Rivera remembers the roads still being treacherous at times because of the cold temperatures lingering but the power, seemingly miraculously, being on along one of Hope’s main drags. “It was my cousin Jose and his wife and my mom and my dad. We would drive there in one car,” he said of those early, cold days.
Before he started his restaurant, Rivera said, he had already had extensive experience in the industry, first in a Chinese restaurant. “Then we opened up a Mexican restaurant and ran it for a few years, and we weren't able to renew our lease after five years. That's when I someone I knew from over in Prescott and he told me about that building next door. He said, ‘Hey, you should open up a restaurant here.’”
The building was previously a bait shop and convenience store, no doubt requiring extensive renovation and new décor.
The Hope Star photo of the restaurant’s ribbon-cutting appeared in the February 26th, 2001, issue. It shows Rivera with several members of his family, including wife Lulu. He is holding up the Hope-Hempstead County Chamber of Commerce scissors while those around him, including and two servers in uniform as well as several familiar faces of past Hope leaders smile their celebratory smiles.
You can also readily see in the black and white photo the building’s cladding of light-grey granite stones and dark mortar. It is still owned by the restaurant today, now used most often as a meeting room for civic clubs, including the Hope Lions and the Kiwanis Club. Amigo Juan’s caters lunchtime meals for both clubs.
About three years into Rivera’s running of the first location of Amigo Juan’s a road-widening project threatened to take his restaurant’s parking. River said it was a lucky thing that chance arose to buy the building just one block north, which had originally been built by a regional franchise whose ads dominated local television in the late 1980s.
“This used to be Catfish King. We were able to purchase that building and remodel. And we were actually, it took a little bit, but, I mean, we redid it. It was originally mostly wood on the inside and outside,” Rivera said. This summons my own memory of meals at David Beard’s Catfish King as teenager, which took place with my parents and sister in a dining room whose interior was made to resemble that of a cozy barn.
While Catfish King didn’t last over three years in Hope, when it first opened it was a have-to-visit proposition. Amigo Juan’s has had that status all its 25 years, though, serving the freshest Mexican meals from a menu whose variety astonishes. When the café first opened, Rivera said it did not take long before he got enough business to hire more employees.
“We hired, I think two people. That was our start. And then, after a few days, we started getting a little bit busier and busier. So we hired a couple more people. Then, I think once people found out that we were here—it just took two months—from then on we were busy.
“I was very, very welcomed by that community. The City of Hope, and the community around it gave us so much support that we're we've just been rolling along all these years.”
Once the restaurant moved to its current home, Rivera set about creating dining rooms that offer many vivid works of art that yield more and more meaning on each visit. Even the backs of the chairs invite close appreciation and, on the day of my interview with Rivera, photography. He explained where they came from.
“We purchased our first hand-carved chairs and booths from Guadalajara, Mexico. I see a lot of customers that walk in and they admire our furniture,” he said. When he was there, Rivera met the owner of a warehouse where the chairs could be purchased. The owner explained that about a dozen individual carvers would sell their work to him, which would then be offered for sale at a shop nearby. Rivera also got a look at the chairs being made.
“It was amazing what they could do, with so few tools,” he said.
There are also the massive and intricate murals that cover nearly every wall. The one to the right of the kitchen as you enter the dining room is of the town square in Rivera’s hometown, Chihuahua, Mexico. The wall that faces south is of the native American mounds not far from that town square. These were built by a culture that also constructed a village in the area starting about 1130 AD.
As the years have gone by, the interior of Amigo Juan’s has gained more art in the form of wall-hangings, vases, figurines and other items that contribute to its mystique. But the food has remained a flavorful constant. Rivera said about 80 percent of the original menu is still prepared and served today. The quality he said is thanks to a handful of long-tenured kitchen staffers.
“We have people that have worked for us for several years. We have two or three people in charge. But we have learned that even though we have people who have been here for several years, we got to set it up to where, where if this cook is going to be off today, we standardized the ways to do our prep and our cooking and all that. So it's trying to keep that consistency to the max.”
And it is that consistency that has made Amigo Juan’s a Friday night treat for me since I moved back to Hope in 2022. Helping toward that, he and his wife’s three children, the oldest of whom was a second-grader during the ribbon-cutting photo (she’s now a doctor) while the second was on the way (now in California having received a degree in business) and the third, who pursued dentistry, was yet to arrive have all at some point worked at their parents’ beautiful café, learning so much as they did so about running a business and keeping customers coming.
One of those is me. I’m unable to shake my addiction to the Mucho Nachos with brisket, which I always grab the full order of. About 14 corn tortilla chips are topped one-by-one with layers of refried beans and cheddar jack cheese with the brisket, black olives and mushrooms scattered on top, then baked. In the center of the plate, a bed of lettuce, chopped tomatoes, sour cream and guacamole are generously placed. I also recommend thoroughly the café’s street tacos, so complex and mildly spicy.
To thank its customers, Amigo Juan’s has had a month of specials. My advice is to get there right now and take advantage of their Dinner for Two, Eight Street Tacos (four al pastor and four carne asada) with rice, beans and slices of Three Leches Cake for a mere $25.
“The one thing that I would like to let people know is how grateful and appreciative we are of all the support during these 25 years. I can do so many things on my end, without our customers, we won't be anybody,” River said. So go eat hearty and show Juan and Lulu Rivera and Amigo Juan’s staff they are definitely more than just somebody, and everybody who knows them thinks so.
