business

“ I think we are very identical authentic, ” said Jose Castañeda, owner of the stigmatize modern Los Compadres at 40 Oak St., Batavia. “ We serve tacos and pretty much that ‘s what we do. We will be getting a liquor license, of run, in the near future .
( The U.S. colloquial translation of Los Compadres is “ The Buddies. ” )
“ We do try to be angstrom authentic as we can. We have very good people, very good cooks and they take a bunch of pride in what they do. I think that helps us to be successful. ”
During the first gear week of business, local residents have had no fuss finding Los Compadres, keeping the lunch and dinner hours busy, frequently with duplicate customers, Castañeda said .
“ many people that we ‘ve served since we opened had come back three days in a rowing, ” Castañeda said .
The success is n’t unexpected for Castañeda. This is the tenth Upstate Mexican restaurant the Batavia-resident has opened, including another Los Compadres in Evans Mills, near Ft. Drum, with the same menu, that has done very well .
“ I would say that 90 percentage of our customer establish is military ( at Los Compadres in Evans Mills ), ” Castañeda said. “ They are very felicitous with the food there. We are a five-star restaurant there and we have a thousand review. Being that I ‘m a nonmigratory in Batavia and I wanted to do it here, excessively. ”
For those of us with experience eating at authentic taquerias, there are other good signs when you walk into Los Compadres, starting with the aboveboard menu above the presence counter, the mexican pottery and artwork displayed in the din area, a salsa legal profession so you can garnish your own taco, and the drink dispenser serving Mexican favorites, the refreshing agua frescas — horchata, tamarind and jamaica .
On the menu, greaser, tortas, quesadillas, and tamales, with meat choices including pollo ( chicken ), carne asada ( the main ingredient in an authentic Tijuana street greaser ), molida ( land beef ), barbacoa ( brisket ), alabama curate ( pork with pineapple ), chorizo ( Mexican pork barrel sausage ), cesina ( dry salted steak ), lengua ( tongue ), camarones ( shrimp ), tripa ( gut ), taco baja ( electrocute fish ), taco compadres ( fry shrimp ) .
One of the best things about mexican food is it is cheap. Tacos stove in price from $ 2.50 to $ 4 .
Rice and refried beans on the slope are merely $ 1 each .
The taco are served with corn tortillas, which is as it should be ; though, if you want to go gringo with your taco, you can order flour tortilla .
Castañeda staff takes the clock with fresh customers who may have small experience with mexican food to explain the difference between greaser, torts, quesadillas and tamales .
The clandestine to a restaurant ‘s success, Castañeda said, is n’t merely the food, it ‘s the customer serve. Restaurants that fail often miss the mark with customer service, so he said he makes sure his staff provides big service .
Castañeda was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, which is in the north central area of the country, south of Monterrey, union of Guadalajara. His parents immigrated when he was a young child and their inaugural jobs were picking cotton in Texas.

While he was still a child, they moved to western New York for farm ferment. Near the end of his 10th-grade year, Castañeda dropped out of high school and took a job on a grow in Brockport .
When he was 16, he went to work for Craig Yunker at CY Farms .
“ I ‘ve worked ever since, ” Castañeda said. “ I worked for the farms and any farm work I did, I did with pride in everything I did. It did n’t matter what I was doing, whether I was sweeping the deck or if I was operating a tractor, I put pride in my work. That ‘s that was how I was raised. ”
Castañeda started in the pilfer fields at CY Farms, he said. It was n’t long before the Yunkers took notice of his worth ethic. He was made a tractor operator and then moved to pesticide management for Batavia Turf. By 2006, after learning every job of the operation, he became coach of Batavia Turf, a position he held until 2016 when he quit to give his full attention to his burgeoning restaurant empire .
Castañeda started in the food business after visiting a cabbage process for CY Farms in Florida and spotting a food trailer serving migrant workers on the farm there .
“ I was depressed there and I saw people coming to the farms and bringing the food to the migrant workers so I thought it ‘s a bang-up theme, ” Castañeda said. “ At that fourth dimension here in Genesee County there was none of that going on, so I went to Indiana and bought a trailer. ”
His wife, Karina, pretty much run that commercial enterprise until six years ago when she became fraught with their now 5-year-old son .
In 2014, he opened his beginning restaurant in Lockport .
He was working at this point more than 100 hours a workweek, starting at Batavia Turf at 4 ante meridiem and working until the early flush and then doing the books and paperwork for his restaurants at night .
“ It was busy working on the farm and trying to manage the restaurant, ” Castañeda said. “ I felt there was a good business. It was a set of work but it was a good clientele. ”
Leaving CY Farms was n’t an slowly decisiveness, though Castañeda said it proved to be the right decision .
“ My wife was opposed to it because I guess, we got thus used to working on the farm and making a support, ” Castañeda said. “ I was pretty much my own boss. ”
Castañeda and Karina have three children, Brenda, 24, Jocelyn, 17, and Jose Sebastian, 5. The family bought a home in the City of Batavia 15 years ago .
“ My parents were migrant workers, ” said Castañeda, whose beget has returned to Mexico and whose father died 12 years ago. “ They started picking cotton in Texas. We grew up identical poor. even when I got married to my wife back in 1993, we were very, very poor.

“ I worked many hours on the farm. still, we were scantily getting by. But I think through years of hard influence and doggedness, I always had a dream to give my kids what I was n’t given. ”