we had a friend here in Austin who offered to host us, and I went to the interviews and I passed. I started working for CIA as a researcher. They wanted to do a curriculum for Latin America, especially Mexico. I was writing recipes, interviewing people, and traveling to different areas in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. I also taught both professionals and students. I did that for five years.

How did you get your restaurant business off the ground?

We opened a [food] trailer with a partner here in Austin, and it was time for me to leave teaching. We had the trailer for one and a half years while we worked on getting a permit to open a brick-and-mortar. It was super difficult back in the day. We opened the restaurant in May 2012 on Rainey Street [a historic and now-popular restaurant district] and were there for seven years.

What was the neighborhood like when you first opened there?

There was nothing. A scattering of houses. My competition was G’raj Mahal and IHOP. There were a couple of bars — Lustre Pearl and Clive. That was it. Nothing else.

How do you think people found you?

Word of mouth. A lot of people tried my trailer. It was not easy because I was bringing something unusual for the area. It was not Tex-Mex. Luckily Austin is a very open minded city, so people want to try different things. After a few years, there was construction happening, and things got a little rough, but we survived. We started seeing the younger generations come in in the evenings because of the nearby bars, so we switched the menu a little. But then we felt like it was time to go.

So, we moved [to South Lamar] in 2019 just before the pandemic. We stayed, and the people began to slowly come back. We survived it.

What does national recognition mean to you?

We had a James Beard nomination in 2019, again in 2020, and then in 2022, I was the Texas winner. That was very unexpected for me because I’m not a trained chef. I just cook with passion and love and care for the customers. This has been from nothing — totally from scratch. Everything we have done through hard work. Maybe it’s not the most beautiful, but I think it’s cute.

I feel proud — to be recognized for your work is always reassuring. But the more reassuring thing is having clean plates going back to the kitchen. That’s the most important thing for us.

And now your daughter Ana is the chef de cuisine.

She’s a trained chef. She went to the CIA and then she went to Mexico to study food engineering. She’s very curious about things with food and fermenting things and all those kind of crazy stuff that I’m not that much into. She’s doing an amazing job, and I try to give her the space to do so, so we don’t fight — there should be one cook in the kitchen. We talk about things, but the final decision, well, we still talk about it. But just in a supportive way.

One of her ideas was doing specials every month to keep the people interested in what we do. She said, why don’t we travel to a different state each month, a different region of Mexico, and show the cuisine of those states. We showcase a different state every single month. And there are 32 states. So we have a long way to go. It has been super good. I’m proud of her.

Let’s talk about the mole negro.

It will always be on the menu. Once I put it on, I knew it was never leaving. It’s the most traditional dish on the menu. [Negro] is the king of mole in Mexico. It’s a rich, dark sauce with a hint of chocolate. It has 34 ingredients, so it’s a very complex flavor. When you taste it, each spoonful should give you a different taste. It takes three days to make, and is one of the moles that gets better over time. So, we make at least one batch a week. We serve it with duck mostly. You can also order it with chicken or vegetarian. All of our moles are vegan and gluten free. I eat mole just with rice or tortillas to really enjoy the sauce.

What are other parts of the menu do you love?

We offer an amazing brunch. Homestyle, with the best conchas you’ll ever eat. We have customers who come from Mexico and buy boxes of conchas to-go.

Tell us about things behind the scenes in the kitchen.

The layout of the kitchen is very small. It’s very complex, our food — we don’t have time to open for lunch. We do all prep in the mornings and we continue throughout the day. We have someone who has been working here since the trailer. It’s a small staff. Five people in the kitchen and two for prep, plus servers and other front-of-house [staff]. My kitchen works like a clock because the space is limited. Everyone knows what to do and helps each other.

What’s the secret to your longevity?

We care for the customers and we care for the food. We make food to remember. I have people who come here because they came to [the restaurant in] Oaxaca and remember what they ate. I think we create memories for people. We were the first restaurant making tortillas from nixtamal in Austin, finding Mexican corn, grinding it, and cooking it — the whole process is exhausting, and we keep doing it every single day.

What are some of your favorite places to eat in Austin?

We like Launderette. We like Justine’s and Kome. I like trying new tacos places that are opening like Cuantos Tacos.

What’s next for El Naranjo?

2024 was a hard year. People were dining out less, so we are hoping more people start dining out again. We also are starting to do pop-ups with local taquerias around Austin. We’ll also be inviting chefs from Mexico to have special dinners here at the restaurant. We’ll feature foods from Tlaxcala and Campeche, plus a few more surprises.

What do you hope is the biggest takeaway for diners who eat at El Naranjo?

Food is so important to us. And family, and gathering. It’s a different experience when you share. So, when a couple comes to have dinner with us, I want them to share and talk about the food the next day. That is the most important thing for me – that people remember the food.

It’s a love story here. Love for Mexico, love for the food, and the love of sharing it.

Adele Hazan is an Austin-based food writer originally from Chicago. You can find her attending concerts, being totally average at pickleball, and, of course, dining out around Austin. Follow her here. Follow Resy, too.