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Authentic Cuban restaurant switches to Mexican food
| Friday, Oct 10 2008 4:03 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Oct 10 2008 4:02 PM
It’s bad enough you can’t travel to Cuba. Now you can’t even enjoy the cuisine. Not here, at least.
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Sergio Aguilar served original Cuban food at Cuban Flavor.
Cuban Flavor, an authentic Cuban restaurant owned by brothers Sergio and Pedro Aguilar, is closing its doors after less than a year in business and converting to El Taco Fresco, a Mexican restaurant.
The place just couldn’t overcome its association with Mexican food, Sergio said. Several Mexican restaurants had previously occupied the building at 1431 California Ave, corner of Chester Avenue. Every day, someone would come in looking for tacos or burritos and leave without ordering when they couldn’t find any on the menu, Sergio said.
Ironically, Friday just the opposite nearly happened. In town from the Los Angeles area for the Hot Rod Reunion, Kathy Woodruff, 58, and her friend Michele Fair, 66, wandered in because they saw the Cuban Flavor sign.
“I love Cuban food, and she’s never had it before,” Woodruff said. They were a little surprised, though, when they got inside and saw mostly Mexican food on the partially revised menu.
They ate there anyway. Fair got a taco. Woodruff had a garlic chicken wrap.
“It was quite good,” Fair said.
The Aguilars are “pulling away” from the new El Taco Fresco enterprise, which they will own but largely hand over to Mexican relatives more familiar with Mexican cooking, Sergio said.
The decision to give up on Cuban Flavor was heart- breaking, he added, calling the restaurant a “labor of love.”
But Bakersfield just wasn’t ready for Cuban food.
“People literally used the word ‘scared.’ They were afraid of it,” he said. “They said they didn’t know what to order. And the economy didn’t help us, either.”
Sergio said he hopes to try Cuban fare again some day, maybe in the northwest in a location that doesn’t have a reputation for Mexican food.
El Taco Fresco isn’t the family’s first foray into Mexican food. Pedro Aguilar and his wife own a La Mina Mexican Restaurant, too.
Cuban Flavor was to shut down for good at the close of business Friday and will reopen in its 2,000-square-foot spot early next week as El Taco Fresco.