Expanding horizons: Longtime Mexican restaurant enjoying first year in new downtown Sterling location

STERLING – Maria Rocha has come a long way in the restaurant business.

It’s a career path that started in her family’s kitchen when she was growing up in Mexico, led her to a restaurant in one of the country’s largest cities, on to the kitchen of a Sterling restaurant, and finally, to her own business — and that was all in the just the first 15 years of her journey.

Today, she’s bringing her Mexican menu to diners downtown, at El Jacalito, where she recently relocated her business that had made a home in the town’s West End since 2000.

El Jacalito is Spanish for “the shack,” but don’t let the translation fool you — Rocha’s family restaurant is far from a shack: The bigger and better location is in one of downtown’s more stately storefronts: a former bank with distinctive Greek columns welcoming people through the front doors on East Third Street.

The new location, which opened this past Dec. 1, is the culmination of more than two decades of Rocha’s hard work carrying on family recipes and coming up with her own, which has kept customers coming back for more. Rocha is enjoying seeing familiar faces and welcoming new ones to the restaurant, which she owns with sons Antonio and Octavio Flores.

“It’s been almost a year here, and we’ve had so many nice experiences with all our customers,” Rocha said. “With our new customers, I’ve seen everyone so happy. A lot of people like to come here to celebrate anything, all of the time, and it makes me so happy. A lot of new customers had never been to our old place, and some have told me, ‘See, you needed a better location.’”

With more than 50 different menu items — from appetizers to dinners to breakfast options and more — there’s a lot to make customers happy. Tacos, burritos, enchiladas, chimichangas, tamales and fajitas make up much of the menu, along with a shrimp and fish seafood selection and breakfast favorites such as huevos rancheros (eggs over easy with hot sauce) and chilaquiles (tortilla chips mixed with egg, salsa and cheese).

Rocha and her cooks get a lot of orders for carne asada and birria tacos. The carne asada is a grilled steak garnished with green onions and guacamole; the dinner plate also is served with an enchilada. The taco birria is also sold as a dinner option, with its special sauce served in a small cup on the side to dip or pour over the birria meat. There a lot of types of taco birria, Rocha said, but what makes hers special is, well, it’s a secret — recipe, that is.

Other special sauces are used to simmer the meats in, such as with the carne guisada (pork) and loma en chile de arbol (beef) dinners.

Other tacos come with a variety of meats, including ground beef, roasted or marinated pork, chorizo, chitterlings, beef tongue, and an Alabmre combination of steak, bacon, ham, onion and cheese. Can’t decide between having a taco, tostada, burrito, enchilada, quesadilla or tamale? No problem, a combination dinner dish with three of any is available, and all dinner options come with rice, beans and tortillas.

The combo dish is a favorite of Rocha’s niece, Stephanie Abarca, who enjoys stopping by and hanging out with her family while having a meal.

“I like coming here because it’s very homey and comfortable,” Abarca said. “The staff is always friendly and the food is always great.”

Rocha returns to Mexico on occasion and sometimes comes back with a new recipe to add to the menu. She also gets creative with cuisine in her home kitchen, coming up with new ideas, including one she’s currently working on that may find a spot on the menu: a dish with steak, shrimp and melted cheese.

“I like to do newer recipes all of the time,” Rocha said. “We were cooking one day at my house, and I said that I wanted to invent something,” Rocha said. “I started cooking and I made the steak and put jalapeños and tomatoes in, and decided I wanted to put something else in it, so I added some shrimp. Then I went, ‘Okay, how about a little cheese?’ It came out so good, and I said, ‘This is my new plate!’”

It’s that sort of dedication to dining — making meals, meeting people and making them happy — that’s made cooking a lifetime love for Rocha, who said she can’t imagine doing anything else.

“I love to cook,” Rocha said. “I enjoy it a lot. I remember when I was little, probably seven years old, I always helped my mom to cook. It was something that would always get my attention.”

Rocha began cooking with her mother as a teenager in Llano del Carmen, a small town in the state of San Luis Potosi in central Mexico. She would later work at a restaurant in San Luis Potosi City before coming to Sterling in the 1980s, where she worked in the kitchen at Willy’s Restaurant – which, at the time, had moved into the former Jennie’s grocery store in the Steelton subdivision.

After leaving the restaurant business for a short time, Rocha came upon an opportunity to purchase another Mexican restaurant at a plaza on West Fourth Street in 2000. El Jacalito opened that Oct. 15 and remained there for 23 years. The first three years “were really hard,” she said, “but I was going to be patient and not give up.” That patience paid off and the restaurant found its footing — and then she took another big step. She’d been keeping an eye out for a bigger location when she learned that the owners of Smoked on 3rd would be retiring and the building would be available.

Once the Smoked cleared, she did some work on the interior, brightening up the walls and bringing her own touch to the decor before opening her doors. She also added more staff. With the new location, Rocha not only has more space for customers, but she was able to have a full bar.

“I’d trying to look for a bigger place for 3 or 4 years,” Rocha said. “One day I just drove by and saw the For Sale sign on the window.” When she called the real estate agent and took a tour of the building, she knew she had found what she was looking for. “When I walked in here, I said, ‘Oh my God, this is me!’ This is what I’m looking for. The first thing that blew my mind was the full bar. Then I looked around and had so many ideas, and I got excited.”

More space has also allowed her to have an impact on the community: The restaurant has hosted several music and art performances since relocating downtown; one of its first was a paint party for Primitive Frills on April 15, where 43 artists gathered to create their visions of Tejano singer Selena, (whose birthday would have been the next day if not for the young singer’s death in 1995).

Rocha also contracts with a Florida company to provide meals to migrant workers it employs in local cornfields, something she’s has been doing for 10 years. Last year, she fed around 240 employees, and another 100 more this year.

The restaurant also caters large orders to businesses, schools and parties, giving Rocha a chance to really roll up her sleeves, which she really enjoys, she said. Prior to the move downtown, a Sunday brunch buffet once was offered, and Rocha hopes to bring that back to the fold soon.

Rocha considers the move downtown “a dream come true,” she said, with customers not only enjoying her meals, but the friendly atmosphere, too; some customers wind up staying for two or three hours, she said.

“We were on the West End for 23 years, and soon it will be one year here at this place,” Rocha said. “We’re so happy with the new location and with the customers, too. We want to say ‘Thank you’ to everyone as we bring authentic Mexican food to the Sauk Valley. Now my two sons are with me, and I hope we can keeping doing it for a long time. We would love to do that. We have really, really nice customers.”

El Jacalito, 14 E. Third St. in Sterling, is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Find it on Facebook or call 815-625-3404 to place a carryout order or for more information.