Normal Station

Restaurateur Determined to Thrive At New East Memphis Location
Monday, November 09, 2009, Vol. 124, No. 220
By FREDRIC KOEPPEL | Special to The Memphis News

In the parlance of the sweet science, a knockdown occurs when a boxer is knocked to the mat but rises to fight again.Antonio Martinez knows something about that principle.

In 2001, Martinez, who came to Memphis from Mexico City in 1998, was working in the computer division of a local warehousing company. One day, his boss told Martinez he wanted him to return to Mexico to help open a company branch. Martinez explained that he didn’t want to travel, Memphis was his home and his family was here.

“Fine,” said his boss, “you’re fired.”

“Whoa,” Martinez said last week, sitting at a table in his second, recently opened Las Delicias restaurant, just as the lunch crowd was dispersing. “I mean, it’s always a mistake to think that you’re – what’s the word? – invulnerable.”

Martinez, a small, wiry 51-year-old who radiates goodwill and intensity, had worked in restaurants in Mexico City as a teenager. And, before being fired, he had been making tacos and selling them out of his garage on Friday nights.“So,” he said, “I sat down with my wife, and we talked about it, and we decided to open a restaurant.” Read the rest of this entry »