After Fire, Taco Restaurateur Rebuilds

A kitchen-wall fire shut down Edgar Marcial’s Tacos Los Gordos restaurant barely a month after it first opened on Orange Street.

Now, the California transplant is working on raising money to rehab his recently renovated culinary home so that he and his staff can soon get back to cooking up and dishing out nopales tacos, esquites, and other Oaxacan fare.

Marcial’s restaurant is located in a downtown storefront at 167 Orange St., where Duc’s banh mi shop and CBH Cafe used to be. 

After first opening its doors in early August, Tacos Los Gordos has been closed since Sept. 7 because of a fire inside of one of the restaurant’s kitchen walls. 

During an interview with the Independent, Marcial described what happened that day — as well as what motivated him to open up a restaurant downtown in the first place, and why he wants to get back to serving up tacos on Orange Street storefront soon.

“That’s one thing you learn in this business, to never give up,” he said as surveyed his still-shuttered restaurant. ​“We’re going to keep pushing.”

At around 3 p.m. on Sept. 7, Marcial said, he started to smell something faint, but could not identify what it was. 

As the day went on, the smell grew stronger, and Marcial continued to look for the source, moving around equipment and checking the connected basements of other storefronts in the building. 

At around 6 p.m., one of Marcial’s employees came up from the basement and told him it was filling with smoke.

But a fire was still nowhere to be found. 

Firefighters arrived on the scene and, Marcial said, it took them still another hour to locate the fire.

“They did what they had to do,” said Marcial. ​“They had to destroy a lot of walls and parts of the ceiling” to find and put out the blaze.

By the time firefighters located the fire inside a wall in the back corner of the kitchen, the restaurant ​“looked awful,” according to Marcial. ​“Watching it get torn down made me sad. I worked hard on it and designed it myself.”

The @NewHavenFire Twitter account documented the city’s response to the fire in real time, starting at around 8:10 p.m. with smoke reportedly coming from the basement at 167 Orange St. At 8:59 p.m., the account Tweeted: ​“C32 fire located behind the stove in a taco joint. Opening up the wall.”

Marcial did not return to the restaurant until some of his employees had cleaned it up.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation and it will take some time for Marcial to be able to reopen, he said. 

Before a contractor can start repairing the damage, the building will have to undergo building, health, and fire inspections, and he’ll have to pull a handful of related, required city permits. 

The day after the fire, Marcial started a GoFundMe to help cover some of the expenses of repairing the restaurant and covering payroll for his employees while the restaurant is closed.

“It saddens us to share, Tacos Los Gordos took a hit last night due to a fire inside the walls,” the online fundraising post reads. ​“Although this has slowed us down, it has not finished us. As many of you know, we are a family business, we have been open for a month & 1/2, it took us 4 months to open. So, we’ve been trying to catch up on time & money lost. Many of you have reached out and gave us condolences, best wishes, prayers, & asking/wanting ways to help us reopen. If you would like to donate, even a little, we would be [eternally] grateful. We have a great community, and family here on Orange St. in New Haven. We miss all of you, and look forward to serving you again soon!”

“We didn’t expect anything from the GoFundMe,” Marcial told the Independent on Sunday. ​“But we’ve been very blessed.” One regular customer donated $200 just after the GoFundMe was set up. According to Marcial, many of Tacos Los Gordos’s loyal customers have been telling him. ​“We can’t be without you guys. You better reopen.” According to the GoFundMe, Marcial’s raised around $2,160 towards a $15,000 goal so far.

Multiple people who walked by Marcial outside his restaurant Sunday recognized him and asked how things were going. He told each of them that he would not give up and hoped to reopen by the end of the month. 

Marcial is grateful to the other restaurants on his block who supported him the day of the fire. He said that many other restaurants in town have offered help as well. He said Atticus offered its kitchen to Marcial and his employees to hold a pop-up while they repair their own kitchen.

“New Haven is amazing,” Marcial said with a smile. ​“These people don’t even know me.”

He also said that Tacos Los Gordos had already developed a loyal and devoted base of customers in its brief time open downtown. 

Soon after opening, Marcial said, he was selling so many tacos that he had to close in the afternoons to prepare more ingredients and would still have to close early for the night when he sold out again. ​“People were traveling here from all over, Hartford, New York, for our tacos,” Marcial said. 

Marcial said he takes pride in making quality food, bringing an authentic taste of his Oaxacan roots to New Haven. He said he often works in the kitchen alongside his five employees, sometimes bringing along with him his 16-year-old son, who loves cooking. 

"Si Vas A Hacer Algo Hazlo Bien"

Marcial said he fell in love with cooking when he was 13 years old, while working under the table as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in his home state of California. 

When there were no dishes to do, he would watch the woman who owned the restaurant and admire how happy she looked spreading the ricotta on her lasagna and making sauces on the stove. As he became more curious, Marcial started asking the woman questions about her recipes, and soon, he was helping her make them.

After that, Marcial began cooking for his four siblings while his mother worked day and night to support them. Because they didn’t have much money, Marcial had to work with whatever ingredients were in the kitchen. ​“I thought it tasted horrible,” he said of his first attempts. But eventually, his skills and tastes developed.

Near the door to his Orange Street restaurant, the story of Tacos Los Gordos is painted on the wall in black letters. 

Included in it is a quote from his mother, which Marcial lives by: ​“Si vas a hacer algo hazlo bien. Si no, no lo hagas.” In English, that translates to: ​“If you’re going to do something, do it right. Or don’t bother doing it at all.”

Marcial said he’s spent 15 years working as a chef. His tortillas are homemade with masa straight from Oaxaca, he said. He added with pride that his al pastor tacos are made the ​“original” way, unlike just about every other al pastor taco he’s had in Connecticut. 

While the restaurant is closed, Marcial has not stopped perfecting his food. He is working on more vegetarian options, after his cactus — or nopales — tacos have unexpectedly been one of the most popular menu items. He was surprised to find that even non-vegetarians would come in just to try the cactus and he is excited to add more options, not just because they will sell, but ​“to give people something they love.”

He also hopes to open the restaurant for breakfast and eventually open a few more locations in Connecticut.

But Tacos Los Gordos is not the end of the road for Marcial. 

Marcial said this restaurant is just a ​“break” for him, before he eventually hopes to open a fine dining restaurant. He said his goal is to open a restaurant that eventually earns a Michelin star.

“I want one for Connecticut and I know I’ll get it. I know what I produce,” he said. ​“I know the talent I have. It’s in my heart. It’s in my hands, my eyes, my tastes.”