Guerneville’s Sabor Mexicano feeds farm-to-table empire

It's not that he is so much a humble man, but Jorge Saldana doesn't take credit for his success. He owns Cancun restaurant in downtown Berkeley, Tlaloc restaurant in San Francisco's Financial District, the national Sabor Mexicano Home Made gourmet chips and salsa company, and the 130-acre Sabor Mexicano Farm in Guerneville that sources produce for all his other businesses.

But, he says, “It all happened naturally. It was an accident. It's because life is what happens when you don't think about it.”

Specifically, it all started with a microwave. The Guadalajara-born entrepreneur grew up in a farming family, one of nine siblings, with a father who harvested daily, and a mother who cooked every meal from scratch.

“My father would take me and my brothers out to the fields,” Saldana said. “He showed us how corn ripens, how beans grow, how to pick squash when it's tender. We would bring it home, and my mom would do an amazing meal - sauté corn with smashed garlic, onion, tomatoes, torn cilantro and zucchini, maybe throw in a little pork. I never saw a bag or box or can, ever, ever, ever, and I learned to cook that way.”

So he was horrified when, after moving to Berkeley for college in the late 1980s, he met a woman who was trying to run a Mexican restaurant with only a microwave. She didn't have a grill, or even a stove, and her business was failing. Saldana, meanwhile, had become “famous” among his friends at school because he cooked “amazing” food, replicating his mother's recipes from memory.

That was 1991, and he was just 20 years old. He scrounged a down payment together, bought the place for $19,000, and the lady carried the loan. “She gave me a crazy gift,” he said.

And why not jump in, he figured - he had been working as a waiter, he had a friend who worked in construction and could build a proper kitchen for the tiny spot's six tables, what else could he need?

It turned out he was right. Customers loved his authentic cuisine, showcasing whole black beans instead of refried, homemade tortillas, smashed garlic and torn cilantro for bolder flavors than chopped, and meats sizzled on an open grill. “Back then, most places boiled their chicken, a grill was novel,” he said. “People said no one would understand my cooking, with quesadillas like we made back home with queso fresco and squash blossoms, but all of a sudden I had lines out the door.”

Saldana dropped out of school, and three years later, moved to a new, 4,000-square-foot space that is today's Cancun. In 2000, he opened his Tlaloc restaurant, spanning an ambitious 7,000 square feet over three stories. Tlaloc is a regional Jalisco term for fertility, and true to the name, the menu focuses on fresh ingredients, including eggs from Saldana's 200 forest-raised Guerneville chickens, homemade chorizo and tortillas, whole pinto beans, queso fresco and specialty items like nopales.

In 2006, Saldana realized he wanted to return to farming. “I was homesick,” he said, “missing the ground, the soils.”

Originally, he planned to buy 1 acre, near a friend's property in Cazadero. But by chance, another friend came across the 130-acre parcel on Fife Creek just steps from Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, and Saldana fell in love. Again, he took the leap, and today, his farm thanks him with an organic bounty including hot peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, cilantro, garlic, onions, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, corn, radishes, kale and cabbage.

The salsa business was a natural progression. Saldana's mother was a salsa maven, he said, joking that he “was breast-fed on salsa.” She made some 100 different salsas, matching unique salsas to each dish, and even for how each meat was cooked.

“She didn't even know why, she was just pairing flavors,” he said, “but she knew if a salsa needed crushed, boiled, grilled or in-between tomatoes, and exactly what kind of peppers.”

Daily-made salsas are signatures at Saldana's restaurants, in blends from mild, smoky grilled chipotle, tomatoes and sea salt, to rich, earthy roasted pumpkin seeds, grilled tomatoes, hot puya peppers and sea salt. Customers kept asking him to bottle them, and so, starting in 2010, he did. It made sense, then, to bag his addictive homemade corn tortilla chips, the crispy bites seasoned with sea salt hand-harvested from Mexico's Sea of Cortez and fried in certified non-GMO sunflower or corn oil. The products were bestsellers at the 20-or-so farmers markets Saldana's team participated in, and one day, the Whole Foods in Walnut Creek came knocking.

Today, the chips and salsa are sold in 23 states, still with pure all-natural ingredients (sabormexicano.com). Along the way, commercial buyers have asked that Saldana use powdered peppers instead of fresh-roasted and dried, plop-in canned tomatoes and chemicals to extend the shelf lives (salsa last just a few days after opening, and chips are best before several months).

“That wouldn't be real food. I wouldn't eat it, it's gross,” he said. “We don't want to store stuff, so we don't over-produce. We barely have a warehouse, because if our products aren't selling within two weeks, we have a problem.”

For now, Saldana is content with his empire, happy to enjoy his contemporary metal, wood and glass home on his farm. He says he's disappointed that plans for a Cinco by Sabor Mexicano restaurant that was planned for Sebastopol's Barlow in 2014 fell through. He says he's open to a new restaurant in the recently burgeoning Sebastopol if the right deal were to come along - perhaps, he muses, “by accident.”

Yet until that time comes, he's enjoying his pet dogs and goats and working the farm fields like he did as a child.

“I work all the time, but I don't stress out, because I enjoy it,” he said. “I really believe in what I'm doing.”