Photos by Sarah Sole
When La Fogata Grill employees say the restaurant uses local ingredients, they’re not exaggerating.
In some cases, the produce used for the Pickerington Mexican restaurant’s menu items comes from as close as the front yard.
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About four years ago, restaurant owner Crispin Alvarez decided to plant banana peppers in a small plot out front. From there, the operation grew, says Juan Alvarez, restaurant manager and son of Crispin.
Now, Crispin tends more than 100 pepper plants in bell and poblano varieties. The produce is used at La Fogata and Zapata’s Grill, a restaurant just a bit further south down Hill Road North that the family recently took over. The family also operates another La Fogata in the Short North.
“We’re trying to put out the freshest ingredients,” says Juan.
As one might surmise from its very locally sourced peppers, freshness is a point of emphasis at La Fogata. Everything is cooked fresh daily, and healthful salads have been added to the menu of late, Juan says. The restaurant buys tomatoes from a farm in Pataskala and purchases other produce locally in Columbus.
While Crispin’s green thumb made it possible for the restaurant to grow some of its own produce, he can credit his skill to his upbringing. Prior to coming to the U.S. at age 17, Crispin worked in the fields with his father in Guanajuato, Mexico. They grew corn, beans, squash, wheat, peanuts and watermelon. Juan has two uncles who are still tending the fields there to this day.
“I came to the United States to make money to buy tractors and agricultural supplies, because all we had were hand-held tools and bulls to move around the fields,” Crispin says.
Crispin looks back on his childhood in Mexico as a happy time. He enjoyed watching the corn fields grow. He helped out with everything from seeding to harvesting. Similar to his current operation, his family in Mexico also had pepper plants around the house.
Crispin plants the peppers around April. Once the plants start growing, he fertilizes them. The plants grow as high as two to three feet, and he picks about 20 buckets of peppers in September and October.
“I like to see how the plants produce and grow, and enjoy the quality and freshness of the product,” he says.
At La Fogata, family is also just as important as freshness.
“The best part of La Fogata is the customers that come in and feel like a big family,” Crispin says.
Family is also represented in the literal sense, as many of Juan’s uncles and cousins work with him at the restaurant. Two of Juan’s brothers and one of his sisters works at La Fogata.
“We all get to see each other,” Juan says.
The oldest sibling, Juan, always wanted to be a chef when he was growing up. At 15, he got his start in the industry working as a bus boy at Mazatlan, a restaurant Crispin previously owned with another partner. Juan later managed his own restaurant for a while. Now 28, he manages Zapata’s Grill and La Fogata, the latter of which opened in 2004.
Juan has seen La Fogata’s menu slowly change to include more healthful dishes, along with those suggested by customers. The carnitas and chimichangas, he says, remain the restaurant’s most popular dishes.
Sarah Sole is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at ssole@cityscenemediagroup.com.
