Family seeks to recover their restaurant, and they have community support
Humberto ‘Beto’ Gómez was living his American dream, cooking carnitas and chicharrones that he learned to master at the age of 8 growing up in Irapuato, Guanajuato, México.
The richness of his food was well known, even at Fresno City Hall. Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Nelson Esparza – along with their colleagues and municipal workers – would meet at Zamora’s Carnitas Restaurant near where Fresno Street hides beneath Highway 180 every day of a council meeting.
The restaurant that Gómez and his family opened in 2006 was everything to him.
That American dream was cut short in the early hours of Nov. 29 – and the holiday season – when a fire that started in the kitchen destroyed the restaurant.
The rebuilding process for the restaurant at 850 N. Fresno St. received a boost when the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation and Neighborhood Industries.
The groups contributed $40,000 to help the Gomez family get the restaurant back up and running, including a mobile truck that Beto Gomez expects to be in service next month.
“Now I cry less,” said his wife, Gaby Gómez, during a Dec. 19 celebration of las posadas, where the families of the restaurant’s owners and workers received Christmas dinner and gifts.
“We are very grateful to the community,” Beto said. “Every day we receive calls, mainly from the city and its departments (which) have given us a lot of solidarity.”
Beto has found clients from the past and present who have expressed their support.
“Everything I see is very, very moving, and what I am already living now.”
The roots of the restaurant
In 1995, Beto arrived in Los Ángeles where he began working in butcher shops and restaurant kitchens.
“Mainly, we cut all the pork for the skin, to cook it, what are the carnitas, the chicharrones, and all the derivatives of that product,” said Beto, as he cheered up at the mention of his specialty .
In 2007, he visited family in Fresno “and we stayed.” They used their savings and loans from other family members and friends to buy the restaurant, which today has 15 employees, including Beto and his family.
Two of the four oldest children help out when they have time on weekends or vacations from UC Berkeley or Fresno State.
At first, Beto wasn’t sure the business would take off.
“I cried at one time, the first few days because people would come and see my carnitas differences. They said that they don’t look good, and they go to a place where it looks very pretty,” said Beto.
People were asking him, “When are you going to close this place?”
Beto encouraged customers to give him a chance and try his carnitas. Little by little, he noticed that people were beginning to return.
People would not only return, but they would bring someone else with them.
What brought them back?
Beto said that it was his breakfast of chilaquiles, his carnitas and the pork rinds that he prepares every day and takes a long process.
“We prepare the chorizo for our breakfasts,” he said. “I like to buy it whole. I cut it and yes I am delicate. I don’t like people complaining that it’s fat.”
Beto prepares the pork rinds every morning.
Rebuilding will take time
The restaurant owners are in talks with the insurance company to find out how to rebuild, but Beto thinks it will take 10-12 months to reopen.
He and his wife want to make sure their workers are taken care of in the meantime, too. That is why a GoFundMe account has been created.
Dora Westerlund from the foundation and Ricky Bravo from Neighborhood Industries are challenging the community to match the $40,000 they raised.