Juan and Dolores Barajas, their daughters Lucy Aguirre and Linda McIlvain, along with several other family members sit around a table laughing and telling stories. It’s a warm afternoon in early September and the family just finished eating lunch- Dolores’ famous cooking. This scene might have been straight out of the family’s dining room if it wasn’t for all of the customers seated at booths and tables around them.
For the Barajas’, running a restaurant is a family tradition. Although their current place, Old Mexico Restaurant, opened in 2003 at 610 45th Street in Rock Island, Juan and Dolores have been operating restaurants in the Illinois Quad Cities since 1965. Now both in their eighties, neither are sure when exactly they’ll end up retiring.
“We consider Old Mexico a 46-year tradition that people really come and cherish,” says George Barajas, one of six Barajas children. “We’ve had three generations of family working at the restaurant.” Several grandchildren work as servers and in the kitchen. George expects his six-year-old grandson Isaiah will become the first of the family’s fourth generation to work in the restaurant.
After starting Lolita’s Café on the east end of Moline in 1965, the family operated Lolita’s Taco House and Cantina in downtown Moline from the early 70’s through the late 1980’s. All of the Barajas children grew up working at Lolita’s.
“Every table was full constantly,” remembers Lucy about her days as a Lolita’s waitress. Juan and Dolores instilled the value of hard work into each of their children. In addition to helping run the restaurants, Juan worked at John Deere for 28 years. He would often finish a shift at the plant and then head to the restaurant and keep working until Dolores finished.
“They’ve always been so united in what they’ve achieved,” says Linda about her parents. “You hang around with them, you work.”
Juan was born in Texas as a U.S. Citizen, but raised in Mexico with his family. He met Dolores while working for a newspaper in Mexico City and the couple was married in 1947. As the family grew, Juan and Dolores wanted more opportunities for their children and decided to move to the United States. In 1958, Juan moved in with relatives in Moline and worked a number of jobs until the rest of the family joined him in 1961.
“We came all the way from Mexico City by train to the border and then we came by Greyhound [bus] all the way from El Paso to Moline,” remembers Linda.“My mom alone with five of us kids.” Her youngest sister Dee Dee was born in Moline.
On the way, they missed a bus connection in St. Louis and had to spend the night in a hotel, paid for by a local church. In the morning, a man Linda remembers only as a police chief took them all out for breakfast before getting back on the bus. He was the one who had instructed police officers at the bus station to bring the family to the hotel and who had connected them with the church. As it turned out, he was Latino-American and spoke Spanish.
“He talked to us, gave us all a dollar and told us that our dream will come true here in this country and that whatever we decide to do, if we work hard enough, that we can accomplish it here,” recalls Linda. “He made a big impact in our lives.”
That promise seems to have come true for the Barajas children, all of them finding success in and out of the restaurant business. Old Mexico is the eleventh restaurant the Barajas’ have operated, including one in Houston, Texas. Having retired from running restaurants after Juan left Deere in 1989, the couple traveled back and forth to Mexico, spending time with family and taking a break from a lifetime of work. Then, in 1995, their eldest son Mario passed away due to an aneurysm in his heart. Their daughter Marcella followed in August 2002, losing a long battle with cancer.
After Mario’s death, Dolores needed a way to deal with her pain and found solace in the kitchen. In October of 1995, the family reopened Lolita’s Taco House in Silvis, where the youngest sibling Dee Dee Abarca now run’s her own version of the restaurant.
“Cooking is in my heart,”says Dolores. It’s what keeps her going day after day, year after year.
The night of the grand opening, Linda drove in from Chicago after flying from California. She was thinking that she would arrive too late to see anyone at the restaurant, but when she called, Dee Dee told her to come as soon as she could. She got to the restaurant at 9pm and found a line out the door. She went “straight to the register and nonstop until 1am!” recounted Linda. “For me, it was beautiful.”
In 2003, Juan and Dolores opened Old Mexico, again taking on more work as a kind of therapy after the death of their daughter Marcella. Today Juan and Dolores still close the restaurant together, usually leaving around 10pm along with Linda or George and the night staff. Recently, however, Dolores cooked up 50 pounds of tamales for a church fundraiser, which kept them working until after midnight for almost a week.
“We’ve had customers that have eaten our food for over 40 years,” says George, noting that there are some customers who come in to eat almost everyday. “A lot of people come from out of town to say hello and come to see my mom and dad.”
George says that the combination of time honored, made-from-scratch cooking and a family atmosphere is what makes Old Mexico unique. It’s a tradition that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon, no matter when Juan and Dolores decide to actually retire. “We all know mom’s style in her cooking and fortunately I’ve learned a lot from her,” says Linda. At least for now, Dolores keeps on cooking and supervises everything that comes out of the kitchen.
“The people that I go out to see when they come to the restaurant say the food is very delicious,” says Dolores with a smile. “I tell them that it’s because I make it with a lot of love.”
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