After a decade of running a successful food truck business, the Colindres family opens El Mundo Do Las Delicias in downtown Petersburg

PETERSBURG — Sitting in the open dining room of his new restaurant, El Mundo De Las Delicias, Carlos Colindres talks about the long path his family has taken to end up on 20 N. Sycamore St. in downtown Petersburg. Hispanic artwork and flags adorn the walls around him.

“What’s funny, or the irony of it, is that none of us really cook,” said Carlos laughing. “My mom, me, or my dad. None of us really cook. But we’ve always had people who knew how to cook around us. We’ve always been behind the scenes, making things work, making things happen, that type of thing.”

Carlos' mother, Lupita, agrees.

"I love food, but my mother and sister, they were always cooking," she said laughing.

Colindres’ parents, Juan, from Guatemala, and Lupita, from Mexico, both came to the United States from small villages in their countries. Juan and Lupita met while working for a telephone company in Chicago, before moving to the Richmond area in 1984. Though the road the family took to eventually opening El Mundo De Las Delicias started more than a decade ago in 2003, when the family opened a small Spanish grocery called La Victoria in Richmond, selling Spanish products. Though the family sold the store in 2007, there was still demand for the Mexican food Lupita Colindres had begun to prepare in the back of the store.

“People were coming and saying ‘the food is good’, especially many of the people working in construction. They knew us like that,” said Lupita.

This led to the family opening the first El Mundo food truck, which were just becoming popular around that time. Capitalizing on a recent trend, one food truck quickly turned into more, as the business started to boom.

“We had more sites open up and more doors open, so we eventually had to get another truck, and another truck,” said Carlos.

The food trucks became popular staples at Fort Lee, where the family found a niche for their business. Right now, three trucks from El Mundo are regulars during lunch hour at the Army base. Because of all the success from the food trucks, the family decided to take on another challenge

“The natural evolution was like ‘Well, we’re already in the Tri-Cities area, let’s open up a restaurant’”, said Carlos. “That’s when we started doing this project.”

Carlos looked in multiple places around the Tri-Cities area, including Prince George and Hopewell, before deciding to plant the flag in Petersburg.

"We saw this place one day, and we really liked it," said Carlos. "There is parking [for the food trucks] in the back, it had almost everything we needed. And apart from that, Petersburg is a beautiful city. It's up and coming, and we just fell in love with it."

The Colindres’ hope to bring their authentic, home-style Mexican cooking that they have spread around the region to Petersburg.

"We're trying to bring back the concept of real Hispanic home-cooked meals: something really basic can go a long way," said Carlos. "Nothing super fancy; we could've went that route, but at the end of the day I think people enjoy that meal that they miss from home."

Carlos was in part inspired by the Mexican food culture in Chicago, where, as he puts it, there’s a “taco stand on almost every corner”.

“It’s hard to find a good taco place,” he said. "Everybody is looking for those good, real tacos, and it’s hard to find that. We’re from Chicago, and there, every store has tacos, and they’re real tacos,” he said.

Carlos hopes this authenticity can give the restaurant an identity among fans who enjoy a real taste of Hispanic cooking, which is different than some of the American-inspired dishes.

“You go to Mexico and ask for a taco, they’re not going to give you a hard shell taco,” he said. “They’re going to give you a soft corn tortilla with your choice of meat, and if you ask for something different they’ll say you’re crazy, they’ll say we don’t have that.”

With a smattering of customers left over from the lunch hour, Carlos reflects on the latest milestone for a family that has come a very long way from where they started ten years ago.

“It’s really amazing,” said Carlos. “If you had seen how we started, it’s like a Cinderella story. It’s really the American dream because my parents came from Mexico and Guatemala, and they came from small villages looking for a better life.”

I always ask them ‘Hey mom, hey dad, did you think you would do this?’ Because, working at Fort Lee, we’ve met senators, congressmen, generals, lots of soldiers, and now the people here in Petersburg. So it’s really amazing how it started in a small village, and now we’re all here.”

“It was a challenge, but we love being here. So we try everything for the best,” said Juan.

El Mundo De Las Delicias is open Monday-Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m to 6 p.m.

•John Adam may be reached at jadam@progress-index.com or 804-722-5172.