First Guatemalan restaurant in Solano County opens in Vallejo

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VALLEJO — Rosendo Calderón worked as a cook in various restaurants throughout the Bay Area for 17 years, becoming an expert in different types of cuisine, from Italian to Mexican to American. Yet, he had a yearning to bring food of his native Guatemala to Vallejo.

Calderón shared his plan with his family, and they all came on board. Abo’s Cocina opened its doors on Feb. 1 of this year. Calderón and his wife, Anabel, develop the recipes, cook, and train the kitchen staff. Their son Mike manages the restaurant and works the front of the house with his sister Suri; his wife, Paula, lends a hand as a waitress when needed and helps Suri with the restaurant’s social media. The family also has 10 employees.

Abo’s Cocina has filled a gap. “We are really the only restaurant that serves the food that we serve, not only in the city, but in the county,” Mike Calderón said. “The only other restaurants that serve Guatemalan food close to us are in San Pablo and in San Rafael.” 

As a result, Abo’s Cocina, located on 3570 Sonoma Blvd., a neighborhood dotted with car repair shops and fast food joints, gets customers from all over the state. 

“A lot of people come to Discovery Kingdom, and they check the restaurant because we have five stars,” Rosendo Calderón said proudly. “We have different kinds of customers, not just Latino people. We get a lot of Filipinos, Chinese, even people from L.A.”

During the official inauguration of the restaurant on Sept. 10, the Calderon family received a commendation from U.S. Rep. John Garamendi recognizing their contribution to the community. Annette Taylor, senior developmental analyst with the city of Vallejo, came representing the city, and an enthusiastic crowd applauded as the family cut the ribbon.

The menu at Abo’s Cocina is small but mighty, offering typical Guatemalan dishes like churrasco, and chicken or beef pepian. “Churrasco is like carne asada, and it comes with a lot of things: avocado, beans, green onions and chirmol sauce, which has very hot peppers, tomatoes and onions,” Rosendo explained. “And pepian is a stew with chicken or beef and several seeds, like sesame and pumpkin, as well as peppers.”

Calderón plans to add dishes from other Central American countries in the future, and he will also import Guatemalan food products to sell in a store within the restaurant, where they already sell T-shirts and other merchandise. The family also wants to reopen the taco truck they had operated for a month before opening the restaurant, which currently sits idle in the parking lot.

“We have a contract with Home Depot in Vallejo to set the truck in their parking lot,” Mike Calderón said. “It was there before, but the employee who ran it had to leave. We are looking for an employee to run the truck and we plan to expand the menu, which started with Mexican tacos, to add Guatemalan food.”

Opening a restaurant with no previous experience as restaurateurs has presented some challenges. 

“I’ve always worked in construction and construction is very involved, but this is involved to a different magnitude,” Mike Calderón said. “Learning how to run the business, it’s not impossible, but there are many things that we’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know we had to do it this way. Let’s try to backtrack and get back on the path we need to get to.’”

Although it’s been a steep learning curve, he relished the challenge. “It’s been fun learning all these new things because it takes us in a direction of expansion,” he said. “I have a very young son and my dream is that one day he’s going to learn how this all runs and he’ll be able to manage this or go off and run something else.” 

Mike Calderón didn’t go to business school, so he’s been learning the ropes by reading business books, researching his questions on the internet and watching YouTube videos. Most difficult for him has been deciding how to price the menu items to cover everything that goes into running a restaurant, from food costs to labor to rent.

For his father, the biggest challenge has been training the kitchen staff. “You have to be patient,” he said. 

The restaurant can seat 60 customers. “If there is a soccer game during lunch time, we have a lot of people, because they come to eat and watch the game during their lunch break,” Rosendo Calderón said, “but usually dinner time towards the end of the week is the busiest.”

Father and son agreed that the best part of their new business is the community it has created. “People who haven’t seen each other for years have met again at the restaurant,” the son said. “A lot of people sit down and have a conversation, which, I mean, let’s be honest, you’re not gonna go to Applebee’s and be like, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while, come and sit down with me and let’s talk.’ Here it happens a lot.”

The restaurant is open seven days a week, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and it has a parking lot in the back. If you want to try authentic Guatemalan cuisine, Abo’s Cocina is your ticket.