She lost her restaurant job when COVID struck. Now chef has her own place in Modesto
When the pandemic started, longtime Valley chef Lupita Gonzalez lost her job at the restaurant where she’d worked for years.
Her two daughters, who worked with her, found themselves jobless as well. But instead of panic, Lupita and her family did what they do best — they fed people.
“I was thinking, what am I going to do? I could try to find another job or I could so something else,” she said.
That something else was cooking her family’s recipes and favorites for a new home-delivery service. Lupita’s Meals To Go quickly found followers, thanks to her almost 30 years of cooking in the region and social media. Three weeks after launching the meal service, they had enough business for her husband — a chef at another area restaurant — to quit and join her in the endeavor.
Now, after nearly two years of successfully running her catering business out of her home in Ceres, she has opened her first brick-and-mortar restaurant Lupita’s Home Style Cocina. The new Mexican eatery opened in late December in the former longtime La Parilla spot just off the corner of Oakdale Road and Scenic Avenue.
The opening brings Lupita’s kitchen career full circle. More than 20 years ago, she joined La Parilla when it first opened in the same spot, and spent 14 years working at the popular restaurant before leaving to join her last employer.
La Parilla now has three locations around town, in Modesto’s The Marketplace, in Riverbank’s Crossroads and on McHenry Avenue in Modesto. The family behind the local chain left its original lower Oakdale Avenue location about a year ago, after successfully launching its newest spot adjacent to the flagship Save Mart store in northeast Modesto.
Last year is also when the Gonzalezes got serious about finding a restaurant location. The grind of turning their home into a makeshift kitchen and delivering food across the region until 10 p.m. daily became too much.
“That’s when we started thinking she could have her own restaurant,” said her son Edgar. “She was tired of working for other people all these years. We all decided to help to make this dream happen for her.
When the Gonzalez family members were looking for a location, they never dreamed they’d land on Lupita’s former workplace. But the 1,800-square-foot space already was set up as a restaurant. The family spent about three months renovating the interior, modernizing, updating and taking out the old carpeting.
The result is a simple but inviting dining room that is open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner and can seat about 85. The facade of the complex, which is also home to Coach’s Corner, was updated not long ago and gives the whole center a cleaner, modern look.
True to form, the restaurant is a family affair with several family members working there, including Lupita, her husband, Saul, and their three children. She also showcases desserts made by her daughter, Andrea, who when she lost her restaurant job along with her mother started an at-home sweets and confections business.
Drea’s Sweets treats are now available at the restaurant on Fridays and Saturdays, but they hope to expand and be stocked daily soon.
The rest of the menu is filled with recipes Lupita’s family made growing up in the western Mexican state of Jalisco. The extensive menu includes breakfast and lunch specials, as well as a variety of chicken, beef, pork and seafood dishes. Most entrees range from about $14 to $20.
The showstopper is most certainly the Home Style Molcajete, a hearty mix of chicken, steak and bacon-wrapped shrimp served with a zesty tomatillo-and-cheese sauce. The heated volcanic stone serving bowl provides a dinner-and-a-show, as the food comes served boiling and sizzling. The hot stone experience, which is enough for at least two people, runs $30.
Lupita isn’t done bringing new things to her restaurant, either. Her siblings, who still live in Mexico, regularly visit and bring ideas and items for her kitchen. When her brother comes to visit from Jalisco, he will bring a tortilla press and the restaurant will use it to start making tortillas by the end of this year.
Lupita is also still keeping up the catering and taquiza side of her business, but now runs it out of the restaurant’s professional kitchen.
“I have a lot of plans for this place,” she said. “We’re just so thankful for our customers.”
Lupita’s Home Style Cocina, at 950 Oakdale Road, Suite I, in Modesto, is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. For more information, call 209-595-1427 or visit www.instagram.com/lupitashomestylecocina.
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
