From the bottom to the top(opo), El Azteco going strong after 40 years Vickki Dozier (Photo: Courtesy photo/whitney Miller) EAST LANSING - Standing in line on M.A.C. Avenue for the old El Azteco, the one that was in a basement, felt like waiting for concert tickets. It seemed to take forever, and, inside the door, the wait continued. The line went down a steep, narrow staircase. Departing patrons had to squeeze past folks on the crowded stairs. It was not a place for the claustrophobic. There was the distinct aroma of (supposedly forbidden) clove cigarettes, refried beans and sweat. The dank, cave-like atmosphere echoed with jazz or music from Detroit rock stations. The conversations seemed muffled due to the acoustics. Menus had to be read under the dim, reddish cubed lamps. But the regulars didn't need a menu. They knew exactly what they wanted. Pitchers of beer. Margaritas. Sangria. Chips and salsa. Topopo salad. It's a formula that's worked for decades. This year, "El Az" celebrates its 40th anniversary. NMSU News Clips (1 of 6) University Communications
Owner Arturo Santa Cruz, left, holds a plate of nachos while restaurant manager Zsuzsanna Toth holds another El Azteco favorite: Topopo salad, March 12, 1987. (Photo: Lansing State Journal file photo) "When I came to East Lansing I just had this vision about a restaurant, that would be underground," said Arturo Santa Cruz, the restaurant's former owner. "I set out looking for it, and everything fell together, and I opened a restaurant." Santa Cruz graduated from New Mexico State University with a degree in mathematics and came to Michigan State University to get his master's degree in counseling. He switched interests and decided to open a Mexican restaurant. He had never worked in a restaurant. "People said 'You know, you re going to start a Mexican restaurant next to MSU, in a population that has no experience with Mexican food, which we associate with being hot and spicy. Do you think it's going to go over?'" But having gone to school in New Mexico with a lot of people who were transfer students from places such as Wisconsin and Michigan, Santa Cruz saw how readily they took to Mexican food once they were exposed to it. "I knew that it would take off," he said, "because, at the time, Lansing was doing fairly well with the auto industry, but they needed someplace for people to go out and have food. To diversify, to do something different. Entertain themselves." NMSU News Clips (2 of 6) University Communications
The Pizza Pit was at the site of El Azteco before it opened at 203 M.A.C. Ave., in East Lansing in 1976. (Photo: Courtesy photo/whitney Miller) Santa Cruz bought what used to be the Pizza Pit in 1976 and ran it as a pizza place for about three months. And then, El Azteco was born. And it took off. It was not uncommon to see a long line that wound from the basement, up the stairs and in a long line down M.A.C. in East Lansing on any given Friday or Saturday evening. "I am still in in contact with a lot of people I worked with at El Az," said Tom Deja, who worked at El Azteco from the fall of 1988 until the spring of 1994. "I waited tables for a good portion of that time, at least five years," Deja said. "Everyone got along, especially among the staff. It was a very congenial atmosphere. I started going to El Az years before I was a student at MSU. We would drive down to East Lansing from Grand Rapids to get records at Flat, Black and Circular, then go to El Az." There was a radio in the back, and the staff would all take turns playing different tapes. "It helped me decide the Grateful Dead was not for me," said Deja, who now lives in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. "There is plenty of Mexican food here, but it's not exactly the same," he said. "I still make the cheese dip on a fairly regular basis. I recently made it for a block party. It's always a very popular dish." NMSU News Clips (3 of 6) University Communications
The Topopo Salad is on display at El Azteco in East Lansing, April 16, 2008. (Photo: Lansing State Journal file photo) Santa Cruz then opened a second El Azteco in 1981 on Saginaw Street in Lansing. "The underground as I called it, was the place to be on Friday nights," Sydney Washington recalled. "We didn t really mind waiting in line for an hour, just to get inside this dark, packed, underground place. The botana (an appetizer of chips with beans, melted cheese, guacamole, lettuce and tomatoes) was my favorite. How I ate the entire thing, I don t know. But I did. And the smell of clove cigarettes was usually in the air. After we ate, it was off to a bar." Washington frequents both the Ann Street and Saginaw Street locations and says the food tastes the same, even after all these years. "I could tell if they changed a recipe," she said. When Santa Cruz decided to expand and move to the Ann Street location in 1990, he was worried about whether his clientele would accept the new place. Arturo Santa Cruz, owner of the El Azteco restaurants, relaxes on the rooftop dining area of the East Lansing branch. He also owns an El Azteco in Lansing. (Photo: Lansing State Journal file photo) NMSU News Clips (4 of 6) University Communications
"The place underground was permeated with hot sauce and frijoles, the scent, the odors," Santa Cruz said. "I worried if this new place was going to run my clientele away. But it didn't. They stayed with me and I appreciate it very much." When they moved to the new location, it didn't have the same hipster vibe, Deja says. "I was there when they opened the roof for the first summer," Deja recalled. "There was definitely more of a feeling of Bohemian culture at the downstairs El Az. The new location had more of a 'fratty' vibe. We had basically the same clientele, but the new location was just brighter, and happier, I suppose." Santa Cruz was on the roof of the Ann Street restaurant one night, fixing the air conditioning unit, when he looked out over Ann Street Plaza and thought, "I d sure love to be able to share a beer with somebody up here." Santa Cruz found an architect and flew with him to New Mexico, where they visited different places being built out of adobe. On the flight back, the architect had it all figured out. The rooftop dining space opened in 1992. Rudy and Christine Redmond, from Southfield, enjoy lunch with their grandson and MSU student Torey Redmond at El Azteco on Oct. 11, 2016 in East Lansing. (Photo: Julia Nagy/Lansing State Journal) The dishes have pretty much remained the same. Some have come and gone, but the recipes haven't changed. "Our topopo salad is our most popular dish," said Braxton Newman, general manager of the East Lansing location. The salad is gigantic, more than enough for two people: peas, chicken, scallions, jalapenos, two kinds of cheese on a base of chips and refried beans. "I would say our staples are topopo, blue corn enchiladas and our cheese dip," he said. "Those are just certain things you won t get anywhere else." NMSU News Clips (5 of 6) University Communications
The margaritas are so popular that El Azteco now has them on tap. The tequila bar on the roof offers more than 100 different tequilas. They get the chips and tortillas from the same tortilla factory Santa Cruz opened not long after he opened the first El Azteco. Now located in Mason, it manufactures tortillas and chips exclusively for El Azteco. Everything is made fresh daily. There are staff members who have been around for more than 30 years, Newman said. Customers, too. "Many of the customers say, 'We ate here when we went to school and now we want to introduce our daughter or son to it,'" Newman said. "There's a guy who's been coming here for 37, 38, 39 years, who still comes in, drinks a beer, eats a beef Chili Verde burrito, and is on his way. We have another gentleman who has been coming about 30 years, sits on the roof every day during the summer, eats one chicken taco, drinks one Corona, and will be on his way. So we ve got regulars, and we can t express how appreciative we are that they still enjoy the food as much as they do and they still come back." In 2012, Okemos developer Paul Vlahakis, president of Vlahakis Companies, purchased the restaurant from Santa Cruz, who said he sold his stake to free up more time. Santa Cruz now splits his time between East Lansing and New Mexico. Bobbi Jo London, a long-time employee of Santa Cruz's bought the westside El Azteco restaurant. What does the future hold for the East Lansing El Azteco? Vlahakis says they've been working hard at the East Lansing location to get it the way they want it, kind of as a model. They'd like to expand, maybe sell franchises. "We ve got our eyes set on some other towns, downtown Grand Rapids, probably downtown Ann Arbor," Vlahakis said. "We're not going to open more than what we have here in the Lansing area. El Az is the type of restaurant where you only need one per market. "Our model will be one in a city like Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor. And there's a lot of suburbs of Detroit. We might hit downtown Detroit, so that s probably going to be what we re going to be doing next. In the next couple of years. But we want to make sure we get all our ducks in a row before we do that." And there is talk of adding more space in East Lansing, a bar and a few seats where patrons could wait for their tables. "What we plan on doing is maybe doing a little bit of a throwback," Vlahakis said, "do a basement in El Az." Contact Vickki Dozier at (517) 267-1342 or vdozier@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickkid. NMSU News Clips (6 of 6) University Communications