Why Aren't There More Puerto Rican Restaurants...
In California
If anyone of Mami’s Maniacs would like to send trinkets, Starbucks gift cards or nail polish:
Mami Maisonet
5960 S Land Park #222
Sacramento, CA 95822
If you want to contribute to this artist in residence, mami’s f’ing expensive ass burgers or Dollar Tree visits:
Last weekend was Mami’s 68th birthday! Her thoughts on the day, “I might as well just round it up to 70!”
Her one request? To continue the annual tradition of eating at Red Lobster. This would be our second time dining in since getting vaxxed. I was never one to eat inside a packed restaurant and I’m definitely not doing that shit now. I drove out to the Red Lobster in Stockton (not Sac) and got there right when they opened at 11AM. There weren’t a damn patron in the building. Just a few lonely lobsters in the tank and the staff.
Mami ordered the Ultimate Feast. Ultimately la chingada expensive. It don’t take much to make her happy and she was delighting in those free biscuits (all three baskets), I can assure you. I bought off some of my guilt by leaving a 30% tip.
A post-lunch Dollar Tree visit and she was humming in the car all the way back home.
Thanks to those who wished Mami a happy birthday and sent her some Dollar Tree money and Starbucks gift cards.
We’ve made it to our halfway goal! We’re currently at 2,500 subscribers. When we reach 5,000, we’ll do a Puerto Rican mukbang. Because it’s the number one thing people keep asking for. Of course, I’ll have to cook the food myself because there isn’t a Puerto Rican restaurant within 90 miles of Mami. So, make sure to like, comment, share and subscribe!
This week we’re eating La Favorita, which built an empire in the early aughts. But, only has several remaining restaurants. I should write something about that. Hmm. Anywayyyy…
Speaking of there not being a Puerto Rican restaurant within 90 miles of Mami…
Yes, I’m recycling this material. I’m too vain to let it pass that so many of you haven’t seen articles that I’ve written years ago. I feel like I’ve been at this for a very long time and in actuality, I haven’t. Think about people like Ruth Reichl, who have been doing this for possibly three decades.
I saw Ruth Reichl in conversation with Soleil Ho at the JCCSF in Marin County back in 2017/8. Ruth Reichl had mentioned all of the footwork she had to do for food writing back in the day and that the pay was only “$500” for an article. And without blinking Soleil was like…“Yeah, that’s still the going rate.” Yeah, Ruth…we’re all still doing an insane amount of work and still getting paid the same rates some twenty-years later.
Luckily, I’ve been fortunate enough to always negotiate my rates. That way there’s some delusion that it’s on my terms. And the weird thing is a lot of my white counterparts don’t negotiate rates. I once asked someone who started as a columnist with me at the SFChron how much she was getting paid for column and it was much lower than mine. When she asked how I managed it, I responded, “I asked for more.” Not gonna lie, I relished the idea that I made more than her. Yes, I’m petty. No, I don’t always feel like that. This was very specific to this person who turned out to be a frenemy.
Anywayyyyyyy…
June 9, 2017
Above Image: Pernil from Parada 22 taken by Carlos Avila Gonzalez
My grandparents came to Northern California in 1955. My grandfather packed up my nana, mother and uncle and moved to Sacramento. They knew no one there. Why my grandpa chose the area is unknown to anyone but him. But I’m thankful he did.
Virtually isolated from other Puerto Ricans, my nana continued to cook in the “old-fashioned” style that her mother and aunt taught her, making beans from dried instead of canned, and making sofrito — a paste made from cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, onions and garlic — from scratch.
But because they were the only Puerto Rican family in Sacramento at the time, she quickly made friends with those she could communicate with: her Mexican neighbors. She quickly learned to cook their tortillas, chile rellenos and menudo, and these dishes remained in her cooking repertoire. In 2014, six decades after my grandparents first moved to Sacramento, there were reportedly 11,215 Puerto Ricans in Sacramento — but not a single Puerto Rican restaurant.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about why Puerto Rican food is not more popular on the West Coast.
Above Image: Chicharron de pollo from Parada 22 taken by Carlos Avila Gonzalez
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and can come and go freely — if their economic situation allows — to create a life on the mainland. Yet despite more than 30,000 Puerto Ricans in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties, Puerto Rican food isn’t popular here. (Although San Jose does have an annual Puerto Rican festival, which takes place this year on June 17.)
According to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York, there were an estimated 200,000 Puerto Ricans living in California in 2014, accounting for just 4 percent of all Puerto Ricans living in the United States. For context, about 84,000 people moved from Puerto Rico to the United States in 2014 alone.
“I’ve only ever heard of a Puerto Rican community being in Florida and New York,” says Paxx Caraballo Moll. Caraballo Moll and partner Audrey Berry are part of a new generation of chefs shepherding a fresh Puerto Rican culinary movement, and recently opened Baoricua, a Puerto Rican-Taiwanese food stand in San Juan, Puerto Rico. So without more Puerto Ricans on the West Coast, maybe that’s why the cuisine is not as popular here, Caraballo Moll says.
And as with many Latin American foods, there’s a constant comparison to Mexican cuisine.
“The Mexican demographic is huge and they have implanted their culture and food in a unique way that is perceived as Latin food everywhere,” says Manolo Lopez of Mofongo, a Puerto Rican pop-up restaurant in New York. “I only know a handful of Puerto Ricans in the West Coast and none are in the food industry. I spent some time in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and our ingredients are also hard to find: recao, platanos, aji dulces, et cetera.”
How many Puerto Rican restaurants do you know in Northern California? Yes, there is Sol Food in Marin. Good for you for knowing. But did you know there are more? Well, a few more, at least: Borinquen Soul in Oakland is a take-out restaurant within a liquor store, with great alcapurrias — grated plantain and green banana stuffed with seasoned meat and fried. In San Francisco, Parada 22 has been open in the Haight for seven years, and the Mission’s El Nuevo Frutilandia serves both Puerto Rican food and Cuban food. There’s El Coqui in Santa Rosa, and, of course, Sol Food’s two North Bay locations, which are the mainstream darlings of California-Puerto Rican cuisine. But for the most part, that’s it.
It’s possible the lack of Bay Area Puerto Rican restaurants is due to a lack of support, and certainly there’s the high cost of entry into the restaurant industry. Plus, while a soulful and delicious cuisine, traditional Puerto Rican food is just not sexy-looking; it’s double-starch and brown on brown on brown.
With the country’s best-known Mexican chef being Rick Bayless and the best-known Thai chef being Andy Ricker, sometimes I also wonder if Puerto Rican food might need, well, a comparable mainland chef to bring it to mainstream status — or even a Top Chef competitor like Hawaii’s Sheldon Simeon, who showcased the range of Filipino food beyond adobo. He managed to find a balance of re-creating the soulful flavors of his Filipino rustic cuisine but with a refined appearance. Or perhaps we need an Instagram-savvy Puerto Rican to plate carne guisada in a contemporary way utilizing edible flowers.
Maybe we should look to the diaspora for its culinary champions. In Puerto Rico, traditional methods of cooking were once in danger of disappearing in the face of American colonization, due to a complicated import-export relationship, defunct agrarian culture and the introduction of processed foods and fast-food chains, among other challenges. But those of us on the mainland, isolated and trying to salvage our grandmother’s recipes via osmosis, cook the most traditional way.
Only recently has a younger culinary generation found its voice on the island, partly thanks to the duo of chefs Jose — Jose Enrique and Jose Santaella — who have incorporated modern (and often Euro-centric) techniques with Puerto Rican ingredients. They have, in turn, cultivated a new generation of young chefs, including Paxx Caraballo Moll, who have tentacled out across the island creating their own culinary endeavors.
Maybe that movement will eventually spread to the mainland. No one seems to know anything about Puerto Rican food here. You’d think it’d be easy bringing the food of Puerto Rico, an island belonging to the United States since 1898, to the West Coast. Now, it just seems like a big order to fill.
“There’s simply not enough knowledge outside the community about what (Puerto Rican food) is,” says Alicia Kennedy, associate editor of Edible Manhattan. “Even here in New York City, where there are more Puerto Ricans, it’s not spreading beyond those who have a connection to the culture.”
Lopez, from Mofongo in New York, concurs that education is the first step.
“We just have to get people to know our food for it to be able to expand and be recognized around the world,” Lopez says. “The more media (that) write about our pop-ups and collaborations, the more people will know.”
Places that serve Puerto Rican fare
Borinquen Soul: 2020 Macarthur Blvd., Oakland [CLOSED]
La Perla: 3409 Fruitvale Ave, Oakland, CA 94602
El Coqui: 400 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa
El Nuevo Frutilandia: 3077 24th St., San Francisco
Parada 22: 1805 Haight St., San Francisco
Sol Food, 401 Miller Ave., Mill Valley; and 901 Lincoln Ave., San Rafael
Brown on brown on brown is f-ing delicious! Sprinkling some edible flowers on my Spam fried rice, “How you like me now?” 😏😐😉
My Dad (from Peñuelas) is constantly asking me when I plan on opening my own Mexican Puertorrican restaurant in SF. Reading what and how you wrote this, has me super emotional. The accessibility to the proper ingredients, knowledge and understanding of Puertorrican cuisine is overwhelming but also something worth the fighting to bring to the mainstream food industry. My Mom (Mexican) learned to cook signature dishes taught by my Abuela (Mama Lula) so we could proudly pass on the legacy. I have family members in Mexico who request my Mom roast Pernil for the holidays. I was raised in San Diego surrounded with most Puertorrican restaurants actually being a fusion of Cuban or Caribbean. The sad part was how often these restaurants actually went under so fast because like you mentioned the cost to maintain a restaurant is a financial strain.
This is one of the most powerful articles I have felt resonate with me. Literally wiping tears on Muni as I read this!!