The two o’clock sun hits Willis Avenue, in the south of the Bronx. No one leaves or enters the Ortiz Funeral Home. Nor is there any movement at Chen’s Garden, a Chinese restaurant.
But between the funeral home and the restaurant is La Morada , whose door hasn’t stopped opening or closing all afternoon. An older man enters the restaurant. He arrives alone, yet Natalia Méndez prepares a bag with enough food to feed four people.
The man’s wife and two children didn’t come this time. The bag has a container with rice, chicken fajitas, vegetables and beans. The gentleman — who hails from a country in Africa — is one of hundreds of migrants who pass through La Morada restaurant every day, starting at noon.
Méndez knows that the man’s journey was long. That’s why the bag of free food that she gives him is full of beans. “Those people walked through Africa and part of America to get here,” she sighs.
“You see them and you know that they need to get stronger. That’s why we’re making more stews, so that they receive everything they need. We traditional cooks are also like healers.
” Méndez, 54, has no doubt that the thousands of migrants who have arrived in New York City over the last two years need to eat stew, just as she knew how, during the pandemic, New Yorkers needed to eat root soup. One day, in the middle of the lockdown, she left with her husband, Antonio Saavedra, for La Morada. They began to prepare what she calls “the root soup,” based.