![]() ![]() “A man from my hometown came to Tucson to open a hot dog restaurant on South Fourth Ave.,” Benny said. To make matters more sensitive, many of Benny’s former employees now run Sonoran hot dog joints of their own - a narrative that’s part Willy Wonka, part The Godfather. ![]() He sees those specs as his own, and they are now freely and commonly plagiarized. Then, whenever anyone would come up to the inspector asking about how to get a hot dog cart certified, he would give them the document I made.” Benny told this story with some chagrin. The inspector was impressed, and Xeroxed my plans. “I built out the cart with a water heater placed underneath the beans to keep them warm. “So I took the specs home and I used the side of a CD jewel case as a ruler to get the lines all straight,” he said. ‘You have to keep the beans at the right temperature, the bacon at the right temperature, or people can get very sick,’ the inspector told me.” He talked me through the process on how to run my cart safely. “Luckily, the director at the time spoke Spanish. “I thought, Sonoran dogs and carne asada, these are two things that were everywhere in my hometown and hard to find here at the time,” he said.īut when he got to Tucson, he was confronted with the strict bureaucracy of the city health department. When he put his cart into practice, though, he realized the town wasn’t big enough for two vendors, so he decided to take the concept back to Tucson. When he returned to Nacozari, he knew he wanted to make Sonoran dogs, too. He would leave Nacozari to go to high school in Tucson, where he was born. He remembers very distinctly the day that the Sonoran dog cart came to town. He first learned about Sonoran dogs as a kid in Nacozari, Mexico. But principally it is something very simple and easy to recreate.” What makes it different is in the little details, the special methods each person brings. “A Sonoran dog will always have the same ingredients. He is sensitive about this intellectual property because he staked his legacy to something that is replicable. “Seafood is harder to copy than a Sonoran dog.” “I wanted something people couldn’t imitate,” he said. He also owns El Berraco, a submarine-themed seafood restaurant. The restaurant has two locations, one on the south side, the other on First Avenue, with another on the way at Park Avenue and 19th Street. As we spoke, he occasionally took a handkerchief out of his pocket to gently dab at the sweat on his brow throughout a conversation, recalling Marlon Brando.īenny owns BK Carne Asada and Hot Dogs. When he was 21, he was selling a thousand Sonoran dogs a day out of a cart he named, in a pinch, with his and his wife’s initials. He wears crisp collared shirts that are patterned, appearing more casual than his ambition really makes him. “I knew from that day on that I wanted to have a helicopter,” he said.īenjamin Galaz owns BK Carne Asada & Hot Dogs and El Berraco. “But his father, the more important man, treated everyone like a friend.” The boss’ son stood at a distance, “like he was judging us for being from the countryside,” Benny said. He shook Benny’s hand, and told his dad he should be proud. The big man in a suit exited from the helicopter doors and embraced everyone, including Benny’s father. Benny didn’t know what was coming down from the sky, but his father would soon tell him it was a helicopter. The secretaries had to hold their hair down as winds picked up in an unnaturally confined space, like a tornado made just for them. Everyone was waiting around a big green circle with a white H in the middle. He saw their beautiful skirts for the first time. The young secretaries who were typically confined to desks and only seen from the waist up were standing in a line. The CEO was bringing his son with, so Benny’s dad would do the same.īenny understood this was not a typical visit to the mine when they were waiting outside. The CEO of the mining company was flying in from Mexico City. There came a day when his dad asked to take him out of school to come to the mine. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |