Our story
Four generations, one recipe
Guadalupe “Lupe” Portillo learned to cook beside her mother in Corktown. Later, in Southwest Detroit, she cooked for churches, schools and festivals, and for the families who came up from Mexico to work the summers. She ran businesses of her own along Michigan Avenue and Vernor, and she took pride in her family and her heritage. You could taste it.
In 2016 her great-grandson Finn brought the salsa to school for a class project. People kept asking for more, so the Gomez family started selling it, first at local gyms and then at markets around Metro Detroit.
When we needed a commercial kitchen, Jim Danosky of Bella Pizza in Allen Park answered a Facebook post and let us use his, rent-free, for six years. In 2022 we opened our own kitchen and shop on Fort Street in Lincoln Park.
“Without Jim, I don’t know where we’d be today.”
Finn Gomez, on NPR
