Susanna MacManus, a co-owner of Olvera Street institutions taquería Cielito Lindo and restaurant Las Anitas, died in her sleep at the age of 82 on Wednesday, June 25, due to complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
For decades, MacManus — a second-generation Angeleno — was the face of Cielito Lindo, a taqueria where most people would order the combination number one — an order of two beef taquitos drowned in a complex avocado salsa and a side of refried beans with melted cheese.
Just after the founding of the city of Los Angeles in the 1780s, the area that became known as Olvera Street (Placita Olvera) was a thriving commercial hub until the 1920s, when it began to decline. Los Angeles socialite Christine Sterling led the revival of the area in 1930. It was there that McManus’s grandmother Aurora Guerrero eventually opened a small retail shop on Placita Olvera and later sold food out of a neighboring stall. Guerrero, who immigrated from Huanusco, Zacatecas, arrived in Los Angeles with her children to search for her husband, a bracero who had come to the U.S. three years prior…