How La Mexicana Became a Kissimmee Institution

Though Odilia Alvarado is responsible for 80 employees, the first people she attends to in the mornings are her children. Every day by 8:00 a.m., she drops her 8-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son off at school. Then it’s off to La Mexicana Restaurant, or the nearby affiliated bakery, for breakfast service.

In the last three decades, Odilia has helped her mother, father, siblings, aunts, and uncles, build a series of Mexican food businesses that have taken Central Florida by storm, usually under the moniker “La Mexicana.” In 2011, she and her husband struck out on their own and opened the first Kissimmee outpost of La Mexicana. Today, she runs a restaurant, supermarket, tortilleria, bakery, and ice cream shop in Kissimmee that can barely keep up with demand for their delicious treats.

If you ask Odilia, she’ll attribute her success to her faith in God, and her tight family that has supported her every step of the way. Her dedication to perfecting dishes inspired by the southwestern region of Mexico hasn’t hurt, either.

From the Mountains of Mexico to Central Florida

Odilia Alvarado spent her early childhood in the town of Tenanguillo de las Cañas in the mountainous state of Guerrero. To buy groceries or clothing in the larger town nearby, her family would travel by car down a dirt road that took 20 minutes to traverse. But the rural setting came with upsides too, like the widespread practice of home-growing fresh herbs and vegetables, which Odilia believes is a big part of what makes the region’s cuisine so special.

Odilia also draws inspiration from her grandmother, Angela Guadarrama Millan: a prodigious cook who supplied many of the recipes that made La Mexicana locally famous.

She remembers hiking up rocky mountains with her grandmother to reach her vegetable patch, where she cultivated beans. Angela would harvest the beans, clean them, cook them, and grind them down in a molino, a mortar and pestle. She would then stuff the ground beans into homemade corn dough that she would toast on a comal, a traditional Mexican griddle, to make gorditas. The gorditas, plus a homemade salsa picante made from tomatillos and dried chiles de arbol would make up many of their meals.

“We would eat really good,” said Odilia. “That’s all we’d eat, mainly.” They would also have the occasional bean soup, flavored with the medicinal-tasting epazote herb and lapped up with tortillas.

When Odilia was around six years old, her mother, Paulina Cervantes, and father, Alejandrino Honorato Guadarrama, left their hometown to stake out a home for the family in the United States. Odilia, the second-oldest and the only girl among eight children, spent a year living with her grandmother and her older brother. A year later, Odilia’s parents brought Odilia and her older brother to Apopka, Florida. Odilia remembers being happy to be reunited with her parents, and the world taking on a sheen of novelty.

Odilia was seven when she arrived, and she initially struggled in her new school, where there was limited support for Spanish-speaking students. But she soon transferred to a school with a bilingual education program. “My brain just started to pop up,” she remembers. She started soaking up English and getting good grades. In her first year in the new school, she made honor roll and won a trip to Disney World, an experience that she describes as “magical.”

The Birth of a Restaurant Family

When Odilia was twelve, she and Paulina started cooking tacos de barbacoa, a slow cooked, richly-spiced shredded beef, on weekends. Odilia was in charge of making the tortillas by hand with a mechanical stamp. They would sell them to her Alejandrino’s colleagues at his job at a greenhouse. The tacos were a hit, and customers started asking for Paulina to bring the tacos to their soccer and basketball games.

When Odilia was 14, the Alvarados opened a brick-and-mortar taqueria called La Mexicana in a plaza in Apopka. It was a family business: Odilia’s mother and grandmother prepared the meat, Alejandrino and Odilia’s uncle made the tortillas, and Odilia would chop the garnishes before preparing the tacos with her cousins.

People clamored for their carnitas, carne asada, pollo, and, most of all, Odilia’s grandmother’s adobada, pork chunks marinated in a complex, spicy red sauce. “We had lines and lines of people waiting for the food, for the tacos,” Odilia says.

From that first taquería, the Alvarado family sprang a bunch of other iterations of La Mexicana across Central Florida. Different branches were operated by different family members who would work closely together, and it expanded to encompass tortilla-making, baking, ice cream, and Mexican groceries. Odilia worked hard alongside her parents and brothers. Along the way, she discovered that she loved cooking. “Even when I was making the tortillas,” Odilia says, she was in her happy place. Today, she cooks dinner for her husband and kids after work, often inspired by videos on Facebook and Instagram that advertise the dishes in restaurants and Mexican pueblos. She says it’s worth it to cook for her family, even though she owns a restaurant that could easily supply them with cooked meals. “When you see them eat and they like your food,” she says, “I feel more happy.”

In 2011, Odilia and her husband were working together with Odilia’s mother, father, and two brothers in the family’s Orlando location. “We didn’t fit there anymore,” Odilia says. Her younger brother came across a space for rent in a shopping plaza in Kissimmee, but he didn’t yet have the money for it. “You go—you try over there,” he told his sister.

Odilia and her husband opened up the Kissimmee branch of La Mexicana in December 2011. Their original plan was to open a taquería, but Odilia’s father Alejandrino said that they should take a shot at opening a supermarket and a restaurant, like they had opened in Orlando. She was intimidated, but he encouraged them. “If you’re going to go for it, go for something big. You don’t go for something small,” Odilia remembers Alejandrino telling her.

So Odilia went for it, opening a supermarket with a small restaurant in a 2,000-square-foot space.

“We were scared at the beginning, because we were starting to struggle,” she remembers. The first two years were rough. Odilia and her husband would do much of the cooking themselves, and would often spend their entire days in the restaurant.

Odilia emerged from the first hard years, and eventually was able to expand the supermarket, and open a tortilleria and bakery.

Odilia took her creative leap with the opening of a large, colorful, full-service sit-down restaurant a few years ago. This time, she didn’t need any convincing from her father: she and her husband spearheaded the process from start to finish. She drew a sketch of what she wanted the restaurant to look like, and handed it to an architect. She and her husband sourced decorative animals and hand-carved tables from Mexico. The space is playful and colorful with an emphasis on the natural world, because “it brings you back to Mexico” and evokes fresh, natural food.

Secrets to Success

Over the years, Odilia’s father has developed a few rules to success. “Clean area, good service, and good food. The three main things that we always keep in mind,” Odilia says. She and her staff remember customers’ names and make sure to always be friendly.

As for the food, she uses recipes from the matriarchs that form the backbone of the La Mexicana empire. She helps create the restaurant’s menu, but she isn’t usually in the kitchen cooking for customers. Her kitchen prepares nopales, or prickly pear cactus, according to her grandmother’s method; and a healthy green juice according to her mother’s recipe that also includes its fair share of nopal.

The restaurant serves a wide range of Mexican dishes, from rich soups to crispy tacos. Many of them have their roots in Guerrero, such as their golden-fried quesadillas and their green and red salsas. The tacos de birria, a choice of goat or beef stewed in a rich consummé, are a customer favorite.

Odilia says that when it comes to her success, faith is a major factor. For as long as Odilia can remember, her family has believed that “if you have God in your life, you’re good,” she says. She keeps an image of the Virgin Mary in each of her businesses, to protect her family and bring them blessings.

Odilia thanks her family for helping her achieve her goals. Her husband, whom she met when she served him at La Mexicana in Orlando, has been a constant support as well. He jokes that he picked the right wife—someone who could make his belly happy.

But the truth is that he helps her, too. He takes initiative and is constantly strategic and ambitious about the restaurant. At the same time, he encourages Odilia’s ideas. If she and her partner did not have such good teamwork, “we would not have what we have,” she said.

She is also thankful for the mentorship of her father and other family members. “I have learned a lot from my dad and my family,” she says. These lessons are “something that you want to pass on to your kids.”

Odilia has seven children, and it seems as if her third child may follow in her footsteps and become an entrepreneur. “She looks like she wants to open her own business,” Odilia says. “It makes me very proud.”