EL CHOLO’S MOST FAMILIAR FACES

THESE FIVE EMPLOYEES HAVE LOGGED A TOTAL OF MORE THAN 200 YEARS AT THE FAMILY-RUN CHAIN

AN Y O N E who works in a restaurant will tell you: It’s not easy. And it’s increasingly uncommon to see restaurant workers not only make a career out of their vocations but remain at one restaurant for their working lives (if only because most restaurants don’t survive more than a few years).

But El Cholo, the venerable Mexican institution founded nearly a century ago, is a throwback in more ways than one. Many employees have stayed. And stayed. At the Western Avenue location, there’s a hand-drawn board honoring more than a dozen employees belonging to the “20 year club” — and that doesn’t factor in the long-serving employees working at other locations.

Ron Salisbury, grandson of El Cholo’s founders (who has himself run the restaurant for almost 70 years) attributes the restaurant’s ability to retain employees, in part, to the cultivation of an egalitarian culture. “I want everyone to feel that we’re all important. Not just as a cog that makes the restaurant go, but respect each other. And that’s how we try to go through life,” Salisbury said.

I chatted with five of El Cholo’s longestserving employees, who have collectively given it more than two centuries of their dedication and hard work. Together, they’ve done just about everything one could do for a restaurant: cooked, served, butchered, managed, prepped — even done maintenance.

In an age that has seen the gig-ification of work culture and flagging loyalty between employer and employee, particularly in such a physically demanding environment, that kind of longevity is rare. And it may not be something we see again anytime soon.

“I don’t think we’ll see people who will stay with you for 40, 50 years,” said Salisbury. “They came up differently.”