PM: TELL US WHO YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU COME FROM.
LA RUTA DEL SABOR: My name is Carlos Ramos, a 29-year-old Puerto Rican, Chef, and owner of La Ruta Del Sabor better known as the one with his grandmother’s seasoning, and also as the rooster and his poppy flower, due to the design of our logo. I was proudly born and raised where even the stones sing, the Atlantic City of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. But if you ask Rosa from Palo Magazine, she will say that I am a “Domiriqueño” meaning half Puerto Rican and half Dominican.
PM: WHEN DID YOU DISCOVER YOUR TALENT IN THE KITCHEN?
LA RUTA DEL SABOR: I will share with you a little of my personal story, the birth of a business, and how God changed my life with my passion for cooking a talent that I did not know I even had.
From a very young age, I watched my grandmother Santa and my grandfather Papucho on my maternal side cooking, they are both of Dominican descent. As you can see, I also carry Dominican blood. I remember seeing my grandmother cook every day exclusively through touch and smell, measuring with her fingers, and tasting the food every second since she was blind. That marked me and even when I grew up, I always wondered how it was that her meals were always on perfect point. While I have the joy of being able to see I still cannot replicate those recipes. It was there that I understood the saying “love enters through the kitchen.” I remember Papucho with his famous pigeon “sambumbia.” That is what he would call his soup. It usually was accompanied by “yaniqueques” a Dominican fried fritter. The smell of this aphrodisiac soup was so strong it made everyone leave the house, but for him, it was his way of staying healthy.
From the town of Moca, PR on my father’s Puerto Rican side I remember seeing my grandmother Milla making liver and onions “the pleasure with a high taste in iron” that is what my grandfather Carlos would kindly call it. He would eat it usually with a plate of stewed rice, and codfish. For me at that time his only grandson I would have some green fried plantain chips that were freshly cut from my grandfather’s harvesting. It was here where those desires for cooking had already awakened in me, seeing how a genuine love was offered and one that could hardly ever be replicated.
PM: TELL US ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY FROM WENDY’S TO “MOFONGUERO” (A PERSON WHO MAKES A SMASHED PLANTAIN DISH)
LA RUTA DEL SABOR: At the age of sixteen I arrived in the city of Orlando Florida and joined the diaspora along with my mother and two younger brothers looking for a better future. To contribute something, I would take eight public buses daily to accompany my siblings to their respective schools, four to go and four back while my mom worked, but the money was not enough. It was then that I saw an opportunity for extra income as directly in front of where we lived there was a Wendy’s Restaurant, and I decided to contribute by working at night at that location. I was a minor and they did not give work to minors at that time, but I had something in my favor and that was my high school diploma thanks to that diploma I managed to get my first job.
From that first day of work, entering the ”rush hour” I was able to confirm the passion I felt since I was a child for cooking that atmosphere was similar to an orchestrated symphony where smells are mixed and time goes unnoticed it was an instant addiction that I knew no other branch of work was going to be able to captivate me and immerse me in it for the rest of my life. As for the title of chef, it is more of a degree granted by a culinary university, but the cost of schooling making the minimum salary at a fast-food restaurant was not a viable option for me. So, mine, although it was not given to me by a teacher, I earned it in the best schools. As a good Puerto Rican would say, “I earned it with sweat and lungs” on different battlefields, in the heat of the kitchen.
As the weeks went by, the day came when the manager approached me along with my first paycheck and that is when I had to confess the truth. While I already had my high school diploma, I was only 16 years old, and right there culminated what for me was my first real love for cooking as I was let go.
Speaking of real love, a few months later I turned 17 and decided to go to Puerto Rico where I left behind a love when I emigrated to the United States. I decided to marry who is my wife today. ”The poppy flower in our logo represents her.” We returned to Florida together for a short 6 months. Then we headed to the city of Reading, PA in 2012 and there began another story. We started like many working in factories through employment agencies, then my wife became a professional in the medical field and I was tired of seeing my passion for cooking die in jobs that only left me money, but not the happiness that marked me in that first kitchen in 2012.
I then decided to throw myself into the culinary world and pursue that passion that I had let die. I applied to an Italian restaurant and that is when I entered the real battlefield, a different world where I barely understood the instructions that were given to me due to their language, but it was there that the spark returned and the passion for cooking revived. I learned about the world of fresh pasta, about huge pizza dough, and how to handle the fire of a wood-fired oven and I fell in love. Time passed and thirsty for more wisdom I entered the world of Lebanese, Japanese, Mexican food, and countless other types of restaurants. Already my jacket was growing in ranks and full of culinary skills. The year 2017 arrives with a lot of culinary wisdom but full of customs adopted by a poorly balanced life in the said work environment. Long nights came of cleaning kitchens, friendships with restaurant owners, open bars full of unlimited free alcohol at the end of the night, drugs, and being overweight. The world seemed to be a great party, but everything conspired in favor of my failure. That same year I saw my first daughter born and I said this is not the life or the father I want for her life. Together with my wife, we ??decided to move to Puerto Rico since my life was spiraling and it seemed I would reach the point of hitting rock bottom if I continued in that world.
We arrived back in our hometown of Aguadilla, PR, welcomed by my paternal grandparents along with our daughter who was only several months old. The jacket was full of culinary victories, but personally, I felt empty and defeated. During my depression, I managed to work again at a Creole restaurant like a Mofonguero, but the $7.25 minimum wage was not enough since there were already three of us. Between bad habits and ego clashes with other cooks, I cashed my first check of $200, and along with it some words that would launch me into an upcoming test, you are fired!
I said now who gets me out of this position of uncertainty, depression, and supposed defeat. Between tears, my paternal grandmother and my second mother encouraged me to get out of my depression and do the only thing I knew, cooking. I remember both of them in front of a computer writing a delivery menu for each day of the week at $5 a plate with a bottle of water. We tried to draw up a route to make deliveries and right there the question arose, what will the business be called? and Bingo!! We will call it La Ruta Del Sabor, and there an enterprise is born.
That was the easy part, the most important thing missing, the clients. My wife came up with the idea of printing that week’s menu and placing it on the cars parked at a church. I remember that when I finished distributing them, I told her, how about we go to the town’s market square today to distribute them directly to people there, I was sure there would be many people. The day arrived and there we went with a baby carried on our backs in a porter under the hot 90-degree sun, trusting in our proposal of food, drinks, and free delivery to an entire town for only 5 dollars. How we were going to achieve it was the constant question because it was such a feat with just an idea and a piece of paper. With that last work check already invested, we lacked where we could cook, and we didn’t want to use up the only stove in the house. Then my wife told me about a double gas stove that she had seen, the kind that is used in emergencies on a ranch, and one was owned by her grandfather. Now at least we had somewhere to start.
Upon arriving at “the famous carport” where we would start, my grandfather Carlos takes me to a welder to build a custom table for those simple two burners. The first day arrived on Monday, June 12, 2017, I remember it as if it were today, Spanish Shepherd’s Pie, a green salad, and garlic bread. Suddenly the phone did not stop ringing, “Yes, good morning, does La Ruta Del Sabor deliver?” There began another challenge, we needed to utilize two cars because the route was extending more and more every day. Thus, as the weeks passed, we received calls from universities, medical offices, post offices, restaurant employees, and even family and friends who also arrived at that famous carport called La Ruta Del Sabor. Within a very short time, we already had a paralyzed house, both cars in use, my wife answering one cell phone and my grandmother on another, my father went alone to make deliveries while I stayed to cook, while my grandfather went racing in search of more merchandise and my aunt Yeyi who would come walking over to take care of our five-month-old daughter.
Shortly after seeing an entire family scaffold letting go of their routines and supporting us, Hurricane Irma sadly arrived, followed by Hurricane Maria. The two stoves returned to the ranch and my wife, faced with uncertainty, decided to return to Pennsylvania where, shortly after, the Island was completely in the dark and unconnected.
Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, everything on the Island turned dark, and in survival mode with military food, waiting in lines for days for only $20 of gasoline and two gallons of water per day per person. The first day after María I remember very well another strong attack on my life. While I was riding a bicycle with a gallon of gasoline in each hand I suffered a fall where one of the gallons of gasoline exploded in my face and I momentarily lost my sight and my whole life passed through my mind because no one wanted to share some of their precious water to wash my eyes. Tired, and feeling exhausted once again, I heard on the radio that they had restored functions at the airports, so I decided to return to Pennsylvania with my wife and daughter.
After two years in 2019, our second daughter came into our lives, and fearing the experience of that past where the nocturnal world of cooking influenced me and the nights were a party, I decided to return to what one day in that carport in Aguadilla was. The Flavor Route (La Ruta del Sabor). That safe place full of family support where we are the owners of our time and instead of being influenced by the world we serve as an influence through our faith, and a testimony full of perseverance that also gave birth to another sugary venture that complements me in the kitchen called ”Dulce Ruta” where my wife decorates beautiful tables, they are colorful with fruits and charcuterie, with typical Puerto Rican puff pastry dough desserts.
We have been strengthened in God and no atmospheric change makes us shake. I give my life to Jesus and today we can say, Ebenezer, God has helped us up to this point.
PM: HOW TO CONTACT YOU?
LA RUTA DEL SABOR: Today we have almost 10k followers on our Facebook page La Ruta Del Sabor Reading P.A. Reaching the reaction of more than 400k people in our publications.
Currently, we decided to go to Florida for a while. Just when this publication is released, we will already be in Florida. Until a few days ago we were in the township of Temple P.A. where we worked as a catering company serving the Hispanic community with that authentic 100% Puerto Rican flavor. Our specialty is Puerto Rican Fusion Chinese food. Do not be sad because we are chasing our dreams and a better future for our family, and I know that wherever we are we will continue to succeed.
Personally, if there is one thing we are sure of, it is that for those who love God, all things work together for good, and within the entrepreneurship world never abandon your dreams because we know that he who strives and perseveres sooner or later triumphs.
We hope our story can be a blessing or motivation to others. Blessings family!! The Rooster and the Poppy Flower.
Rosa J. Parra
Founder and Editor
Palo Magazine