La Poblanita Restaurant in SJB offers authentic dishes in a
vibrant setting
Imagine walking through the historic downtown of Puebla, near
Mexico City. As you take in the town’s Spanish architecture, you
come across a small cantina. The smells coming from the small
kitchen seemingly draw you to the nearest table.
La Poblanita Restaurant in SJB offers authentic dishes in a vibrant setting
Imagine walking through the historic downtown of Puebla, near Mexico City. As you take in the town’s Spanish architecture, you come across a small cantina. The smells coming from the small kitchen seemingly draw you to the nearest table.
A visit to La Poblanita restaurant in San Juan Bautista is a lot like that imaginary trip – from the paintings and pottery brought in from Puebla to the authentic, home-style cooking of owner Irene Teruel, La Poblanita is a taste of Mexico.
“Everything we serve is homemade; Mom makes all of our sauces from scratch,” Jose Teruel, Irene’s son and the restaurant’s manager, said. “Nothing we serve is canned. We try hard to keep everything fresh.”
La Poblanita’s dishes reflect the regional cuisine of Puebla, where the Teruels lived before immigrating to California in the early 1970s. The restaurant’s signature dishes are the Chile Rellenos – mild, fresh poblano chiles filled with Monterey jack cheese then dipped in a lightly whipped egg batter and deep fried – and the Mole Poblano, a roasted chicken breast covered in fresh mole sauce made from toasted cocoa beans, ground dried chiles, a variety of spices and a hint of dark chocolate.
“We want to be the restaurant you ome to where you can eat like you are in Mexico,” Jose said.
Jose was 5 years old when his family moved to the United States, and was about 7 when his parents, Irene and Everado, opened a small take-out diner in Mountain View in 1973.
“Mom is an entrepreneur. She was working as a teacher’s aide, but she had always wanted her own restaurant,” Jose said. “They bought this little hole-in-the-wall, and my grandfather told them they were crazy. I would wash dishes for them, because if I did a good job, I could go to the movie theater across the street.”
They named their restaurant La Poblanita and business grew steadily, but Jose was not around to witness his parents’ hard work. His family sent him to Puebla when he was 10 to finish school. After he graduated from college, his grandmother told him it was time to head back to the states.
“My grandmother said to thank my parents for sending me to school, I had to go work for them in the restaurant for one year,” he said. “I ended up working for them for five or six years, until they closed for a while to remodel, so I went to another restaurant, the Tied House in San Jose.”
In 1998, after 25 years, La Poblanita closed its doors when the Teruels’ rent was raised from about $5,500 to $11,000 a month, Jose said.
The family spent a few years away from the restaurant business, and Jose went to work for Frankie, Johnnie & Luigi’s Too, an Italian restaurant and pizzeria in Mountain View. Once a year, the Teruels would drive to San Juan Bautista to visit the mission, shop the galleries and eat in the local restaurants. A few years after Everado died in 2001, Irene felt she was ready to start cooking again, and chose San Juan Bautista as the location for the new restaurant. They opened their doors on Nov. 20, 2006 and were an instant hit with the Christmas crowds shopping and attending performances at El Teatro Campesino. Although business has dropped some since then, Jose said he is not worried.
“I strongly believe in our food and our service,” he said. “We’ve been here just about a year, and it takes time to build up a clientele. But if you can survive the first year, you’re going to be OK. And if you can survive in a recession, as we are, you’ll make it.”
While Irene’s commitment to making food from scratch and using only the freshest available ingredients sets La Poblanita apart from other restaurants, Jose said. He is reluctant to compare his mother’s restaurant to others specializing in Mexican cuisine.
“We are totally different,” he said. “I want to feature authentic dishes. You don’t go to a sushi bar to eat French fries. I didn’t even want to put burritos on the menu, but Mom said we should, so we have two.”
Along with the chile rellenos and the mole poblano, other items on La Poblanita’s menu worth trying are the homemade soups – chicken soup made with fresh tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, cilantro, avocado and two pieces of chicken and on Fridays and Saturdays, Menudo – the carne asada plate and the enchiladas de mole. Guests are served warmed tortilla chips while they wait for their meal, along with two salsas made from scratch – a pico de gallo mild salsa featuring fresh, chopped tomatoes, onions and cilantro and a dark, thin salsa with a taste of chiles and a bit of a kick. The homemade guacamole is also tasty – instead of mashing the avocados, Irene uses fresh avocado chunks and blends them with small bits of tomatoes and a hint of lime juice.
Eventually, Jose plans to open an art gallery in San Juan, featuring work from Puebla artists similar to the pieces on display in his mother’s restaurant. The vibrant yellow walls with red and green trim are filled with original oil paintings featuring scenes of Puebla or tin-types of Mexican banditos. Shelves boast beautifully hand-painted ceramic pitchers and small statues from different Mexican villages. Jose also hopes to have a tequila bar where he can display and offer tastings of the vintage tequilas he collects.
“We treat everyone like family, from our customers to our employees,” he said. “I tell all my employees to greet people with a smile and to be nice. We want people to leave happy. I feel we offer our services with humilde, humility. When you give from your heart, customers will want to come back.”
