Maria Elena Ball is sitting in her empty restaurant on the Old Seward Highway in Anchorage. The 81-year-old has avocados on her mind after the U.S. suspended imports of the Mexican staple from her home state of Michoacan.
Fifty years ago she had avocados on her mind for a different reason.
“The avocados were terrible,” she said, “They had no flavor.”
Aside from a lack of good produce, Anchorage’s culinary scene was challenged by limited awareness of true Mexican cuisine. Ball didn’t have experience cooking — or running a business — but she knew she could make better Mexican food than the Americanized dishes like deluxe tostadas and Spanish fried rice that other restaurants served.
She opened Mexico in Alaska in a small building in Mountain View on St. Patrick’s Day in honor of the Irish soldiers who fought for the Mexican army during the Mexican-American War.
“I started with tapatias quesadillas, tacos de carne asada — that’s what I knew,” she said.
It was 1972, and Anchorage’s population was a fifth of what it was today. Many doubted her at first, she said.
She had come to Alaska by herself around 1970 after leaving her husband in San Antonio, Texas, to the chagrin of her strict Catholic father.
She headed north with no clear destination but determined to become independent, financially and emotionally.
In the early years of Mexico in Alaska, she relied on the kindness of strangers, as well as cilantro and spices her mom shipped to her from Texas. Slowly, the restaurant started to catch on with a few loyal, well-traveled customers.
“It was a small, selective group of people. There were many lawyers who are still friends, and people there that knew a little bit about home-cooked food and Mexican food,” she said.
Her husband followed her up a few years later, as did her sister.
Customers like the late Sen. Ted Stevens were regulars. He even flew a flag in Washington, D.C., in honor of the restaurant’s 25th anniversary. The restaurant was also featured in the “Big Miracle,” a 2012 film about the rescue of whales from the ice north of Utqiagvik.
Fifty years later, Mexico in Alaska is still serving burritos, tamales and other Mexican staples, now at its location on the Old Seward Highway.
Still, the pandemic has hit the restaurant hard.
Loyal customers keep coming back, but Ball has struggled to find enough workers for an in-person dining operation. She’s found a way to adapt, though, turning to takeout and ramping up prepackaged products for local stores like Safeway.
“I make the burritos they have in the deli, and then I have the salsa and the burritos in the two Sagaya stores,” she said.
The restaurant today is dark and quiet inside, though customers stop by to pick up take-out orders. The walls are covered in faded polaroids of customers from her early years. She said treating customers well is part of the secret to her longevity.
“All my customers are friends,” she said. “These pictures that you see here. Those little guys were 10. Now they’re grandparents.”
The other part of her success might be her stubbornness. She said she always felt she had to prove to her parents that she was independent and had made the right choice to come to Alaska. She said she’s dealt with obstacles like chauvinistic salesmen who couldn’t believe that the diminutive woman was the owner of the restaurant, and personal tragedies like loss of her daughter 10 years ago.
“I went through a lot of things, a lot of things,” she said. “But it never occurred to me that I was going to give up.”
Her grand niece, Audryana Belisle, grew up in the restaurant, learning how to roll up burritos and seat patrons. Belisle plans to take over the restaurant when Ball retires, but she said she knows she won’t be able to fill the place of her great aunt.
“Whether you’re going through, you know, mental stuff, spiritual stuff, or even, you know, financial stuff, she was just that rock that you could always rely on,” said Belisle.
Ball, for her part, says she has no immediate plans to retire. The only thing that will keep her from coming into work, she said, is if she can’t get out of bed.
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Correction: This story has been corrected to omit a reference to Ball’s daughter in Texas. Ball did not have a daughter until she was in Alaska.
Lex Treinen is covering the state Legislature for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at ltreinen@gmail.com.
