Woodbury staple, Café Fiesta, closes its doors after nearly 30 years
Amid the colorful decor of stringed lights and clusters of intricately cut paper banners in the dining room at Café Fiesta, an aproned Mama Beta watches over patrons and workers. She's there in spirit, in two large photos. In one, she clutches a rooster to her chest; in another she stands before a gray donkey.
Mama Beta, whose full name is Roberta Valle, is the 90-year-old mother of Camerino Valle, co-owner of the Mexican restaurant off Route 32. Everyone knows her as the namesake of the restaurant's locally-famous homemade salsa and the face of Café Fiesta.
Camerino, whom customers and family call "Cam" or "Papa," shot the photos of his mother while visiting her in the mountains of Guerrero, the Mexican state where he grew up.
She watched over customers last week as they stopped by to pick up their last meals from the restaurant.
After 29 years in business, Cam and his wife, Barbara, closed the doors to Café Fiesta on Monday. While their two youngest sons – Gabe, 28, and Carlos, 31 – sometimes pitched in to help run the restaurant, none of their five sons can spare time from their full-time jobs and busy lives to take over the business.
As Barbara noted, when it opened in the early 1990s, it was one of the only Mexican restaurants in Orange County.
Until the pandemic, the restaurant had spent a quarter of a century open seven days a week, closing only on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Cam and Barbara were hardly able to get away together for more than a few days at a time. If they left, one of their sons would manage the bustling restaurant.
"I am ready to retire from this," Barbara said during an interview at the restaurant May 24.
The couple has many plans for their new free time: Among them, Barbara, 65, is looking forward to converting her minivan into a camper and taking it on cross-country road trips. Cam, 58, plans to visit Mama Beta at her home in Tepetlapa, Guerrero, a rural Mexican town about five hours south of Mexico City.
The birth of Café Fiesta
Cam crossed the U.S. border from Mexico with four other family members in the early 1980s. They traveled to New York to join family living on Long Island. Cam said his family was operating two Mexican restaurants at the time, one on Long Island and another in Queens.
Through connections in the restaurant industry, Cam received word that some workers were needed to help out at the 24/7 diner, Bright Star, in Woodbury.
It was a different era in Woodbury. There weren't a bunch of big box stores and chain restaurants. Woodbury Commons was there, but it was smaller. In an interview at their restaurant, Barbara and Gabe said dining options in the area back then featured just an Italian restaurant and a diner.
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Barbara was working as a waitress at Bright Star in 1982 when she met Cam. He started working there as a dishwasher. One day when one of the line cooks failed to show for work, the boss asked Cam if he wanted to learn how to fill in in the kitchen, kicking off his career as a cook.
Cam and Barbara's romantic relationship quickly flourished, despite the fact that she is seven years older than he is, Barbara noted.
Though Cam and his brothers were eligible for then-President Ronald Reagan's amnesty program, Cam gained his citizenship after marrying Barbara in 1987.
In the early 1990s, the owner of a restaurant down the road from Bright Star wanted to sell his business. Barbara described it as an Italian-owned taco place. The Valles were interested, but they couldn't come to an agreement with the owner. But in late 1991, when the building was vacant, their opportunity had arrived.
"I saw the sign for it and was like, 'Barbara, let's go get it. Now is the time,'" Cam recalled.
"I was very hesitant," Barbara said.
While Cam had dreamed of one day owning his own restaurant, Barbara's passion was focused on raising a family. Cam was 28 at the time they opened Café Fiesta and Barbara was 35.
"I didn't think I could do both," Barbara said. "And we didn't really have any money at that time, but that didn't stop him," she said of her husband.
They collected $20,000 from friends and family to start out and opened the restaurant in May 1992.
"We were young and said, 'We can do it. We can do it.' But we didn't realize how hard it was going to be," Barbara said.
Game changer: $1 Taco Mondays
In their quest to be "different," the Valles' youngest son, Cam and Gabe, invented Taco Mondays, as opposed to the more alliterative Taco Tuesdays.
The dollar-taco night that began around 2006 or 2007 was an instant success, turning Mondays from their slowest day to their busiest.
"It was like all hell broke loose after that," Barbara said. "It was packed."
They typically sold 900 to 950 tacos on those days, Cam said.
To jazz things up a bit, Cam said the employees would place bets on how many tacos they would sell each week. Whoever's guess was closest to the end result received $10.
Support during the pandemic
When the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, the Valles closed Café Fiesta for two weeks. It was the first time they had closed down the restaurant for more than a day.
Once the restaurant reopened for takeout, they decided to cancel the dollar-taco tradition and closed on Mondays. They weren't able to accommodate large numbers of patrons inside because of the pandemic regulations and they had limited staff.
Still, the restaurant enjoyed its busiest Cinco de Mayo ever in May 2020.
"We stopped taking orders at 6 o'clock because it was so busy," Gabe said.
To survive the pandemic, it helped that the restaurant already had a steady takeout business.
"I think the community really circled around us," Gabe said. "We were busy. Very busy."
Comfort foods from two cuisines
Given Barbara and Cam's experience working at a diner, they created a menu for Café Fiesta chock-full of familiar American comfort foods locals love and Mexican foods featuring Cam's Guerrero-inspired flair.
It was part of their strategy to acclimate customers to what may seem like intimidating, unknown Mexican dishes. It also provided a safety net for parents who may have needed a backup if their kids did not like Mexican food, the Valles said.
Items like grilled cheese, turkey club sandwiches and burgers are popular with customers, Barbara said. But so is their "orange sauce," homemade Mama Beta salsa and mole sauce. The orange sauce, which Barbara noted looks like cheese but isn't, is a popular condiment in Mexican entrees that Cam made less spicy to suit American taste buds.
A home for anyone
"Our restaurant always had a very homey vibe," said Carlos, one of Cam and Barbara's sons. "It's a very safe space to be in. And I think part of the reason we built such a good relationship with the community is that my mom never said no to anyone about anything."
It operated as a local hub. Barbara would have the restaurant sponsor any local sports team that asked, whether it was soccer, baseball or roller hockey, Carlos said. They would provide employment opportunities to young people and people with disabilities. Recreation teams would host meetings there. School tutors would work with students in the back of the dining room.
"This would be a place where parents would send their kids to by themselves to go get some food with like $5 because they knew it was a safe place, it was family-owned and there were people always keeping an eye on the kids," Carlos said.
Children's toys used to sit in a corner near the front of the restaurant to entertain kids while their parents ate.
"This is a place that you could come in, you could bring your kids, you could trash the place," Carlos said. His parents and brother laughed and nodded.
"They did!" Barbara said.
"And it wasn't a big deal," Carlos said. "It was like our home."
lbellamy@th-record.com
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Owners of Café Fiesta in Woodbury reflect on long history
