When Jonathan “Yona” Estrada opened Yona Redz on State Street a couple weeks ago, the 30-year-old, first-time restaurant owner figured that a lot of his clientele might be the family and friends he grew up with on Santa Barbara’s Westside. “It was the complete opposite,” said Estrada. “It was all strangers and just a couple people I knew.”
Santa Barbarans of all sorts were hungry for birria quesatacos, crispy, cheesy tacos filled with long-simmered, chile-soaked beef and a side of hot, savory consommé. A Mexican melting pot of a dish, the quesataco relies on birria — a stewed meat dish (originally goat) with a long history in the central state of Jalisco but which was created just over a decade ago at Tacos Salseados in Tijuana, far to the north. They soon spread beyond the border, tantalizing Los Angeles eaters for the past few years and catching on recently in the Bay Area as well.
As eclectic and diverse as Santa Barbara’s dining scene is for a city of less than 100,000 people, we’re often left waiting for the latest big-city trend to reach our shores, a predicament laid more stark by the travel-trumping pandemic. Estrada’s opening — in the heart of a pedestrian-rejuvenated, vehicle-free 500 block of State Street — quelled this particular envy, and he’s getting a jump on others as well, including birria ramen (admittedly not his invention, but new to us) and birria tortitas, whose bolillo buns are even better than tortillas at sopping up that rich consommé. (While birria touches most of the small menu, there are potato taquitos for vegetarians, served with green salsa, avocado, sour cream, and queso seco.)