A mother and daughter serve up vibrant Mexican cuisine in Wahiawa

Armida Duarte’s restaurant career was launched on the sidelines of the Kapiolani Park soccer field.

She’d pack homemade gorditas for her five children, which led to sharing the crisp Mexican snacks with other kids, which led to requests from families to buy more, so she’d make some extra, which became dozens of extras until …

“I stop when I make a thousand,” Duarte said.

That’s 1,000 gorditas per game day, and there were two game days every weekend.

A gordita begins with a tortilla made thick enough to be split open and stuffed with a meat mixture. Duarte made hers from scratch — tortillas, filling and all. She spent at least four hours cooking, starting on Saturdays and Sundays at 4 a.m.

“We’d wake up to the smell of gorditas,” daughter Miriam Olivas said.

That was in 1992. Four years later Duarte opened El Palenque, a Mexican restaurant on the main drag through Wahiawa town. Gorditas remain a house specialty, filled with chicken, beef or pork in a green or red chili sauce. Duarte still makes the tortillas by hand and to order.

El Palenque was the sole family business until last year, when Olivas opened Ceviche House just outside Schofield Barracks’ Macomb Gate, followed a few months later by Barrio Cafe on Kilani Avenue.

And so it has come to pass that in a 2-mile stretch in the tiny town of Wahiawa, you’ll find three exceptional Mexican restaurants, all tied to this one family. It’s possible to spend a day eating Mexican: breakfast at Barrio, lunch at Ceviche, dinner at Palenque. Drive into town; roll out.

Duarte learned to make gorditas from her mother, Isidra “Chila” Tamayo, who owned food stands in Juarez, Mexico. Duarte actually studied cosmetology and worked in a hair salon — one of many enterprises the family ran in order to keep 11 children employed and fed.

“It wasn’t till she moved to Hawaii that we realized how good her food was,” her daughter said. “It’s in the blood, that’s what my mom says all the time.”

The family moved to Hawaii in 1992 from Los Angeles (before that, El Paso, Texas) and lived in Waikiki, then Salt Lake. Four years later they all got on a bus for the move to Wahiawa, Olivas said. “The bus dropped us off right in front of El Palenque.” Or rather, the building that would become El Palenque.

Kismet.

More such fortuitous moments would follow. One day, as Duarte was working outside getting ready for opening day, “these soldiers passed — Mexican soldiers from Schofield. … They called me ‘senora’ and asked what the place was going to be,” Duarte said. “These three guys, they told everyone on the base, so when I opened it was full crazy. Crazy full.”

It made for a crazy, busy life.

At the start her children were ages 8 to 18. Every day for Duarte began early with prep work at the restaurant. “I come back home and I take them to school, and I go back to work.” She closed at 2 p.m. to get the kids home and make dinner, then she was back at work at 4 p.m. to reopen for dinner at 5.

This went on seven days a week for seven or eight years, until Olivas, the oldest child, who started out as a waitress, was able to run the restaurant. Then it became possible to take a vacation. Now 54, Duarte still works the same long hours, but she actually takes a day off every week — the restaurant is closed Mondays.

Duarte opened Palenque with a comida corrida menu — a fixed-price meal of soup, entree and dessert. “But people just wanted an enchilada with rice and beans, or a burrito,” she said. She switched to the more familiar Mexican platillos (plates, original price $4.95), offering chili relleno, pork chili verde (with green chili sauce) and beef chili colorado (red chili sauce). Oh, and menudo (tripe soup) — 80 pounds on Saturdays, 60 pounds on Sundays. “By 1 o’clock it’s gone.”

The menu has expanded to many more Mexican standards, although it’s still a tiny, six-table restaurant. Duarte has help from another daughter, Erica, but continues to do most of the cooking. “I still open for dinner til 9 o’clock, and if I don’t have a dishwasher, I stay and do the dishes.”

The work ethic is contagious. Or perhaps it’s in the genes.

Olivas is at work at 5 a.m. daily, making ceviche for her first restaurant. Barrio Cafe opens at 7 a.m. for breakfast, closing at 3 p.m. She is the sole cook.

Unlike her mom, though, she doesn’t do dinner, reserving time for her husband and two children, and both her restaurants are closed Sundays.

Olivas said she took the lease on the Barrio site with the idea that El Palenque would move to the larger location, but once the papers were signed her mother said she wanted to stay put. “She turns around and says, ‘Why don’t you start your own?’”

She suspects that may have been her mom’s plan all along. “I’m certain it was my mom pushing me. She knew Ceviche House was too small for me. It was her way of saying it was time to swim.”

Ceviche House offers a limited menu of chilled foods that can be made ahead. At Barrio Cafe the food is far more complex, everything cooked to order.

Olivas meant for the menu to reflect the spirit of the cafe’s name. “Barrio is ‘neighborhood.’ … I knew I wanted to cook the stuff I ate in the neighborhood.”

But “neighborhood” is not a singular concept. It comprises Wahiawa, where she’s lived for 20-plus years; neighborhoods in Mexico, where she spent summers; neighborhoods in El Paso and California that she’s lived in or visited. Her Barrio Salad served on a plate-size slab of puffed wheat is based on a street food of Juarez, Mexico; her carne asada french fries mirror snacks picked up in San Diego.

Restaurant life has been one of sacrifice, Duarte admits. Her marriage ended. Her youngest son once asked about the “closed” sign at El Palenque: “He told me, ‘Why don’t you put on the sign, closed to be with my kids?’ That time he made me cry.”

Still, owning her business, being her own boss, is a path she prefers over working for someone else. “Because we are family. We are normal.”

Olivas says it is remarkable how far her mother has come, having started with limited English and schooling that ended before high school. “I admire what she’s done — one, being a minority; two, being female; and three, with a lack of education. She worked hard and got us through. ”

THE RESTAURANTS

1. Barrio Cafe

672 Kilani Ave.; 622-3003

>> Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily except Sundays (the restaurant will be closed on Memorial Day weekend, reopening May 31)

>> Menu highlights: Machaca (beef, tomatoes, jalapeno and scrambled eggs); Mexi Loco Moco (chili verde, rice and eggs); fish tacos; Churro French Toast (just like it sounds). Entrees $10-$15

>> Also: The Leilehua Band Burrito, designed by the high school band, is stuffed with Spam; 10 percent of sales go to the music program.

2. El Palenque

177 S. Kamehameha Highway; 622-5829

>> Hours: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-9 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. Closed Mondays.

>> Menu highlights: Gorditas, chili relleno, chicken mole, tamales, tostadas, sope. Entrees $10-$15.

>> Also: It was named after a restaurant in Juarez, Mexico, that Miriam Olivas used to visit when the family lived in El Paso, Texas. It was a 10-cent ride on a red bus across the border, and the restaurant was right at the bus stop. Years later she learned that her husband, Omar, had made the same trip as a teen. Her mother said that was good enough reason to call her restaurant Palenque. The word is Spanish for “stockade.”

3. Ceviche House

1718 Wilikina Drive (Kemo‘o Farms building); 286-8590

>> Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily except Sundays

>> Menu highlights: House special (shrimp and octopus on a chicharron slab with tamarind sauce); fish ceviche with cucumber, tomato and onions. Prices $11-$15.

>> Also: Come after 2 p.m., order takeout and enjoy it out back along Lake Wilson, with a cocktail from Kemo‘o Farms Pub next door.