(upbeat whimsical music)
- My name is Laura Patricia Ramirez
and we own a restaurant, a taqueria and tortilleria.
I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico.
When I came here, I was 16 years old, in 1995.
And it was the hardest thing to do.
There was no Spanish people,
there were, nothing around here.
I did not speak any English at all,
and I just had the baby.
So it was not even a month old when we came to Kentucky.
The food, I mean that was the most thing
that we miss.
There was nothing.
The tortillas that we buy here,
you open the bag,
and if you don't use it,
they will go, real hard.
And all the spices.
You can't get it here.
(easy going guitar music)
My husband, he was working with the horses,
that they race.
So he had to go to Chicago, Illinois
to run the horses and stuff.
Then he find out there were some stuff over there
that we couldn't find here so he brought some.
Well then people started asking for.
- They start asking me to sell some to them.
I don't even know how much to sell it
and they tell me yes, double the price,
we pay for it, because there's nothing here.
So I sold it to them,
talked to (mumbles) of men, we make a good profit.
And I say, what if we go back to Chicago
and bring more, so we did.
And since I was going to Chicago and buy
and bring it over here,
I say, well well we just open up a tortilla place here.
We went to Mexico, bought the machine,
and we open.
(easy going guitar music)
- It's getting dinner time,
then you go to the tortilleria and get the tortillas.
For lunch, they come and get it
and then around four, five o'clock,
people will come and get it because it's ready for dinner.
So it makes me back home,
you know, the memories that we have, from back home.
We make our tortillas,
we make it from scratch.
We cook the corn, then we'll put it on the grounder,
then we have a mixer, where we mix the corn,
and then after it's mixed, we put it on the big
round thing to make the tortillas.
And even you can smell the smell of tortillas.
When we opened the tortillera,
we see there was a lot of Spanish around here.
So we thought, you know, we need to give them
a place to go.
Where they can eat, kind of like a homemade,
like you know, our food.
We wanted for people to be able to come and get
what we couldn't get when we first
came to the United States.
So they can feel kind of like back home,
they can come in with their families,
and teach their kids, you know,
what really is Mexican food.
This is what we use to eat in home.
And we see a lot of response,
either from the Mexican community
and the American community.
- The funny part was cause in here it was Spanish community
but Americans started coming slowly, slowly,
and they looked at menu
and they see this funny food we're serving
and they kind of thinking about it,
and now they love it.
They come in and ask for tens,
they used to be, hate it,
you know, we cook the brains, tongue, intestines,
you're pretty surprised how, how they ask for now.
They forget about the chicken and steak.
- When you come this part of town,
there's a grocery store across the street,
there's a bakery,
kind of feel like you're in Mexico.
That's why they call it Mexington.
They don't call it Lexington, this part of town.
They call it Mexington.
I really think the food brings people together.
It's breaking the walls between the Spanish
and the American.
(easy-going guitar music)
- [Man] I started mixing a lot of southern with the Mexican
and Creole with the Mexican.
- We created a cuisine that was non-existent.