I’ve made deviled eggs with that sauce and it tastes really good. (Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE) Customers enjoy La Victoria orange sauce. Working in the family business since his early 20s, Marcos, now 40, says he uses the sauce on pretty much any dish he cooks at home.Ĭustomers enjoy La Victoria orange sauce. From there, sauce is distributed to all six taqueria locations. He finishes brewing, cooling and packaging bottles around noon. When it’s his turn, Marcos Barrita says he typically starts the process at 5 a.m., prepping all the ingredients to make the zesty condiment. Nick says nobody else goes there except for the man in charge of blending new batches that morning. The Barrita family takes their orange sauce so seriously, in fact, that they even have a secret location in the Bay Area specifically dedicated to sauce-making. So Nick and Marcos rely on two 4.5 gallon blenders to combine a mixture of onions, tomatoes, garlic and a particular variety of dried red chile, among other family-kept ingredients, to create their signature sauce.Ī sign informs customers they can buy La Victoria Taqueria orange sauce at its restaurant in San Jose, Calif., on May 10, 2022. While the recipe and $6 price tag has never changed, the amount of sauce the Barrita family blends to keep up with demand has definitely increased throughout the years. “Today, we use 3,000 gallons - that's how much we pump out every month.” So 30 gallons, and it lasted us two weeks until he came back from Mexico,” Nick says. “Way back when we started, my dad, he made I think it was like six buckets. The exterior of La Victoria Taqueria in San Jose, Calif., on May 10, 2022. At La Vic’s, all the chorizo and al pastor spices savored in the burritos, tacos and tortas are imported directly from Mexico. As the brothers grew older and started working the taqueria on East San Carlos Street, their father would make sure to leave gallons of the orange sauce to satisfy the restaurant’s dedicated following while he made trips back to Mexico to visit friends and family. The Barrita family are originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, and Nick recalls moving to the U.S. “It’s always been one of us, especially me and my brother, Marcos, since my dad is a little bit older now.” So we’ve never put an employee in charge of any of that,” Nick Barrita says. La Vic’s orange sauce is such a coveted family recipe, to this day, only three people know the formula: Marcelino Barrita, founder of the beloved taqueria and the man behind the sauce’s origin, and his two sons, Nick and Marcos Barrita.

La victoria taqueria