Jose's

In downtown Petoskey, there’s a Mexican restaurant overlooking Little Traverse Bay on Petoskey Street between Lake and Mitchell. It’s a pleasant place called Jose’s and on any given day during the winter (and the rest of the year) the restaurant is filled. 
     
    I first heard about this restaurant when a coworker ordered guacamole over the phone. After she hung up, she preceded to rave over the quality of Jose’s cuisine. Being somewhat new to the area, I came upon the information later than most and felt  as though the entire town of Petoskey had failed to inform me of something. In reality the information regarding its existence had not purposefully been withheld from me, but my ignorance was met by strange looks suggesting that I spent the majority of my life living under rocks. “What,” they would say, “you don’t know about Jose’s,” and they’d just shake their heads.

    I set out to discover this place and upon my entry was greeted by a man whose defining characteristic was a smile, so refined, that it was as if the rest of his face had been created to accommodate it. This is Jose. He stands before his grill proudly, ready to create at a moments notice; and not just the ordinary expected fare, but award winning authentic Mexican food. The evidence for this hangs above almost every table with plaques inscribed, “Best Guacamole, Best Burrito, Best Enchillada,” as judged by the local people of Northern Michigan.

    I order fresh guacamole with home made chips and a quesadilla. Jose’s beautiful sisters bring my food and water. I take one bite, and I am back in Guadalajara, with a group of friends who knew the right places to dine. In fact, the food I was having here in Michigan, was better than the food I had in Mexico. If anyone happened to see my bank statement between the months of October, to say now, they would have discovered a pattern in my purchases—a debit statement with Jose’s, Jose’s, Jose’s, Jose’s, Jose’s.  
 
    My one question—how? How could food be this good? I began to suspect it was enchanted, witchcraft perhaps. Or maybe the Mexican Mariachi music had hypnotized me. My conspiracy theories slowly subsided, as I quickly became friends with everyone who worked there and began to witness that the real magic is in the kitchen and the people. I sat down with Blanca and Sandra to hear their story.

    Blanca: “We grew up in León in the state of Guanajuato, close to Mexico City. We were poor, you would consider us very poor. There were nine of us. My father was a carpenter. The living room of the house we lived in was the bedroom for my parents. The other room, the bedroom, is where the rest of us slept. There was a little shop room for my father.  That’s where he did his carpentry work and where my brother slept. There was a small shower, no hot water. In comparison, we are so grateful for what we have today. 
   
    We went to California first. We all lived in California for awhile. Jose moved to Milwaukee with his kids. Sandra moved back to Mexico with the rest of the family and I moved to Michigan with my husband at the time. But my mother stayed in California, taking care of the elderly. It’s strange to think that looking back I have lived in Michigan longer than I have lived in Mexico.    

    One day I was in a Northern Michigan Mexican restaurant (name omitted). I had this craving for Mexican food and what I found really wasn’t like authentic Mexican food, but it was all we had at the time. Anyway, it was summer and we had to wait thirty minutes. Finally, I’m in the door and I’m thinking Oh yes, now we get to eat. Then they give us the chips and the salsa and then waited another thirty minutes before our meal arrived. I remember telling my husband, Brian, “This is ridiculous, waiting for food for almost an hour and a half. That’s stupid. We should open a real Mexican restaurant!” He thought for a moment before saying, “Well tell your mom, if she’s interested we’ll help her.”    

    “Really?” I said half surprised at the prospect. “That would be pretty cool. My mom always wanted to have a restaurant.” The next day I have her on the phone, the excitement still fresh.    

    “If you’d have asked me six years ago. I would have said yes, but I’m a little bit old and I don’t think I can do that,” my mother said.    
    There goes that idea. I gave it time.Then I had Jose’s wife on the phone. She said, “I’m interested.” And I said quizzically, “Really?” You see at that time Jose was working painting trucks and before that he was making cheese. But the idea of it held me. I started to remember a time in Mexico, we had these stands where we sold food. It brought back memories of when my mom worked in a restaurant for many years before coming here. I’m back in the present again, Jose’s wife is still on the phone. She said, “Let me talk to Jose and see what he says.  
 
    The next time I hear from him, he said “Sure!” (Although I think his wife talked him into it.) Jose then moved out here in September of 2005. He moved in with his family. A lot of work went into that restaurant. The whole family came and helped set up. The counter was hand built by Jose and my brothers helped him install it. By Thanksgiving of that year, we spent the holiday finishing that restaurant, with ten people laboring. We opened on the 12th of December.    

    The first year was busier than we expected. Things kept getting added to the menu. We wanted to keep it simple because if you want to sell things fresh, you have to prepare a lot more that usual. Later we added more items like the Mexican Pizza, Rellenos (peppers stuffed with meat or cheese). One of our greatest successes is the Tamale. We cook the meat, and make the salsa and dough separately. We wrap them in a corn husk around matza with meat or cheese and steam cook them, so the flavor of the corn husk transfers and absorbs.          

 There is a lot of memory that food can trigger. I think about life back there often. In Mexico you get to spend more time with your family. We have two hundred relatives in the same city within thirty minutes of each other. So for holidays there are going to be parties everywhere and you can go to every single one of them. People try to get together every Sunday for family time. Here, you if can do it, fine, if you can’t, that’s fine too. What I miss over there is the family time where I can see twenty cousins in one day.  

    In Mexico we didn’t have many commodities. I would say I don’t have anywhere close to the things I have today. Owning a car, going to school, taking hot shower or enjoying a warm jacket is not taken for granted. To have a house that has three or four bedrooms--it is something that we didn’t have. The way of life is so much better here, than we would have over there. Because over there only some people have a washer and a dryer. Many don’t. But the good things about not having a washer and dryer is that you can hire someone to do your washing and drying and ironing and everything for you. So you are employing someone whose money goes directly into the local economy. Here you just throw everything into the machine, because if you try to buy help its expensive. Whereas over there you can do it. So if you have some money, you can live a nice life in Mexico because you can have somebody that comes and cooks for you or cleans for you or tends your garden and laundry and someone to take care of your kids.

    That is a benefit there, but you have to have money for it. You can do that here too but you need to have a lot of money. Many Americans retire to Mexico with their pensions and have that way of life. The cost of living is cheaper too. But If I want to have Nike shoes or Levi’s, its a lot more expensive over there, brand names are more expensive. Toothpaste is too. Here one wouldn’t expect that of toothpaste.  
 
    The need for an authentic restaurant was apparent. If you go to Mexico or Latin America, you will never find rice made the way they do in the other “Mexican” restaurants around here. They use a tomato paste. That is not Mexican. I have never seen anybody from Mexico cook it that way. I think everything they use is either canned or cooked to emulate a well known “Mexican fast food restaurant.” (For the record, there are no Taco Bell’s in Mexico). The beans they use are covered in seasonings like pepper. You will rarely see us use table pepper. It is not one of our food spices. What are supposed to be pinto beans look like small black beans covered in dots. Mexico has the simplest kitchen because the most common additives you will see us use are garlic and salt.”

    At the end of the interview I had to ask;

    “What makes the food so good then?”

    Sandra: “Actually, a lot of people come in and say, “show me how you do it.” I tell them the ingredients, where to get them and how to make things like Pico de Gallo” but they come back and say, “you do something to it.” No, I just make it with love. That was my mama’s recipe. You need to love food. You need to.

    Blanca: “You need to put love into it. Then it will taste good.”

    Jose’s is located at:309 Petoskey St. 
    Petoskey, MI 49770 • (231) 348-3299

Parker Marshall is a Petoskey area writer.