{"id":172419,"date":"2026-02-10T21:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/172419\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T21:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:26:19","slug":"oaklands-famous-tostada-is-back-cenaduria-elvira-is-opening-near-jack-london-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/172419\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland’s famous tostada is back. Cenaduria Elvira is opening near Jack London Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

After more than five years of selling tostadas, enchiladas, and tacos from her East Oakland backyard, Elvira Varela is officially opening her first brick-and-mortar<\/a> restaurant on Feb. 21. Her backyard shop, which she started during the COVID-19 pandemic, has been closed since the end of December in order to focus on her new place, and the regulars have noticed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re eager to come in and have the food, and have been calling nonstop for the past few weeks,\u201d Varela told Nosh in an interview a few weeks prior to soft opening, as she was setting up her new restaurant.<\/p>\n

468 3rd St.\u00a0(at Broadway), Oakland; www.cenaduriaelvira.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Grand opening: Saturday, Feb. 21; soft open Feb. 11 to Feb. 15, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.<\/p>\n

The restaurant, softly open this week, Wednesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., is located in the Jack London Square neighborhood on 3rd Street, the new space has peach-colored walls, straw-colored lamp shades hanging from the high ceilings, and indoor as well as patio seating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Varela\u2019s family is from Jalisco and her menu focuses on regional specialities from the central Mexican state. Her signature dish is the tostada raspada, which the New York Times hailed as one of the best dishes in the country in 2023. The tostada is an elongated, crispy, thin tortilla shell imported from Mexico, topped with a bean sauce, sliced cabbage, cotija and fresco cheese, a protein such as shredded pork, and a red sauce. She also sells pozole, fried tacos, enchiladas, and other items.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Elvira Varela first launched her food business as a pop-up at her parents\u2019 Jingletown house in 2020. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for East Bay Nosh<\/p>\n

Roots in The Town<\/p>\n

Varela was raised in Oakland and wanted to launch her first restaurant in her hometown.<\/p>\n

She was 25 years old when, out of a sense of boredom and desire to address the lack of authentic regional Mexican food in the area, she decided to hold a pop-up at her parents\u2019 home in 2020. She printed flyers and put them on windshields around her neighborhood in Jingletown, an area in East Oakland along the estuary that sits across from Alameda.<\/p>\n

Varela had thought about opening a food business for a few years, but it wasn\u2019t until COVID hit that she felt the timing made sense. \u201cI remember I was hiking up in the Oakland hills. It just popped in my head, \u2018You should start selling tostadas.\u2019\u201d Varela said that even though she was relatively young at the time, she had to grow up fast as a young mom. Her daughter often helps her at the food business. \u201cShe was our first waiter. She could take on a full-on table order and read it back to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The menu at Cenaduria Elvira focuses on dishes from Jalisco, Mexico, including tacos dorados. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for East Bay Nosh<\/p>\n

Her home-based shop was initially only open on Saturdays for five hours, and she only sold tostada raspadas. Slowly, as word spread, she expanded her hours and her menu, adding tacos, pozole, enchiladas, and tortas ahogadas. She still worked full-time at her day job in human resources and finance at an engineering controls company as well as a few contract jobs, doing accounting for small companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the only girl among four siblings, she explains that she started cooking and cleaning at a young age. \u201cI always had to help my mom. My love language for my siblings is making them food. Instead of saying, \u2018I miss you guys,\u2019 I make them food.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a couple of years, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the restaurant, then The New York Times declared the tostada raspada among the best dishes in the nation, launching Varela and the cenaduria to the next level. People from all corners of the world, including Japan and the East Coast, showed up. In 2024, she quit her full-time job to focus solely on her business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A cenaduria experience in Jack London Square neighborhood <\/p>\n

A cenaduria is like a diner, Verala explains. \u201c\u2018Let\u2019s go have cena, that means, \u2018Let\u2019s go have dinner.\u2019 A lot of people in Mexico make their house a cenaduria. They\u2019re incognito. You see a house, you see the tables, you see the smoke and smell the enchiladas, and a sign. You park, and you go in, then you sit down. They serve you like they\u2019re your mom, or you just walked into your grandma or auntie\u2019s house. You feel like you\u2019re treated, you feel welcome, you feel wanted, you feel appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Varela carries that spirit into her business. \u201cYou start in a driveway, you take what you have, and you make it into something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new restaurant is a part of a historic building known as the Western Pacific Depot<\/a>, or 3rd Street Station, which was a train station in the 20th century. An Oakland landmark since 1974, the building later housed other food businesses. The cenaduria now occupies the wing used to store baggage.<\/p>\n

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\"\"The restaurant is near Jack London Square in a building known as the Western Pacific Depot. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for East Bay Nosh<\/p>\n

Varela kept the outside the same, but decorated the inside to have a comfortable, warm, and modern feel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was born and raised in Oakland. This is where the first location had to be for me,\u201d she said<\/p>\n

The neighborhood also has a personal connection. Her parents used to take Varela and her brothers to the movies in Jack London Square when they were children, followed by a round o of ice cream at Ben & Jerry\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oakland in general, is a misunderstood city, she says. \u201cA lot of people come to Oakland, and I get it: \u2018Lock your doors.\u2019 But it\u2019s not always that way. It\u2019s okay if people don\u2019t understand it, but they have to come here to get it,\u201d she says about the food.<\/p>\n

Cenaduria Elvira will still have the same menu as before \u2014 a concise one with six items, and she plans on adding two more dishes. Ingredients are sourced from Mexico, including the tostadas themselves, made by Varela\u2019s aunt, which are scraped to be very thin, sun dried, and then fried in the restaurant. The vegetables and meat are purchased from the produce warehouses in Jack London Square.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we don\u2019t get from Mexico, we get from here in Oakland,\u201d Varela said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She learned not to take shortcuts with her cooking from her father. \u201cWe don\u2019t just open a can of hominy. We cook, peel, wash, store, then cook the day of,\u201d she said about the corn kernels used in pozole.<\/p>\n

The restaurant will offer the opportunity to expand the menu. At her home, the kitchen space was limited. She is excited about adding more topping options to spoon on top of the tostadas, including patitas de puerco, a stewed pigs\u2019 feet that\u2019s authentic to Jalisco. There will still be chicken, cheese, and vegetarian versions for people who don\u2019t eat pork, she added.<\/p>\n

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\nVarela gets her raw tostadas from Jalisco and then fries them in her Oakland restaurant. There are choices for toppings, including shredded pork, then a red sauce is added before it\u2019s delivered to diners. can Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for East Bay Nosh<\/p>\n

For some people, a cenaduria is a new concept, and she\u2019s well aware that she is trying to cater to different populations. \u201cA cenaduria is nostalgic to people who already know it. [There are] people that know it, and people that don\u2019t have any idea what it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She has plans to add fried quesadillas, quesadillas fritas, made with handmade tortillas and tacos de barbacoa, which are made of two corn tortillas and cooked until crispy on a comal, then dipped in a beef stew, similar to quesabirria.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a little bit nervous, she said, but stands by the quality of the food. \u201cI don\u2019t think I had a single complaint that said, \u2018I don\u2019t like this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She believes she\u2019s the first to have a restaurant like this, and is thrilled to introduce this concept to more people in the U.S. and beyond, and hopes to franchise one day.\u00a0But for now, the focus is on Oakland. \u201cIf you do anything with love and you like it and do it with your heart, it\u2018s going to show,\u201d Varela said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of what happened with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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