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Traditional southern crop is gaining ground in Cowley County

By DAVID WOLMAN
Traveler Staff Writer

Hispanic business owners in Arkansas City have traveled different paths to call this place home. They all share one common theme, though: authenticity.

Using family recipes and ideas from their native countries, every hispanic business strives to be original.

Ramirez' Green Door La Familia Mexican Restaurant, operating since 1976, continues to serve its selection of freshly cooked food.

Noted items on the menu includes its selection of fajita meats and the Create Your Own Platter meal.

Patrons choose between one to three items on the menu for their meal.

The restaurant is located at 714 W. Madison Ave.

El Torero has been serving patrons since 2000.

Brad Bowen, of Burden, has been eating at the restaurant every Monday for approximately five years.

"It doesn't have the feel of a chain store," Bowen said. "Very comfortable and has a personable staff."

El Torero is located at 2123 N. Summit St.

The newest hispanic business in town, La Favorita Market, features grocery products straight from owner William Figueroa's native El Salvador. Loroco is a flower that can be cut up into a garnish and placed in salads and soups. Yuca, a cousin of the potato, is sweet and can be eaten raw; a wonderful garnish for soups.

Not to be outdone, cactus is one of the hottest commodities at the market, located at 1603 N. Summit, selling at a rate of ten pounds per week.

The sharp thorns have already been removed.

La Favorita Market has been opened for approximately one year.

While Figueroa is excited about the potential of the business and the possibility of expanding his ventures in the near future, he stated that he only wants to start one thing at a time.

Figueroa and his immediate family moved to New York City from El Salvador in 1993 looking for a job opportunity that would financially support the rest of his family back in his homeland.

Jobs in El Salvador were scarce and offered drastically lower incomes in comparison to companies in the United States.

After two years of not finding a good opportunity in the Big Apple, he moved his family to Emporia.

In 1996, he quit his job there and moved his family to Arkansas City.

Figueroa knew one of the owners at PPI Process and began working for him shortly after arriving here.

He would process approximately 1,100 cows per day while working at the facility.

Once the company changed owners a few years later, he realized it was time to make a change of his own.

With two daughters and a wife to take care of, he invested a good sum of money and opened the market.

Hopefully, sometime down the road, depending on the store's success, Figueroa would like to open some form of auto shop. His brother in El Salvador repairs tires.

Extra motivation for William Figueroa is to assist his sister in Virginia with the purchase of a home.

"She does not have the money to buy a home," Figueroa said.

He would like to pay off the market in the next four years.

The Providencia Bakery, located on Eighth Street in the Redwood Village, is in its second year of serving homemade sweet breads and other assorted pastries.

Owner Eleazar Mendez says the business' main focus is on the bread it sells. Powder, sugar, pineapples and pumpkin are just a few of the accompaniments he places inside the bread mix before it is placed in the oven.

Mendez worked in his father's bakery in Mexico learning the steps to make a delicious piece of baked bread.

His godmother also owned a bakery in Mexico.

The immediate Mendez family moved to Arkansas City from Laredo four years ago.

A family friend told them how nice the people and town are. And as an added incentive, a bakery of this type had not been opened in the city.

"It is really calm here," daughter Melissa Mendez said. "Most bad kids don't have anything to do."

After two years of gathering money, the Mendez family opened the bakery in 2004.

Since that time, the bakery has produced mixed results.

"It hasn't been the way he wanted it to be, but it is doing okay," Melissa Mendez said.

He has received an offer from other people to open a bakery in Waco, Texas. Mendez has not taken up the offer, as of yet, but is not discounting his options.

"My father wants to open a business that sells bread," Melissa Mendez said.

La Birria Mexican Restaurant, also located in the Redwood Village shopping complex, offers authentic mexican food of its own.

Features on the menu include homemade burritos, langua and tacos.

The restaurant is open Thursday-Sunday every week.

Latino's Import and Videos sells videos and food products from spanish-speaking countries.

The store is located at 912 N. Summit St.

Above: Maria Mendez places a fresh batch of family-made bread into the oven. The Providencia Bakery can place fruit and other toppings in its bread.