-
- I think my personality
doesn't really fit
-
the proper restaurant.
-
Good morning, mother...
Just kidding.
-
We're ghetto tacos
because I'm ghetto.
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Tacos, boys and girls.
-
(laughs)
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- Good morning! This is...
-
What's your name?
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- Jason.
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- Jason.
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And...
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- What's his job?
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- What?
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Prep?
-
His job's preparation.
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And this is Myra, our cashier.
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Myra.
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And this is our chef, Chef Glo.
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And no more.
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And I am your server for today.
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My name is Noki.
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Actually, there's more.
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Nalou, what's your role?
-
And this is Nalou.
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- I'm an assistant.
-
- She's an assistant chef.
-
And this is our handsome
Chef Ronnie.
-
Chef, look at the camera.
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- If you were a dish at El Poco,
what would you be?
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- Burrito.
-
(laughs)
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- Why burrito?
-
- Because it's chubby
and yummy.
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And this one is Aly.
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- Hi!
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- What's your role?
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- Kitchen prep.
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- Kitchen prep.
-
- You know, El Poco Cantina,
when you Google it,
-
it literally means
"the little kitchen,"
-
because of how we started
back in 2019.
-
It was just
a 10-square-meter stall,
-
or a kiosk of some sort.
-
And we only had six seats—
it was so small
-
that we could literally high-five
each other.
-
Every move we made was just,
you know,
-
"Hey, this works, we can do it,"
because we had no idea
-
how to run a restaurant,
let alone open one.
-
Imagine, it was just
a stall back in 2019,
-
and we already didn't know
what to do.
-
Well, before we even had birria,
the Carnitas Burrito
-
was actually our best-selling item.
-
And then when we started
making birria tacos,
-
the Quesabirria Tacos
with beef barbacoa
-
became our top seller.
-
But I think one
of the real bestsellers
-
is our homemade tortilla chips.
-
Some people come here
just to eat that.
-
But I’d still say the horchata
is the best
-
because that’s my partner’s recipe.
-
Actually, I was really lost
for a long time
-
before I found what I'm doing now.
-
I grew up in a very normal household.
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Just a regular kid with dreams,
but under the circumstances,
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achieving them wasn’t that easy.
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I said, "Ma, I always dreamed
of becoming a Lasallian."
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Honestly, it’s embarrassing to admit,
but my mom had
-
to borrow money
from a loan shark just
-
to send me to school.
-
I was really enjoying
my time there—
-
until I reached a point
where I didn’t even know
-
why I was there
in the first place,
-
because I was always drinking
and hanging out with friends.
-
Then I asked my mom,
"Hey, can I stop studying
-
for a while?
I want to find myself."
-
And in that process
of searching for myself,
-
I didn’t even realize that I was,
you know, depressed.
-
I was drinking every single day.
-
From drinking, it escalated
to smoking cigarettes,
-
and then it just kept going
and going—
-
I was in a downward spiral
of vices, addiction, and abuse.
-
My wake-up call came
when I almost died
-
because of all that.
-
I've met people who were going
through similar struggles,
-
and for the first time
in my life,
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I felt like there were people
who truly understood me.
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I started appreciating
the little things.
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And I went back to school.
-
I finished my degree
in Human Resource Management,
-
then started working
as an HR personnel.
-
The reason I left my job
was because my dad had
-
a serious accident
that left him bedridden for years.
-
And that’s when I started thinking
about what I really wanted
-
to be as a kid.
-
What did I really dream of?
-
And the answer was clear—
I wanted to start my own restaurant.
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Chef, my 377 rider
is here, okay? Thanks.
-
104 dine-in, table 3 left.
-
The mixed order
has been served, right?
-
Table 4, right? Thanks.
-
Does that come with extra plates?
Can you check?
-
Hi, welcome!
-
Chef, I need an additional order,
on the fly—
-
barbacoa soft tacos, please.
-
Thanks, guys! Take care.
-
When I made our first recipe—
the one we knew was going
-
to be good, the one
that would put us on the map—
-
that was our carnitas.
-
The very first version of it.
-
Boss, can I get your autograph?
-
Just your name and number.
-
Takeout, 1020, soft tacos.
-
Three pieces, small,
barbacoa quesabirria.
-
Yeah, thanks.
-
After preparing it that night,
I woke up my wife—
-
but I didn’t just shake her
and say, "Hey, wake up!"
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No, I made a taco.
-
I made carnitas, plated it
with the whole setup—
-
salsa and everything—
and then stuffed it
-
into her mouth
while she was still half-asleep.
-
Then I told her, "This is it.
This is what’s going
-
to put us on the map.
This is our game-changer."
-
And then, on September 5, 2019,
we opened the first
-
El Poco Cantina.
-
It’s nostalgic. Very nostalgic.
-
Yeah. That was our kitchen too—
same setup they have right now.
-
I remember we used
to hand-draw our menu
-
almost every single day.
-
Looking at where we are now,
we never could have imagined
-
that this tiny
10-square-meter space
-
would grow into 100 square meters
with two branches.
-
It’s insane.
-
We started from this one little spot.
-
And it was just the two of us—
no other staff.
-
Definitely worth it.
-
To determine whether
a Mexican restaurant is good,
-
you have to judge it
by its carnitas.
-
It’s like adobo in Filipino cuisine—
every household,
-
every parent in Mexico knows
how to make good carnitas.
-
Now, our biggest seller
is the beef barbacoa,
-
which we use in our quesabirria tacos.
-
That beef takes about 18 hours
to prepare.
-
We marinate it overnight,
then bring it here
-
to cook every day at 12 a.m.
-
We braise it for
about six to seven hours
-
using around 20 different spices.
-
Our birria is made
as close as possible
-
to how they do it in Tijuana.
-
We use guajillo, ancho, garlic,
onions, tomatoes.
-
For dried spices,
we use about 13.
-
There’s a lot of cinnamon bark,
cloves, and allspice too.
-
And we make our own adobo sauce,
which is basically
-
the foundation of flavor
for our birria tacos.
-
One of our best-selling items
is actually our tortilla chips.
-
They were originally just trimmings
from our tortilla prep,
-
but one time, some pieces
accidentally fell into the fryer,
-
and when we tasted them,
we thought,
-
"Wow, this is really good."
-
(laughs)
-
So we started making them
on purpose and turned them
-
into nachos.
-
The meat we use for it
is beef picadillo,
-
seasoned with lots of spices.
-
We also created our own
taco seasoning mix specifically
-
for El Poco.
-
Then we add vegetables—
cilantro, pickled carrots,
-
pickled red onions, sour cream,
salsa, and all that.
-
It’s just happiness in a bowl.
-
When you feel like you’ve reached
a certain high in success,
-
the first thing you should do
is build a longer table.
-
When we built this business,
we thought,
-
"Hey, we’ve given
so many people jobs—
-
let’s create another one."
-
So we opened U-Belt.
-
This is our second branch.
-
This was our first attempt
at expanding.
-
We specifically chose Recto
in the U-Belt area
-
because we saw that
our customers weren’t just from Taft.
-
We noticed a lot of students
from U-Belt were coming in too.
-
It was easy to tell
because of their uniforms,
-
so we decided,
"Hey, I think U-Belt
-
is a great place to start."
-
This here is Frida.
-
She represents
women’s empowerment in Mexico.
-
She’s a woman hero there.
-
And this place—our restaurant—
is mostly run by women.
-
She’s the reason
why we started the whole thing.
-
She’s the one who named El Poco.
-
She’s the one who suggested
we sell tacos.
-
She even quit her job
for this dream and built
-
the business with me.
-
So we owe everything to her
when it comes to pushing
-
this idea forward.
-
And the kitchen
has always been open like this
-
because this story isn’t just
about us anymore.
-
El Poco grew
because of our team.
-
We want them to be part
of this journey—
-
from a tiny stall to two branches.
-
They’re the ones running
the entire operation,
-
so they deserve all the spotlight.
-
- One, two, three, group hug!
-
- What kind of group hug is that?
-
But running your own business
is never easy, I would say.
-
It takes so much from you.
-
Service, 191 for dine-in.
-
(laughs)
-
All right, brother. Enjoy! Enjoy!
-
And because it takes
so much from you,
-
you get depleted.
-
But despite all the hardships,
the exhaustion—
-
mentally and physically—
you come into work,
-
see your team smiling,
see your tables filled
-
with happy customers…
-
and it makes
all the sacrifices worth it.
-
The beauty of life
is you can always learn something
-
and you can always atone
for the things you regret,
-
as long as you really choose
to move forward.
-
And I think being
a father is really
-
my greatest accomplishment in life.
-
Cheers to my partner
and to my fiancée
-
for believing in me.
-
Who would have thought,
you know, this lousy [ _ ]
-
would make it.
-
(laughs)