Our story · Since 1962
Sixty-four years.
One recipe box.
Pepe's started as one taco stand on Sunset and Alvarado, run by two brothers who named it after a nephew they were worried about. It has never been sold, never been franchised out, and never changed the recipes.
Chapter 01
It began as a walk-up window.
In 1962 two brothers, Joe and Tony Russi, opened a small Mexican restaurant on the corner of Sunset and Alvarado in Los Angeles. It was called El Adobe. Tacos, burritos, food to go, painted straight onto the board above the window.
There was no plan for nine kitchens. There was a griddle, a short menu, and two brothers who cooked everything the way their family cooked it at home.
1962 · Sunset & Alvarado
The name
The restaurant is named after a nephew who went to war.
When their nephew Jose Luis Palacios was sent off to fight in Vietnam, Joe and Tony renamed the restaurant after him. In the family he was called Pepe.
The sign went up while he was gone. Six decades later it is still the name over every door, on every cup, and on the nine kitchens he never worked a shift in.
People assume “Pepe” is a mascot, or a founder, or nobody at all. He was a real person, and the name was a way of keeping him close while he was far away.
Chapter 02
Then it found Valley Boulevard.
In 1964 the restaurant moved east to Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. That building is still open today, which makes Alhambra the original and the reason the whole thing exists.
Look at the photograph: the striped awning, the picnic benches out front, the walk-up window. Alhambra has been remodeled since, but it is the same corner, serving the same combination plates, to a lot of the same families.
1964 · Alhambra, still open
Chapter 03
In 1976 it became a test.
Tony Russi died in 1976, fourteen years after he helped open the first window. Joe and his wife Maria kept the business running.
The youngest of the three brothers, Fred, came in soon after and opened the Downey and Orange County locations. That is the moment Pepe's stopped being one restaurant and started being a family operation with a map.
1976 · The second chapter
Pepe's is not retro. Pepe's endured. Nobody reissued these recipes as a throwback — they were simply never stopped.
The faces behind the flavor
The people who ran it.
Four names out of the family archive. One of them never worked here, and the restaurant is named after him.
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Jose Luis PalaciosA.K.A. Pepe · The name over the door -
Tony RussiCo-founder · 1962 to 1976 -
Joe & Maria RussiInside Alhambra, circa 1969 · Kept it open after 1976 -
Andy RodriguezManager · More than 50 years
What hasn't changed
Four things we never got around to modernizing.
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Made from scratch
Cooked in the kitchen you are standing in, that morning. Not shipped in, not finished from a bag.
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Built on family recipes
The same recipe box the brothers started with in 1962. It has never been sold or handed to a corporate test kitchen.
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Breakfast all day
Every breakfast item, from open to close, at every kitchen. It was never a limited-time promotion.
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People who stay
Managers measured in decades, not quarters. Andy Rodriguez has run a Pepe's kitchen for more than fifty years.
Where we are now
One window became nine kitchens.
Los Angeles, Orange County, the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire. Every one of them cooks from the same recipes, serves breakfast all day, and answers its own phone.
Come by
Sixty-four years in, still the same plate.
Order it, eat it in, or come work in one of the kitchens.