Fans of Chinese foods cooked by Mexican-Americans (like the entire staff at Yaqui’s on Cherokee) order take-out from Dragon’s Place several times a week. A Saturday night trip to Yaqui’s, a wine bar and restaurant, tipped this writer to the Chinese-Mexican connection when a young man arrived with giant bags of carryout Chinese food fragrant with garlic and ginger.
Yaqui’s serves some fine foods, so the paper bags seemed like carrying coals to Newcastle, delivering ice to Eskimos, or taking owls to Athens to me. I had to ask what’s up. “We love their food,” Yaqui’s owner Francis Rodriguez said. “Chinese food cooked by a Mexican family. It’s unusual. Of course we order from them.” His claim bore further investigation.
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We foodies often focus on the latest destination restaurants in town, celebrating an acclaimed chef, anticipating new menu offerings and spaces designed to wow and entertain. I learned that for Dragon’s Place, the restaurant that opened in Dutchtown in June of 2015, the story is the journey, in the realization of a long-held dream of one Hispanic family to open a Chinese restaurant.
It’s easy to miss the small storefront eatery on Meramec Avenue, a narrow but well-travelled cross street on the Southside. Cars fly by it in the densely populated mix of two- and four- and multi-family apartments and single-family homes dotted with a small Mediterranean grocery store, a couple of bars, a church, and a senior center.
“We had been looking unsuccessfully for a location on South Grand,” matriarch Yeni Albarran of Dragon’s Place says. “We live in the neighborhood. My husband and I had just about given up. On the last day of our search, I drove down Meramec, opposite of the way I usually drive, and I saw a building, a restaurant, for rent. We called the number. When we saw it, we knew it would work.”
The Albarran family had moved to St. Louis five years earlier. Genaro, the patriarch, found work as a baker at a Bosnian bakery. Yeni started with Arby’s; today she manages an Arby’s store, and still finds time for the family restaurant.
The Albarrans participate in parish life at their neighborhood church, St. Cecilia’s, whose mission is to minister to the Hispanic population in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and where the majority of masses are held in Spanish. St. Louisans know the parish for fiestas in the summer and for fish fries that feature both Mexican specialties and traditional fare.
“Of course we all volunteer at the fish fries, in the kitchen, making the Mexican food,” Yeni Albarran says. “We also set up a booth at the Mexican Independence Day celebration on Cherokee Street in September. People would come to our booth and say, ‘What? Chinese food?’ We told them, we are a Mexican family running a Chinese restaurant. We’ll be there for Cinco de Mayo as well.
“One of the goals for my husband was to serve the Chinese food he cooks to Hispanic people. We sell to all of our neighbors, but for the customers who speak mostly Spanish, we can describe the food and help them try new things.”
Genaro Albarran moved from a small country town of 30 houses and a hundred people in the federated state of México to Birmingham, Alabama when he was just fourteen. Yeni, who is from the same small town, joined him later. He found work as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace. He rose in the kitchen hierarchy from dishwasher to cutter, to running the fryer to chef within seven years.
“When he first arrived in Birmingham, he ate only white rice,” Yeni Albarran says. “As he tried things, he learned to love the food.”
Jonathan Albarran shares in that love of Chinese food and now works at the restaurant alongside his parents, juggling his schedule at St. Louis Community College, where he studies business. “When we first opened, my brother William and I delivered menus all throughout the neighborhood,” he says. “Once we get a customer in the door, that person usually comes back. We advertise on the Spanish language station, WIJR La Tremenda 880 AM radio, but our best advertising is people telling one another about our place.”
The Albarrans closely figured costs to deliver the best value for the money in a city neighborhood neither hardscrabble nor high living, some families financially comfortable and others challenged to make ends meet. The Albarrans run weekly specials in the five- to seven-dollar range for entrees and value combination plates.
They roast ducks sold by the whole, half, or parts to customers who prize the rich meat. The menu features seventeen house specialties like Pork Dragon Style in a special spicy sauce and a Happy Family of beef, shrimp, chicken and crab meat sautéed with snow peas, mushrooms and more.
We didn’t try General Tso’s tofu, but the unusual entree opened a conversation about meeting customers’ needs. “My dad will make any of our entrees with tofu,” Jonathan says. “We have a number of vegetarian dishes, but we work to please our customers.”
That’s what my friends and I experienced when we lunched at Dragon’s Place, the little restaurant that won’t be written up for its star chef, exotic menu, or interiors. The day I returned for an interview, Genaro Albarran wasn’t able to meet because he’d worked all night, baking bread at the full-time job he holds as he and his family grow their business.
Mother and son worked counter and kitchen, pulling away from the interview to tend to customers, lilting Spanish mingled with English as customers entered and departed.
The Albarrans’ journey to open their restaurant reflects their dogged work ethic and exemplifies the best in the immigrants who have enriched our city. Mexico yielded its best with the Albarran family, good people, people like you and me, working hard to live and prosper in the United States.
Editor’s Note: The original story misidentified Francis Rodriguez, owner of Yaqui’s on Cherokee, as Alex Rodriguez. SLM regrets the error. (A-Rod on the brain…)
Dragon’s Place Chinese Restaurant
3819 Meramec
314-300-8665
Hours:
Mon – Thurs: 10 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Fri – Sat: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
No website
