Pueblo native Rita Baca has been meeting and greeting customers at the restaurant that bears her name for more than forty years. She has seen babies grow into young people, young people into parents and more than a few parents transform into grandparents. And she and her eponymously-named restaurant just keep on keeping on.
As she prepares for the seasonal holiday rush, its big crowds and the more than one thousand tamales she’ll be whipping up, Baca spent a few minutes on the phone to talk about Rita’s. Being a restaurateur was never part of the plan, she said, at least, part of her plan. She was more than happy being a homemaker.
But one day back into 1978, her husband, Ruben, then a maintenance supervisor, came home and blurted out, ‘I want to quit my job.’ “He wasn’t feeling good,” remembered Baca. Quitting his job while raising a young family might also have made her wonder if he also wasn’t thinking clear.
“I’ll look for another job,” she remembered him saying as she was still trying to process what in the world he was even talking about. It made no sense. Plan ‘B’ he told her was “We go on welfare.” That was silly. He was too hard a worker. Then came the shocker or, as she suspected, his plan all along, “We open a restaurant.”
So, in September 1978, Rita’s Restaurant at 302 North Grand, a modest space with a red brick façade and red metal awning, opened and, except for the pandemic, has fired up the grill Monday through Saturday every day ever since. During the pandemic’s darkest days, “we went to strictly carry-out and delivery,” she said.
“The day we opened,” said Baca in a buttery-soft voice that conceals a blue-steel grit, “was the scariest day of my life.” The plan, if things were going to work, would have her running the kitchen with Ruben greeting and seating, hobnobbing and running the register. “He and I worked together, and we made it work.”
Today, 43 years later, seven a.m. to seven p.m. it’s all still working. Now though, it’s her children and grandchildren who supply much of the muscle that keeps the place humming. Her husband passed away fifteen years ago.
Her holiday tamales will require 800 pounds of masa, the dough that will envelop the filling of pork and red chile. “We make a hundred pounds of masa at a time,” Baca said. “That will last us two to three weeks.” When that runs out, they’ll make another batch. It’s no small task, after all, making a thousand-plus tamales.
And while making masa isn’t exactly rocket science, it’s also not just a matter of combining a bunch of ingredients. No batch is ever made without first repeating a family ritual that includes a Sign of the Cross and silent prayer.
Baca’s recipe for tamales was learned by helping her grandmother who did all her cooking on a wood-burning stove, she said. When the work was done, she remembered “We would have 20-25 dozen for the holidays,” she remembered. The twenty-five dozen tamales would feed “aunts, uncles, friends of my grandfather’s and anyone else,” he would invite. The recipe has stood the test of time.
Baca’s masa still calls for lard, an ingredient that’s largely disappeared from a lot of kitchens. Not Baca’s. “They (tamales) don’t come out the same without lard,” she said. “That’s how I’ve always made them.” Tamales are also the only menu item that uses lard.
The only chile she puts in her tamales—without exception—is New Mexican. “They have the best red chile.” It seems to work. “I have one gentleman who lives in Denver, and he’ll usually order about ten dozen. He’s a good customer.”
Baca has no guess on who originally created the tamale recipe, but her customers, four-plus decades worth, seem to think that she’s the one who perfected it. All she knows is that “it’s very, very tasty.”
The restaurant is pretty much as it was when it opened in 1978. It still has fifteen tables, though not the originals. The menu features the same Baca-family Mexican recipes, including the green chile customers have come to expect. “We make about 30-40 pounds of green chile every day,” she said. But her menu has other things, too.
Rita’s serves up breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and a customer fave, Rita’s grilled cheese that includes fries. As long as she has a say, it’ll stay that way. The plan is not to get rich, she said. It’s to serve good food. “I’m not a material person,” said Baca. “I’ve always asked the good Lord to just let me just pay my bills and for my health to stay good.” It’s a bargain that, so far, remains unbroken.
And while her customers give Rita’s rave reviews, “I think one person gave it ‘five-stars,” she said, there’s no plan to take it in a different direction despite a few inquiries. Baca subscribes to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ school of thought.
Still, the soft-spoken matriarch has cut back on her workload and mostly lets her children, grandchildren and employees—six full-time, six part-time—run the place. That gives her time to enjoy another pursuit, genealogy.
“We have tried to start going back on the family tree,” she said explaining her need to scratch this new itch. “We haven’t been able to get much information,” except that one branch of her family “came from Spain,” perhaps through New Mexico, a common portal for scores of southern Colorado families. But right now the holidays and tamales take priority.
If holiday tamales are on your menu, from Denver, the drive to Rita’s is just over 90 minutes. No reservations are necessary and, as so often is said in the Steel City, ‘You’re only a stranger once.’
