By Jonathan Turner, Hola America
Coya’s Café Mexican Grill is open at a new location at 2903 Avenue of the Cities, Moline. They held a ribbon-cutting and grand opening Saturday, May 16.
Now in a totally restored building that formerly housed Adolph’s Mexican Foods, Coya’s had been at a smaller restaurant (since 2018) at 4320 4th Avenue, Moline, where owner Blanca Moran’s mother operated the old Jalapenos (since 1993) with her cousin, Angel Moran. Blanca’s grandmother opened her first restaurant in Veracruz, Mexico in the 1950s.
Photo by Tar Macias / Hola America Photo Archives
Her parents moved to the Quad Cities when she was 3, in the late ‘70s, when her dad worked for the John Deere foundry in East Moline, and Blanca graduated from United Township High School, going on to Black Hawk and Augustana colleges. Her mom (Cordelia “Coya” Limon) briefly ran the Veracruz Mexican restaurant in the mid-‘90s in downtown Rock Island, and Blanca worked several years for South Moline Township, leaving after her mom passed away in 2016.
“I didn’t really want to open a restaurant. What happened is the owner of that location, he’s the one that told me, Blanca, you need to rent it out for me,” she recalled of the first Coya’s Café, noting the rent was the same that her mom paid 20 years earlier.
“It was kind of like a sign from God,” Blanca said. “There was too many Mexican restaurants at that point that I was like, I can’t compete with Mexican restaurants at that level. So let’s do something different, something unique. So that’s when I started doing like street-style food, homestyle cooking, snacks, drinks, something unique and different. And I did it to honor my mother.”
“I was going through losing her and then remembering everything and then she taught me — the cooking and it came from my grandmother,” she said, noting her husband Alvaro led the remodeling of the old Moline location and the much larger new one. “Thank God to all the Quad Cities, it became very successful and I had to quit my full-time job.”
Coya’s at first was just open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but then expanded to 9 p.m., and a year ago to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. At the new location, those closing times are the same, but opening six days a week at 9 a.m., closing at 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday; and closed all day Sundays.
They wanted to move for many reasons, including limited space.
“We kind of outgrew it. The parking lot was a craziness,” Blanca said. “People couldn’t find parking. Only five tables would fit in there. Most of our orders were to go where deliveries are. So it’s time to expand. And I kept looking. I want to stay in the Illinois side. I prefer to stay in Moline. But I was looking for places. And then God sent me another angel, another friend, and he started talking.”
Chris Ontiveros bought the old Adolph’s and completely gutted it, ready for total remodel, which took a year and the seating capacity is now about 80. “We put in new plumbing, electricity, new furnace, new kitchen, new bathrooms, new walls. Everything is new in here,” she said.
Her son Pablo works in the restaurant, as does her niece Cynthia. Blanca’s daughter Daisy (now Ramirez) is executive director for the QC Community Foundation’s Center for Nonprofit Excellence.
Popular QC muralist Atlanta Dawn did the interior painting at Coya’s, including a rear wall that has large, colorful portraits of Coya when she was 15 and 79 (her age when she died). An opposite wall includes many crosses and family photos. Their Christian religion is very important to the Moran family.
“That’s why we don’t open on Sundays. For me, God first, family and then work,” Blanca said. “I’m thankful to God for all the blessings and protection. And I said, it’s okay. There’s a lot of other restaurants you can go.”
The philosophy of Coya’s Café is “Cooking Con Amor,” or cooking with love. The menu is filled with her mom’s recipes. “Because she would say, if you’re going to make something, do it out of love. If not, then do it and do it the right way,” Blanca said.
In June, she will bring in even more homestyle cooking, “because I see a lot of people are always running, running, running. They don’t have time to cook. They’re busy,” she said. “So I want to create something that if you’re coming out of work, here’s a package for a family of homestyle cooking.”
The outside of the restaurant has a Spanish quote from Blanca’s favorite artist, Frida Kahlo, saying: “Why do I need feet if I have wings to fly?” The inside also features lots of flowers, which were her mom’s favorite.
“My mom loved flowers. I love flowers,” she said. “My favorite color is pink. My mom’s favorite color was yellow. My husband is blue. So that’s why there’s a lot of blue, pink, and yellow in here. We do hearts because we cook with love and crosses because we believe in God.”
Coya’s will have a different $11 special all day every weekday, and Saturdays will feature Tacos de Birria, which are made with slow-cooking meat (over six hours) in a spiced chile broth until tender and juicy. “It’s shredded beef with onion and cilantro and it has a broth where you dip it in,” Blanca said.
Being a family business is very important.
“If it wasn’t for their help and their support and my backbone, then this wouldn’t happen,” she said. “And then all my workers, they’re like my second family. If it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t run this place either. So I treat them like family and I do some special things with them.”
To compete in a crowded QC field, Blanca focuses on what’s unique and different.
“First, customer service. They be like exceptional. What the customers want,” she said. “Second, the quality of our food, our presentation.”
“I always tell people, this is one of the businesses that you have to love the business. It’s very time-consuming,” Blanca said. “You don’t have a life, you don’t have weekends. Sometimes you don’t even have your family because your kids want you. But you can’t because you have to be here. So I said, you have to have the love for the food and the business because if you’re doing it for the money, this is not the business right now.”
Coya’s also does catering for special events, like weddings and quinceañeras. For more information, call them at 309-749-7626.
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