Baja Taqueria: Local Favorite | Local with Lisa Chan

Baja Taqueria has been a fixture on Piedmont Avenue since 1992. Jeff Mogalian is the owner and executive chef.

Lisa: Baja Taqueria must be one of the longest-standing restaurants on Piedmont Avenue!

Jeff: It seems like it at least. We’re either number one or number two on the avenue for legacy restaurants.

Lisa: Tell me the backstory of how you ended up opening this Baja Taqueria.

Jeff: Well, I had a real job at one point, I was a dentist and midway through my career, I said, you know what? I also want to have a restaurant.

Lisa: What do you think has led to your success?

Jeff: The food is unique. It’s coastal Mexican seafood and no one else is really doing that.

Lisa: It seems like you have a lot of loyal customers at Baja. Every time I come here, my uncle is here eating a burrito. It seems like he is not your only loyal customer, though, who is always probably coming here.

Jeff: We have generations of loyal families that are coming to us and Kaiser down the street is a big customer of ours. The docs come here, the nurses come here, and then we have people who eat six days a week here.

Lisa: And your employees, a lot of them have been here, it seems like, from the beginning.

Jeff: My manager has been with us 28 years since we opened and several of my staff have been here between 15 and 20 years.

Lisa: So you’ve combined music with your restaurant. Tell me about what happens here on Saturday nights.

Jeff: Since we opened, for 32 years now, we’ve had a bluegrass jam. It used to be the famous Monday Night Bluegrass Jam, but we changed it to Saturday nights now. it’s great and it’s free.

Lisa: So how has business been? Post-pandemic?

Jeff: We’re coming back to where we were pre-pandemic. It’s been a rough road for a lot of people.

Lisa: So if someone’s new to the area and for some reason they have never come to eat here, what should they get?

Jeff: A couple of things. We’re most famous for our fish tacos. We’ve won awards for those. We also won an award for our veggie burrito, the Holy Moly, which is a plantain burrito. Then we had a newer dish, a family dish from our manager, on the menu. Birria is a 4-hour slow-cooked fall off-the-bone beef that gets put into organic tortillas with some cheese and a little cilantro and onion. It’s called a Quesabirria, and they are amazing.

Lisa: Great recommendations, Jeff.