Lake Norman family restaurant features mom’s recipes from southern Mexico
Maria Pacheco had no stove, grill or oven when she cooked for her family in the Pacific Coast town of San Jose de la Flores, population about 1,000, just outside Guadalajara in southern Mexico.
Yet she made “the best, most flavorful, colorful and all-natural meals you could have ever tasted, all from a simple wood-fire-style pit” using fresh natural herbs and spices, daughter Rosalva “Rosi” Holder told CharlotteFive.
“Her love, skill and dedication were always displayed in the wonderful meals she served her family,” Holder, formerly Castillo Pacheco, said about her mom, who died in 2009. “She was loved by everyone.”
Holder and her husband, Yoube, named their new Pachecos Tortilleria & Grill in memory of her mom. The restaurant, off Interstate 77 Exit 36 in Mooresville, uses her mom’s recipes and natural herbs and spices, Rosi Holder said.
Spices, natural herbs like mom used
The idea for the restaurant sprouted over a decade ago, Yoube Holder said.
His wife told him one day that she was tired of cleaning hotel rooms. Why not cook for others the types of meals her mom made, she asked. We can’t find them anywhere here, she said, and we could include our three daughters and two sons in the business.
It also was a natural endeavor for Yoube Holder, who grew up in Zebulon and worked for Charlotte-based Morrison Cafeterias and related companies for decades, including as a chef and assistant manager.
The couple met through Rosi’s brothers and sisters and were married in 2000.
Yoube Holder speaks English, his wife Spanish.
“We used to laugh and joke, even though we didn’t know what the other was saying,” Yoube Holder said.
In May, after a complete redo of a former Cici’s Pizza, including the addition of a bar and colorful wall murals, the couple opened their restaurant in the Consumer Square (Super Walmart) center off West Plaza Drive (N.C. 150).
Specials change daily, and some of the meals take three to four hours to prepare, Yoube Holder said. So the couple are at the restaurant at 4 a.m. each day and stay until 10 or 11 p.m., he said.
Specials include everything from bistec ranchero ($12.99), pan-seared beef steak with potatoes, chilies and onions in a tomato-based sauce, to menudo ($15.99), a traditional Mexican soup made with cow’s stomach in broth with a red chili pepper base.
Seafood specials such as shrimp and lobster quesadillas ($18.99) also reflect Maria Pacheco’s creations, the Holders said. Her siete mares (seven oceans) soup included shrimp, crab, clams, oysters, scallops and cod. The family offers that soup as a special for $17.99.
Daily lunch specials are $7.99.
“Amazing, beautiful, natural”
Always available entrees include:
▪ Barbacoa Rey ($10 a pound, $13.99 a plate), beef, goat or lamb heavily seasoned with chilies and spices and slow-cooked until tender.
▪ Carnitas ($9 a pound, $12.99 a plate), fried pieces of seasoned and slow-cooked Boston butt pork.
▪ Chicarrones ($9.59), fried pork belly, pork cracklings and pork skins.
▪ Polo asado ($10), 4-4 1/2 pounds of grilled chicken in a zesty, earthy and citrusy marinade.
▪ Costillas de puerco ($9.59 a pound), pork spare ribs in a garlic sauce marinade.
All thanks to the lifelong influence of her mom, Rosi Holder said.
Her mom’s meals reflected who she was: “amazing, beautiful, natural, flavorful and colorful,” Rosi Holder said as translated into English by her husband on Friday.
“Which is the way we cook here, with all of Maria Pacheco’s recipes,” Yoube Holder said.
Pachecos Tortilleria & Grill
Location: 168 Norman Station Blvd., Suite Z, Mooresville, N.C., 28117
