TamalFest chef opens food truck
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Local chef Michael O´Connor did not go to culinary school in the traditional sense. His education began at age 4 in the kitchens of his “nanas,” where he learned how to make tamales and developed a passion for cooking that led to the new CociNana food truck.
“I definitely have many nanas in my life. In my family they were not just grandmothers but aunties, older cousins—anybody who had a generation on you. Until you figured out their names you called them by the endearing [term] ‘nana,'”he says.
“One of my nanas in particular, Nana Isabel, took me into the kitchen and started letting me participate a little bit more in making meals,” says O’Connor, who you may have met at TamalFest DC. O’Connor was a participated in Hola Cultura’s first Fest in April 2015 and came back last year when we held the festival again in December.
O’Connor, whose ancestry is a combination of Salvadoran and West Virginia Irish with a touch of German, says he enjoys exploring the recipes of each one of those cultures. However his tamales—with names such as “Sweet Piggy”, “Salty Hen” and “Garden Green”—are anything but traditional.
“They start with my family recipes but now ‘the piggies’ have a little bit more of an Indonesian-Asian influence than my regular family recipe,” says O’Connor, who also makes vegan tamales, a market niche that has become key as he expands his business. “I’ve really come to enjoy exploring the vegetarian recipes—vegan recipes in particular—and trying to create a full-flavored welcoming experience for all, while staying true to the vegan strictures.”
Throughout high school and college, O´Connor hosted his own “tamal day” twice a year, inviting friends to gather around a table and make tamales. Everybody would contribute to cooking and eating the tamales, and took a few of the leftovers home too.
“It was a fun way, especially in the college years, to get my friends, who were back in town, together again,” he says of these events that become opportunities for his friends to exchange family stories and recipes too.
Before Christmas last year, O’Connor took the time to reflect on his own life and what makes him truly happy.
“I really started thinking more about what I was doing and why I was doing it. Was it bringing me happiness?” he says.
His thoughts kept coming back to the tamales he’d been making all his life. In conversations with his grandmother, he realized making tamales could become his business.
While he’d dabbled in food service before, he says it wasn’t until he considered starting the business that he became “fully serious” about the prospect. His friends encouraged him to open a food truck, an idea he’d already been contemplating. They promised to bring him business by encouraging their own friends and officemates to check out his food.
Once he decided, he launched a crowdsourcing campaign last December via the website gofundme.com. He raised about $15,000 to buy a food truck a friend had for sale and make the repairs needed to get it on the road. Among the rewards he offered to his biggest backers were the delivery of tamales once a month and the option of having his or her name inscribed on the truck. His friends and family members were among his biggest backers but he says he found himself “randomly crying” with gratitude by the complete strangers who chipped in to his crowdsourcing campaign. Many backers didn’t even claim their rewards his campaign offered, he says. They were just happy to help.
Starting this business, however, had its challenges. Among them were securing a kitchen, figuring out how many tamales were needed for a given week, and setting up the process of making them.
Besides the food prep, there’s a lot of paperwork involved in operating a food truck. Each jurisdiction has a different application process. He completed it first for Arlington County. But doing business in the District of Columbia, required separate paperwork, health inspections and registration fees, and so on for each jurisdiction where he might want to pull up to a curb and sell tamales.
When the CociNana food truck first hit the road in March, O’Connor sold 70 tamales on his first day. Today he rungs through even more during the average lunch rush, often selling out of the more popular varieties, such as the “Salty Hen,” a chicken tamal with potatoes, chick peas and olives.
The day we interviewed O´Connor was his best day for sales since opening CociNana. He had sold out of all of his tamales except a couple delicious vegan options that I was happily tried, taking a few home too.
“It’s all moving forward,” says O’Connor with the excitement of the day’s success and his future dreams reflected in his face. “We got good reactions and are getting a lot of returning customers who aren´t friends,” he says, or rather, “They are new friends, which is beautiful.”
For others who might dream of opening their own food business, O´Connor offers some advice. Complete all paperwork first because once you open, it’s more difficult to find the time. Besides those practical tips, O’Connor says don’t be afraid to dream big.
“Dream bigger than you imagine reality to be,” he says.
—Rebeca Ortega
Photos courtesy of CociNana
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