SALISBURY (Maryland) DAILY TIMES

July 9, 2006

A taste of home

By Deborah Gates
Staff Writer

MARION STATION -- Almost daily, workers cross the road in front of Custom Pak, a packaging house of whole tomatoes off Route 13 in Westover, for a homemade lunch from wagon parked in the field on the other side. There are hamburgers and tortas. But meat tacos garnished with a pepper and tomato sauce, chopped onion, cilantro instead of lettuce and lime juice to drizzle on top are a favorite.

A $1.50 buys one; four are $6.

Everything is home cooked," said Carlos Zagal, a native of Morelos, Mexico, who rolls out the mobile food grill weekdays with his wife, Maria. Tacos are made of chopped steak or cow tongue grilled on site and maseca, or corn-flour tortillas, that Maria Zagal kneaded earlier.

"Taco Bell is very different," he said. "American people usually don't get to eat real Mexican food."

Neither do the thousands of Mexicans and Hispanics who eat out on the Lower Shore, says Miguel Gutierrez, owner of the Fiesta-Mexicana business that includes the lunch wagon, a grocery store in Salisbury and a grocery-cafe in Marion Station.

Four months ago, the native of Mexico launched the lunch wagon, the region's first known mobile food service specializing in authentic, Hispanic offerings and the closest likeness "to a taco stand in Mexico" on Maryland's Lower Shore, Gutierrez said.

"We want to make tacos the traditional way," he said. "We are shooting for the traditional sense of Mexico."

Gutierrez opened Fiesta-Mexicana in Marion Station six months ago in a vacant commercial building on Route 413 for a niche in the market of hundreds of Hispanic residents who for years have worked the agricultural region in tomato packing plants or at construction sites in Crisfield and Princess Anne.

The grocery stocks cereals, canned goods and other staples, and offers money transfer and phone card services similar to Gutierrez' Fiesta-Mex market at the Goliath Shopping Center off South Salisbury Boulevard.

But the café in Marion Station is a gathering place for rural workers in canneries, fields and at construction sites and a migrant camp in Westover that each summer fills with seasonal workers -- many Mexican, mostly Hispanic.

Inez and Blas Carrizales, who arrived in Marion Station two weeks ago from their home in Florida, ate there on a recent lunch break from their job nearby at Six'Ls Packing. Food is prepared like they make it back home and a welcome break from commercial imitation.

"We have a hard time finding spices like spices; this is nice," said Inez Carrizales over beef tacos.

Rogelio Gonzalez is cafe manager and cook, and says the increase in business the last few months has stirred talk of a larger store closer to Princess Anne.

"We are looking for a bigger place, between Westover and Princess Anne because we want to be closer to both places," he said. "Mexican people complained they wanted home-made tortillia. They got it, and we get more Mexican and American customers."

Many who can not dine at the café grab a home-cooked lunch from the passing wagon. "We sell mostly cow tongue tacos," Zagal said of the Mexican delicacy recognized on menus as lengua. "On average, we go to about 10 work sites. There are about 50 customers a day."

Don Martin, general manager at Custom Pak, said the lunch wagon underscores the region's continuous growth and job opportunities. "It is good they're having a business to come; the area is growing," he said. "A sizable number of workers here are (Hispanic)."

Gutierrez is planning a grocery expansion in Salisbury that will also have a café with homemade tacos and other authentic Mexican dishes. As early as next month, a Fiesta-Mex could open on property he has acquired on Newton Street near Peninsula Regional Medical Center and not far from a growing residential community of Mexicans southwest of downtown.