A dish of three corn tortillas filled with chicken and smothered in mole poblano sauce, topped with queso fresco and onions and served alongside Mexican rice and beans is served at Cesar’s Killer Margaritas, along with one of the restaurant’s namesake cocktails.
Jim Vondruska/For the Sun-Times
Each Sunday at 7 a.m., sisters Lourdes “Lulu” Durán and Sandra “Sandy” Sánchez meet in their family restaurant to make the week’s batch of mole poblano.
The salsa is the highlight of several dishes at Cesar’s Killer Margaritas in Lake View. Their great-grandmother’s coveted family recipe is a saucy combination of poblano peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic and chocolate, among 20 more ingredients.
Cesar’s, at 2924 N. Broadway, is known for their giant margaritas and traditional Mexican fare. Their story is rooted in the love for food that started many decades ago in Mexico City, where their mole was created three generations back.
Mole, from the Nahuatl word “mōlli,” hails from the Oaxaca and Puebla regions. Plenty of food historians and experts on Mexican cuisine assert the existence of 300 or more different types across Mexico.
Simply put, no two moles are the same.
The Sánchez family call theirs “El Mero Mole.” They make it just like their great-grandmother Clarita Vásquez did back in her Mexico City fonda (inn or small restaurant): with “no shortcuts,” according to the sisters’ brother Israel Sánchez.
Vásquez taught her granddaughter and the Sánchez siblings’ mother, Lourdes, how to make her famous mole, and she eventually taught her children — who continue to make it today as a tribute to their late mother.
The Sánchez family’s mole poblano has 31 ingredients, always fresh from the source. The peppers are seeded by hand, then roasted and blended with the other ingredients before simmering for hours on the stove.
It’s a tedious, time-consuming process, Israel said, but it’s how they ensure their product stays as authentic as possible.
“There’s ways that you can go around it,” he said. The siblings could easily opt for canned or frozen ingredients to save money and time. “But then it just takes away from the flavor.”
Growing up, the Sánchez home was always the hub for family parties and celebrations. Mole, in particular, would be served at graduations and weddings — only the most special occasions.
Sandy estimates that Cesar’s produces up to 10 gallons of mole monthly. They bottle and sell it for $12 each so customers can experiment with it, too.
The siblings’ late parents Lourdes and Cesar Sánchez instilled a love of cooking in the siblings from a young age, beyond family gatherings. They were young kids when their parents started chasing the dream of owning a restaurant which began with backstage catering gigs for downtown events like Viva Chicago and the Pan-American Festival, where they’d provide food for musicians and their teams.
Durán recalls her mother making the food out of their home to bring to Latin artists like Puerto Rican pop star Chayanne and Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel.
“It was fun,” she said. “And it’s where my love of cooking started because I was secretly like, ‘Mami, ¿[en] que te ayudo? What can I do?'”
In 1991, Cesar opened Cesar’s Taco, the family’s first restaurant in Chicago at 3166 N. Clark St. in Lake View. That eventually became Cesar’s Killer Margaritas after a regular described their cocktails as “killer.” In 2002 Cesar’s opened their second, and now only, restaurant on Broadway.
“My mom and my great-grandmother were very big on costumbres, or traditions,” Durán said, which live on in their bloodline.
“She would always bless the pans and pray to St. Rita,” she added. “It was always about being grateful. I think those things are super important sometimes because we’re doing things so fast.”
And though her mother would shoo Durán out of the kitchen all those years ago, that didn’t deter her. She enjoyed cooking so much that she decided to go to pastry school.
Sandy recently came across her mother’s English as a Second Language (ESL) workbook. Now an ESL teacher at a North Side high school, she sees all her mother did to provide a good life for them coming full circle. Their mom never finished school beyond the fifth or sixth grade, Durán said. Her English was limited, too.
“Now I’m helping other kids learn the language,” Sandy said. “She had a dictionary and the workbook and that was it. She self-taught.”
At Cesar’s, the spirit of hospitality and food made with love — instilled in the Sánchez siblings long before they were born — lives on.
“That was my mom,” Durán said. “Even if she didn’t know you, she would open the door and be like, ‘sit down.’ … That was her love language. Food was her love language.”