Aladdin’s Cafe

Originally published 8/22/17

Aladdin’s Cafe has been serving South Park since 1982. More than 30 years ago, Rodel Corletto immigrated from El Salvador, and got a job as a bus boy at a little burger joint in between where Luma and Elleven now stand. When the owner of the original Aladdin’s Coffee Shop, located in the D&R building on Grand, decided to sell the business he offered it to Rodel’s brother, a chef at Sam’s. Rodel’s brother declined, but Rodel said yes, and purchased Aladdin’s, by paying $100 a month to the original owner.

Rodel began serving Salvadorian, Mexican, and American food to a neighborhood that was primarily factories, but he kept the name Aladdin’s Coffee Shop. In the early days, factory workers kept Aladdin’s busy, and the Corletto family has been part of the neighborhood’s ups and downs since.

When the D&R Brother’s building sold in the 90’s, Aladdin’s moved one block to it’s current location on Hope Street. By then, the factory worker lunch crowd had been joined by lawyers from the State Bar — located then the Transamerica Center (now South Park Center) — and the Convention Center had begun expanding.

Over the next decade, Aladdin’s saw STAPLES Center, Flower Street Lofts, and then L.A. Live open, and their lunch crowd change from factory workers to construction workers, to office workers.

Now, Rodel’s daughter, Cyndi, owns Aladdin’s. After studying International Business and Finance, she came back to take over the restaurant she grew up in. The lunch crowd today is a diverse mix of city workers, loft dwellers, students and teachers from USC; and, now that construction is booming again in South Park, workers on those projects. Aladdin’s catering business, once a staple of local quinceañeras, now also caters corporate luncheons and office breakfasts. Rodel has retired in his native El Salvador, but occasionally comes back to the United States to help out at Aladdin’s.

Stop by Aladdin’s, located at 1150 S Hope, for a breakfast burrito, a papusa, or some of their Chef’s famous molé. For more information and catering, call 213 747 4032, or email dee_cyndirella@yahoo.com