FAITH KEEPS CHEF GOING
West Phoenix chef Ricardo Aguirre knows he’s taking a gamble by reopening his food trailer and catering business during the coronavirus pandemic. In some ways, his company started on a gamble. • In 2010 when Aguirre was laid off, he started hawking tamales in parking lots across Phoenix from his green minivan. He still has that Ford Mercury Villager and the memories he made in it, taking his and his wife’s homemade red and green chile tamales to llanteras, Park ‘n Swaps and the drive-in movie theater in Glendale. • He and his wife, Silvia Romero, eventually grew their street hustle into a full-time catering business, Tamales y Tacos Puebla. But the coronavirus pandemic has tested his family in harder ways.
In 2020, their catering company and main source of income essentially shut down, first because business dried up, then because the entire household, including their two sons, became sick with COVID-19.
Romero was pregnant at the time she, Aguirre and his parents were hospitalized. The couple recovered, but his parents’ health deteriorated. One day under the glare of hospital lights, Aguirre fell to his knees and broke down crying.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Aguirre said. “I had to get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness and ask for a miracle to happen. To allow me to see my parents once again. To allow me to care for them. To see them get better. I asked for my wife to get better, for my baby girl to be born with no complications.”
On Sept. 11, 2020, death came for José de Jesús Aguirre. His son Ricardo Aguirre assured him one last time, “Dad, it’s OK. Don’t worry. Everything is going to be OK.”
Aguirre has lost 11 family members in Arizona and Mexico to COVID-19. After a year marked by pain and loss, Aguirre said his faith gives him strength to carry on.
He’s slowly started returning to work and the grand reopening of Tamales y Tacos Puebla is scheduled for Feb. 11.
“I was in fear of doing it but at the same time if I didn’t do it,” Aguirre said. “It’s just a gamble that I’m taking. It’s not really in stone that I will be successful again.”
How the tamale business started with a bet
The food business began with a bet from his wife.
Romero, who worked at a produce company, came home one day in 2010 and said she had made a bet that she could sell more tamales than another worker. They made 10 dozen tamales, got requests to make more, and that’s how Tamales y Tacos Puebla got its unofficial start, Aguirre said.
For the first few years, they experimented with recipes for red and green chile tamales made pork, chicken or beef, then rajas con queso and sweet tamales made with pineapple and strawberry.
Romero comes from Puebla — hence the name of the catering company — and learned to make tamales from her mother, a cook. Aguirre learned to make tamales from his grandmothers, who used to cook at restaurants in Mexico City. The tamales they make today are a combination of their different styles, he described.
The couple prefers a chunky meat filling, rather than the shredded meat that seems to be more popular in Sonora, Aguirre said.
Tamales, an Indigenous food usually made of steamed masa, come in many varieties, from the tamales wrapped in banana in Oaxaca to the pyramidshaped corundas in Michoacán to the tuna tamales in Baja California.
Many Mexican American families gather around the holidays to make tamales, a labor of love and tradition. Aguirre said before starting the food business, his family made tamales for special occasions, such as Christmas and Día de los Muertos — he didn’t know at the time they would launch a new career.
‘I had to learn how to survive’
In the beginning, he sold tamales out of necessity.
In 2010, Aguirre had been laid off from his job as store manager at Firestone Complete Auto Care. Aguirre said he was used to having jobs where he wore a suit, or dress pants and polo shirt. Switching to T-shirt and jeans, selling tamales out of a van, felt like a big change, he admitted.
“In the beginning I was a little bit embarrassed, but at the same time, I had my family to feed,” Aguirre said. “That shyness went out the window. I had to learn how to survive.”
“My dad was a big part of our success,” he continued. “He would say there’s no shame in what you do as long as you do it the right way.”
A few years later, his wife was laid off, so the couple decided to make Tamales y Tacos Puebla a full-time job. They purchased a hot dog cart, which Aguirre converted so they could branch out to tacos, quesadillas and burritos.
From there they started knocking on doors at different businesses including junk yards, car dealerships and law offices, offering them catering services.
“Next thing you know, we had friends asking us, ‘Can you cater for our parties?’” Aguirre said. “I didn’t even know how much to charge to be honest. I didn’t know how to serve. I was never in the food industry. I just knew how to cook.”
Later, Aguirre’s father loaned them money so they could get a food truck.
One of their biggest breaks came when Ricardo joined the 2018 class of Arizona State University’s Prepped program, which provides free training to food businesses run by women and marginalized communities. He took home the first place prize money at the end.
Rick Hall, co-founder of Prepped and a former restaurateur, described Aguirre as someone with a “stellar work ethic” and willingness to listen. Aguirre celebrated other participants’ successes and shared what he learned from past mistakes, Hall said.
Family seemed so important to Aguirre, Hall also noticed.
“These types of recipes have been prepared in his family for many years and he wanted to share that with others,” Hall said. “At the end of the day, his family is a part of him, why he does what he does.”
How COVID-19 hit the family and business
Aguirre estimated that by 2019, Tamales y Tacos Puebla averaged 18 events a month, ranging from corporate lunches to weddings to quinceañeras.
In 2020, business vanished overnight.
On March 15, Arizona canceled mass gatherings. Within a few days, Aguirre woke up to a checking account that was in the red from customers who had asked their banks to charge back their event deposits.
They donated their food to St. Mary’s Food Bank because it would have spoiled, unused in the refrigerator. Over time, they lost the commercial kitchen they leased, then the food truck when the bank repossessed it.
Monthly mortgage, payments for the minivan, insurance for the catering company, utilities — those bills add up quickly, Aguirre said.
Then in May, their situation took a turn for the worse. The couple, their two school-aged sons and Aguirre’s parents who lived with them caught COVID-19.
The family started feeling symptoms while they were staying together in a hotel, waiting for their air conditioning to get fixed, Aguirre told The Arizona Republic in June.
A GoFundMe campaign helped cover the family’s medical expenses.
By July, Aguirre’s father, José, was the only one who wasn’t recovering and, after experiencing a heart attack, could no longer speak. He died Sept. 11, 2020.
Before he died, Aguirre told his father that he was going to have a granddaughter, the first girl in the family — which seemed to please José, because a smile grew on his face. His granddaughter, Lupita, was born Nov. 4.
‘I know better times are coming’
With the help of a $10,000 grant from city of Phoenix and money from a second GoFundMe campaign started by a stranger, Aguirre and Romero were able to purchase a food trailer and slowly started returning to work. In December 2020, they had their first catering gig in nine months at Luke Air Force Base, serving takeout food.
Aguirre will soon announce a permanent location for the food trailer in central Phoenix, which is scheduled to have its grand reopening Feb. 11. He’s requesting visitors wear a mask when they pick up their food.
Along with the 11 loved ones he’s lost to COVID-19, his goddaughter’s father now has the illness. He’s still taking his mother, Martha, to medical appointments.
When he scrolls through Facebook, he sees his friends and acquaintances who are losing loved ones too.
Mexican Catholics traditionally recite a Rosary for nine consecutive days for the deceased. Since May, Aguirre has held a Zoom prayer with family and friends almost every day at 8 p.m. They recite a Rosary for those who have died from COVID-19.
“I know better times are coming,” Aguirre said. “We just got to have patience.”
Janess Pasinski in Chandler said she’s been following the family on social media. She first hired Tamales y Tacos Puebla for her 50th birthday party two years ago, then her son’s high school graduation party.
She hopes Aguirre’s story will encourage people to be kinder to one another, support local businesses and not spread disinformation about COVID-19.
“A lot of bad things happen to good people,” she said. “Really overall, we just need more kindness in the country. And I’m hoping that this year will be the start of that.”