Interview:

US: Where did your mango salsa originate?
SAL: We like to experiment with different flavors and we incorporated the mango into the pico de gallo, which is a very traditional salsa. It goes very good with fish and shrimp. The first time I tried it was at home. I made some salmon and topped it with the mango salsa and it tasted great.
CYNTHIA: He likes to do that. He’ll come home with different fruits and vegetables and experiment when cooking a nice dinner.
SAL: Eventually we incorporated it into the tacos. Most of the people that come in, they come because someone has recommended the fish or shrimp tacos, especially because it has the mango in it. The fish and shrimp tacos are definitely one of our specialties.

US: Is a bar or cantina a necessity for a Mexican restaurant?
SAL: In this area you need to have it. Because you have so many different restaurants that have liquor licenses, so if you don’t have it, you just fall behind. Most of the people that think of Mexican food, they think of a very good margarita with tequila. And if you don’t have it, they are going to go to the other place. Even if the food is great, if you don’t have a real margarita, they are going to go to the other place and get them. Because they just go together.
CYNTHIA: When we first opened is was pretty much just wine and beer. Then we started getting people asking for margaritas; a fresh margarita with good tequila and real lime juice. We also have very good Micheladas.
US: As the owners of Fuego Tacos and Beer, what do you order off the menu?
SAL: The shrimp tacos are my favorite. It is a lite meal. It’s not breaded or deep fried. It’s grilled and it just goes perfect in a taco. I have tried shrimp tacos in other places where it’s pretty much just batter, and batter is like a sponge, it sucks in all of the oil. And later on you’re suffering. But the way we make them, I love the shrimp tacos. When someone orders the fish tacos, I recommend they try one fish and one shrimp taco. At the end most of them will go for the shrimp.
CYNTHIA: My favorite is just rice, black beans, tons of cilantro, onions and tomatoes.
US: Do you think homemade tortillas are the only way to go?
CYNTHIA: I would love to make homemade tortillas. We tried it in the beginning, but our facilities were too small to be able to make them in house. We have a good local distributor that makes them fresh every day. But, yes, it would be amazing to be able to make them homemade.
SAL: I think with the demand, there are so many tortillas going out that it would be hard to keep up. If we had the space, we could make it happen. Like Cynthia said, with our local distributor, we are still getting them pretty fresh. They don’t store them on the shelves for very long. We tried different taquerias where we got them fresh and the tacos turned out phenomenal.
US: Anything coming up or changing in the near future for the restaurant?
CYNTHIA: We are going to start incorporating some organic things on the menu for people that care about their health and like that organic quality. We’re going to start using organic eggs in our breakfast dishes. I think organic farming is better for the environment. The chickens are happier (laughing). There are not as many hormones in the food.
US: How do you differ from other Mexican restaurants in town?
CYNTHIA: We cater to the customers’ needs. We have Will that comes in everyday, and he decides that he wants to alter a dish. We’ll make it for him. We will cater to people that have special diets. Even if a customer calls and wants something special made for an event, we’ll make it. We have the time.
SAL: I think, mainly, we are health conscience. We spend a lot of our time in the restaurant. When I opened my first restaurant, we used to cook everything with lard. Traditionally, everybody says that the lard gives the good flavor to the food. I disagree with that. It’s not healthy for someone to be consuming that much fat in their diet. So we use nothing but vegetable oil. We have a lot of delicious salads. We cater to vegetarians. We have a lot of vegetarians that come in that would rather have tofu than meat. When we have people that are vegans, they don’t eat any dairy or animal products. They love it. They enjoy their food with a lot of flavor. Most of the time, when you think vegetarian, the first thing that comes to mind is healthy and flavorless. It’s not supposed to be like that. Flavor comes from everything that you put in the food. Spices, salt, fresh garlic is the flavor. Not the lard.
US: Are all of your ingredients fresh?
SAL: Yes. Everything is fresh. Because of the size of the restaurant, there is no need for us to prepare huge quantities ahead of time. Everything that we serve is made in the morning fresh, for the day.
CYNTHIA: Even at mid day, we have to cook rice and beans because of a busy lunch.
We make enough for the lunch crowd and dinner crowd and that’s it. Some restaurants pull rice out of the walk that is two days old. We don’t do that. Everything is fresh.
We don’t use microwaves here either. The enchiladas may take a little long, but they’re made fresh with cheese melted naturally and not all nuclear (laughing).
US: Where did most of your recipes come from? Are your recipes original to this restaurant?
SAL: I’ve been in the restaurant business all of my life. My sister owns La Morenita on Golden State Blvd. I grew up in that restaurant and that was the base for the recipes, like the green sauce. But again, we took out the lard and incorporated the vegetable oil. A lot of the recipes in this restaurant have been created here. They are different than the previous restaurants I have worked at.
CYNTHIA: We have an item that was green eggs with roasted red peppers. Our seven year old loves that dish. We used to make it at home, and we incorporated it here on the menu. We are always experimenting with different fresh vegetables, like our artichoke quesadillas. You can add meat to it, but it’s good just like that.
SAL: Cooking is experimenting with flavors. Sometimes you end up with this awesome flavor that comes out of all of these mixtures and sometimes it doesn’t taste good. That’s what it takes. Trying something out to see if it tastes good.
CYNTHIA: If we like something that we created, we will put it out as a special to see how people take to it.
SAL: That’s how the shrimp and fish tacos made it on the menu. We put it out as a special, and people loved it.