Vince GarciaGrowing up in a large Mexican American family in Orange County, Chayane “Shane” Sarabia remembers holidays meant food. When his family would cook, he’d peek into the room, wishing he could eat all the food.
“I was in the kitchen being a fat kid, peeking at what was going on, then I slowly implemented myself into the kitchen and started cooking with my family. That was my motivation,” Sarabia said.
Since 2024, Shane’s Tamales has been serving the county’s best plant-based tamales out of a Garden Grove storefront. In 2017, he founded Shane’s Tamales as a vegan pop-up and built up a solid clientele. Two years ago, he transitioned the business into a full-time storefront, where he works with a small staff of three and sells his tamales in person and online.
The Garden Grove restaurant is now the top Yelp-rated place for the best Mexican vegan restaurants in OC.
“I don’t push people to leave reviews, but I think because we are not a hyped restaurant, we don’t have a lot of people coming in and out,” Sarabia said. “But the people that do patronize us come in day in and day out and feel the need to leave nice reviews, and we appreciate that.”
Sarabia said good reviews were never his goal. He only wanted to focus on the quality of the ingredients and the food preparation because he values being a good scratch-kitchen restaurant that prepares food with fresh ingredients.
He and his team are always trying new tamale flavors while keeping the tamale itself authentic. The spinach tamale reflects that. While some people might not think of spinach and crema as an authentic filling for tamales, in Chihuahua, Mexico, it is.
“We also have a tamal that’s bean and cheese with rajas. Again, that is not something you typically see in Mexico; you are more likely to see rajas con queso, a type of tamale with chili, cheese. So all we did was add refried beans to it” Sarabia said. “It might not seem traditional, but all the ingredients are made in the traditional sense, just put together in a new, modern combination.”
To achieve structural integrity in his vegan tamales, Sarabia uses organic vegetable shortening instead of lard, and the masa is made fresh with non-GMO corn. The masa is then whipped with air to create a fluffy texture that makes it easy to spread on a tamale sheet.
Much of the preparation begins hours before the customers walk through the door. Staff arrive two hours before opening to prepare the fresh tamales, which require 60 to 75 minutes of cooking time to be ready to serve.
But Sarabia’s willingness to experiment with food goes beyond tamales. He said he sourced three flour tortillas from San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, and overlapped them to create the wrap for a secret menu burrito. But he emphasized that the item has yet to earn a permanent spot on the menu because he has not found a locally made tortilla that meets his standards.
The torta de tamal, a meal like the guajolota, a type of torta using a halved bolillo roll, is a plant-based green chili tamale set between the bread, turning a food normally eaten on its own into a torta. The soft masa, guacamole, cilantro and onions help the flavors mix perfectly well together, creating a flavorful taste in your mouth. What was a single tamale now becomes a torta, bringing together two familiar Mexican foods living in Shane’s Tamales’ plant-based approach.
Despite the support Shane’s Tamales has received from the community, running the storefront restaurant has not always been easy. During last year’s holiday season, Sarabia and his team made 5,000 tamales while dealing with equipment issues and the pressure of scaling production.
Despite the difficulties, Sarabia said he tries to stay grounded and still make food with positive energy.
“You try to remember, hey, we’re still making food that the people are going to eat, so you try not to give that negative energy into the food when you are preparing it, especially during busy times like holidays,” Sarabia said.
@shanestamales 12046 Chapman Ave. Garden Grove, 714-591-5068
Note: A previous version of this story referred to Shane’s Tamales owner Chayane Sarabia as “Chayan Taravia.”
