Super Tortas

For all I know, there may be a thousand fast-food stands in the more posh parts of Mexico City that serve sandwiches like the ones at Super Torta, but somehow the clean, mayonnaise-y richness, the play of crisp textures, seems inspired by the California coffee-shop burger. The tortas at Super Torta are undeniably American--a transformation of the classic form of the Mexican sandwich similar to the mutation of the Spartan East Coast hamburger into the sweet, multilayered thing that became the California lunchroom burger (and then the Big Mac)--but they still retain the funkiness of great Mexican street food.

Super Torta is a purple place, very purple, a paradise of grilled meat and purple Formica tucked into a tiny strip center on the stretch of Alvarado just north of MacArthur Park, where the 99-cent stores begin to give way to medical offices, where the 75-year-old buildings and pedestrian chaos around the park are less in evidence than new condo complexes and old parking lots. Super Torta opened around the time El Pollo Loco opened its first U.S. branch across the street. For a time in the mid-’80s, when broiled-chicken stands began to outnumber gas stations in the Southland and what seemed like every third taqueria in America started to make sandwiches that were exact copies of the ones at Super Torta, it seemed as if this small stretch of road might be one of the most influential food streets in the world.

Latino families hang out here, beret-wearing poets, Filipino guys and big, mixed groups of businessmen in shirt-sleeves. Sometimes in midafternoon, the place is dark with blue uniforms, the small parking lot fills with squad cars, and it seems as if Super Torta is the unofficial commissary for the Rampart Division police station.

And a Super Torta is a good thing: built on a feather-light French roll crisped at the edges, barely substantial enough to stand up under the thick lashings of mayonnaise and guacamole, yet firm enough not to disintegrate even when carried 20 miles in a foam to-go container; marred neither by the earthy smear of beans common to most great tortas , nor with an amount of chile that might bother an Iowan grandmother. (You can add chopped jalapeno peppers to taste from the little plastic containers they give you with each sandwich.) A Super Torta is just the thing with a paper-cupful of the smooth, cinnamon-scented rice drink horchata .

The sandwiches are stuffed with grilled slices of rib-eye steak, chewy and blackened, seasoned with great drifts of ground pepper; garlicky grilled pork; or a rather eggy version of machaca , the northern Mexican dish of dried beef sauteed with onions and peppers, that seems not unlike some exotic Sonoran variation on the egg foo yung sandwiches they sell at the Grand Central Market. A chicken torta , perhaps because of the vaguely chopped condition of the meat and the abundant mayonnaise, tastes like nothing so much as a peppery chicken-salad sandwich.

There are also burritos and tacos and carne asada plates here, but I can’t see why you’d bother. If an intricately carved radish is not what you consider a side dish, try a small order of cheesy, stiff refried beans.

* Super Torta

360 S. Alvarado Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 413-7953. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lot parking. Lunch for two, food only, $11-$13.