New restaurant a family affair: El Rancho offers homemade Mexican food
<p>El Rancho in Kalispell opened at the beginning of the month, to positive feedback from the community. The restaurant is owned by the Galvan-Talamantes family, from left, Jonathan, Briza, Chano, Chayo, and Lucy. (Brianna Loper/The Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>El Rancho co-owner Jonathan Galvan-Talamantes, left, visits with customers during lunch at the restaurant. He said the employees try to remember regular customers, and customer service is important to all of the staff. "We know customers are our lifeblood," he said. "So we treat them like family." (Brianna Loper/The Daily Inter Lake)</p>
Family is the name of the game for one new Kalispell restaurant.
El Rancho, a Mexican restaurant located at 25 Second Ave. West, is owned and operated by the Galvan-Talamantes family and has been a continued labor of love for the group.
“Everything we make here is home-style,” co-owner Jonathan Galvan-Talamantes. “If you were to come to our home and we cooked a meal for you, it would be exactly the same as what we make in our restaurant.”
Their secret weapon?
Chayo Galvan-Talamantes, the family’s matriarch.
“She’s in the kitchen for 14 hours a day, cooking every single meal,” Jonathan said.
“And every single thing she cooks, she puts all her effort, and her love, and her patience into,” his mother, Lucy, chimed in.
The restaurant is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the family matriarch cooks every single dish.
Chayo Galvan-Talamantes learned to cook family recipes from her mother and does so without a cookbook. Everything she makes, she does from scratch and by memory, the family said.
Her children and grandchildren say they have yet to master her technique, which consists of “a pinch of this” and “a handful of that.”
“She can smell a dish and know what it needs,” Lucy said. “What she does is amazing. She loves to cook.”
“She’s superwoman,” said Jonathan simply.
Regardless of cooking style, Jonathan said each time his grandmother makes a dish, it is exactly the same and consistency is key.
All of the restaurant’s key ingredients are ordered from California or Mexico, so they’re as close to authentic as possible. On top of that, each meal is made fresh daily by Chayo.
“We know our work and our products are good and that we are fighters,” Chayo said in Spanish, with Jonathan translating. “We are not looking for competition, because we compete against ourselves every day to be better.”
According to Jonathan, the goal is to get customers to experience the Mexican lifestyle, where each meal is an event in itself.
“Cooking is huge in Mexican culture,” he said. “It’s not just about eating and feeling full.”
Instead, he said it is about the family and community experience of being together. Many times, the act of cooking a meal together is better than eating the finished product.
“I think people see that when they come in here,” he said. “We know customers are our lifeblood, so we treat them like family.”
Because of that, many of the customers call Chayo “mom.”
THE FAMILY is originally from Mexico, but moved to Bellevue, Wash., when Jonathan was 4 years old. There, they all worked in a Jewish deli, and became close friends with the deli’s owner.
“That’s where we really learned customer service,” Lucy said. “We owe everything to our boss there.”
The family joked that the deli’s manager would run after potential customers and drag them into the store to get them to try his food, but in the end, customers always left happy.
“We learned that if you make a mistake, you own up to it right away,” Jonathan said. “Then you make it right, and you make things right with the customer.”
For over 12 years, the family worked in the deli, but eventually decided they wanted to run their own restaurant. They moved to Whitefish to be closer to several family members and opened the original to-go El Rancho location.
However, the “shoulder season” between summer and winter tourism was too difficult for business. They decided to relocate to Kalispell. In August, they found a downtown location, but the building had been completely stripped on the inside. The family spent several months painting, planning, and revamping the inside of the building to their specifications.
Finally, they were able to open for business earlier this month and since have received a flood of positive feedback from the community.
“We’re still learning the ropes, but our customers have been really understanding,” Jonathan said. Since the family did not have seated, in-house service at their previous location, they’re still learning the best way to run their new restaurant.
“It will take a few months to learn the rhythm and flow of Kalispell,” Lucy said. “But once we do, we think we’ll be able to serve our customers very well.”
In the future, they hope to offer live music, outdoor seating and a larger variety of Mexican drinks and dishes.
Right now, the six members of the family — Jonathan, his mother, Chayo and her husband, Chano, and two aunts — work all shifts at the restaurant, but they hope to hire more servers and host staff once they hit a rhythm.
However, one thing is for certain.
“There’s only one Mom,” Lucy said. “She’s a master chief, and this place wouldn’t be what it is without her.”
For more information, find El Rancho Mexican Restaurant on Facebook.
Reporter Brianna Loper may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at bloper@dailyinterlake.com.