JAIME CORNELIO | FOOD RUNNER

Jaime Corneli began working at El Cholo when he was 18, following his older brother, Antonio.

He’s worked for 40 years entirely at the Western Avenue location but has no immediate plans to retire.

“A lot of us have been here too many years already,” the food runner said, and laughed as if to say, what’s a few more?

Cornelio is married with children to a woman from the same town where he grew up — Villamar, in the state of Michoacán. He still thinks about food from home, particularly the sweet corn tamales called uchepos (El Cholo’s most famous dish happens to also be a sweet corn tamale, made with cheddar cheese). Overall, he doesn’t think Mexican food in the U.S. is hugely dissimilar to that in Mexico, but he noted one major difference in the food at home: “It’s spicier. There’s a lot of chile.”

El Cholo is known for the stream of celebrities who’ve eaten at the restaurant over the years — I ask Cornelio to indulge me in a bit of name-dropping and he doesn’t disappoint: Elizabeth Taylor, Magic Johnson and Don Francisco of “Sabado Gigante” fame.