Muy Salsas Restaurant owners, from left, Christine Martinez, her mother Patricia Corral, and sister Gisel Martinez.at the Edible New Mexico award ceremony. Courtesy photo
The Muy Salsas restaurant team. Photo by Brad Pulliam
BY MAIRE O’NEILL
maire@losalamosreporter.com
The Muy Salsas Mexican Restaurant concept was born during the thick of the COVID epidemic! And from there, Muy Salsas has gone on to become a popular, award-winning location and a community favorite.
When COVID happened, a lot of restaurants shut down, Christine Corral said. She, and her sister Gisel Martinez along with Doug Osborn and Robert Hipwood from Bathtub Row Brewing Co-Op in Central Park Square had an idea of being able to provide food onsite. It started with Christine, Gisel and their mother Patricia Corral setting up their food and serving it at no cost, only asking folks to write their comments on sticky notes for them to review.
“It worked out really well. The rules were changed during COVID and we were able to cook the food at home and bring it and sell it at the Tub,” said Christine. “I was the homemade tortilla lady, Gisel was the garnish and salad lady, and my mom did the cooking. We got great comments from the diners who loved the flavors. We wanted to make the difference between Mexican food and New Mexican food clear.”
At the time, Christine was a social worker at Los Alamos High School and Gisel was working for the First Born program. Even so, they provided food at the Tub on Fridays for two years.
“All the money we made, we saved. We went to Savers and bought all the warmers and equipment, and we didn’t pay ourselves at all for those two years,” she said.
Sometime in there, Maura Taylor, who was the executive director for Self Help, LLC, offer the three women a grant and with it they bought brand new equipment.
“Maura Taylor really helped us get on our feet. When we moved into the building at 1315 Trinity Drive that used to house the Hill Diner, it took a lot to get going,” Gisel said.
The name “Muy Salsas” is said to mean “very saucy” and something different. And indeed Muy Salsas has provided that in the community. They wanted to avoid serving what everyone else was serving. We wanted to have a fresh new menu. They hired Alonzo Rico-Saenz, a chef who was the director of the gastronomy department at the University of Chihuahua in Mexico.
“He took a whole week checking out everybody else’s menus and built us one that was unique. There were a lot of challenges along the way, including with the building conditions, but we persevered for five years and became known throughout the region for our bold, authentic Mexican recipes and the variety of our food”.
This has culminated in the restaurant being honored Sunday last by Edible New Mexico magazine as the Best Restaurant in Greater New Mexico Local Hero Award winner. The other winners were Buen Buen Provecho, a Costa Rican restaurant, for Albuquerque and Alkemē for Santa Fe.
Accepting the award, Christine acknowledged the hard work and perseverance that the three women and their restaurant team have had since the beginning.
“Getting this award is real! We’ve been doing this for five years, and I think everyone who’s in the hospitality business knows not every day is a sunny day. Some days we have tough days when we want to quit, sometimes we want to show the world what we’re capable of, and sometimes we want to scream,” she said. “For me this award means all the sacrifices, the tears, the blood, everything we have built for five years is finally being recognized. All those five-star reviews and all those one-star reviews.”