Breakfast burritos on the grill at Cien Por Ciento Mexicana
Haz clic aquí para leer esto en español
By Natalia Otero
One day in 2018 Alejandra De la Fuente arrived at her Mexican food stand in the Lenexa Public Market in Kansas City and discovered a long line waiting for her. Why? Food & Wine magazine had just named her stand the source of the best burritos in Kansas!
Six years later, De la Fuente has parlayed the success of her stand, Red Kitchen, into a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, Cien Por Ciento Mexicana. The new spot opened earlier this month in downtown Overland Park, Kansas.
Mexico City Origins
De la Fuente grew up in a family passionate about cooking. She was born in Mexico City and raised in Guadalajara. Although none of her relatives went into the restaurant business, the love for good food was always present in her mother, father and aunts.
When she came home from school they would rush to prepare exquisite snacks. On Sundays her father would cook chilaquiles with tortilla and eggs with green sauce and chicharrón, which his daughter prepares today in his honor. Her mother, Amalia, cooked rabbit stew, the first recipe De la Fuente learned to make. Her mother has accompanied her throughout her cooking career.
Alejandra De la Fuente
As a good Latin American, her house was always wide open, and for anyone who visited, there was food. It is a tradition she has maintained to this day, and as she says: “If it’s time to add more water to the beans so that everyone eats, it’s done.”
By 2016 De la Fuente was married and living in the United States. Her family insisted that she cook tamales, because everyone missed the taste of home. Although De la Fuente had never cooked tamales before, she tried them and everyone loved them. She decided to take orders for tamales from friends during Christmas that year. It was such a success that she did it again for the Super Bowl.
That led to her first formal foodservice endeavor, the Red Kitchen food stand. “I set up the business in the city’s Public Market, and I took 900 tamales. They sold out in 45 minutes, they didn't even last an hour,” she remembers.
The business grew so much and so quickly that De la Fuente had to resign from the bank where she worked and dedicated herself to the preparation of tamales and other Mexican specialties. When the Food & Wine honor came two years later, business boomed.
Needed a Change
Eventually De la Fuente wanted to take another step forward, and the bricks-and-mortar restaurant is giving her that chance. On the last Tuesday of December, she did her last Taco Tuesday with Red Kitchen, closing this part of her life with a flourish.
“I felt it was routine, it wasn’t the same anymore. I needed that change. The idea of Public Market is to have a place to start. I’ve done it, I’m inspired and I’m ready to fly,” she says. “If you don't give up, your time comes.”
The new restaurant
De la Fuente now has a staff of people who help her in the kitchen and in the marketing of the business. And her mother, who has always been by her side, is present and dedicated to watering the plants.
The restaurant has a bougainvillea that represents the flower of her homeland, a painting of Frida Kahlo, books by Mexican writers, and good food. Breakfast Burritos are still a favorite dish, but De la Fuente also serves pozole on plates brought from Mexico, chilaquiles and tortillas handmade by a fellow countryman and placed in handmade baskets.
She reports that old and new customers have come to Cien Por Ciento Mexicana to try the food.
“I sell Mexican food and that's what I want to show people, it’s what I like eating,” De la Fuente says. “It's what I savor while I'm here: my antojitos, what I grew up with.”
Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to el Restaurante's digital publications for free by clicking here.