One of the recent additions to the community has turned out to be one of the best – if you love Mexican food.
Corona’s Mexican Restaurant is located next to Silver City Cinemas and it tempts us with its authentic Mexican cuisine.
The family came from Vancouver three years ago, after owning and operating Poncho’s in the West End for 25 years. Yearning for something different, they sold and moved to Mission.
Once here, seeing her mother not doing what she loved on a daily basis, Lupita’s daughter suggested that they open up another restaurant.
Before doing so, they took it upon themselves to ask the Mission Facebook community what they would like to see. The response to a Mexican restaurant was astonishing.
The idea and the excitement began to grow almost immediately.
With the support of Community Futures, they developed a business plan and a marketing plan, as well as secured the loans necessary to revamp the vacant space in to their own ideal establishment.
Creating distinctive and appetizing Mexican cuisine has always come naturally to Lupita, who began her love affair with cooking at the young age of five.
“Everything is made from scratch,” Lupita insists. “We want to create a style of Mexican street food for Mission; representing the best of traditional cooking.”
The scent of these familiar dishes draws hungry diners to experience the unique richness of flavours that emerge from the traditional cooking techniques.
Their menu consists of tacos, quesadillas, burritos, tortas, tostados, as well as daily specials to introduce their customers to more unique Mexican dishes.
We were curious as to what their signature dish was. Or more importantly… what was Mission’s favourite dish?
“Mission loves the enchiladas,” she tells us. “We use 10 different kinds of peppers, which made them very popular.”
Lupita admits that by the beginning of March, they were just beginning to recover from their winter sales. Business and income had been low when the virus arrived.
“We knew if we closed our doors, they would be closed forever,” Lupita said. “We couldn’t let that happen. We were given the chance to still operate so we continued to push forward. So we’ve been posting and getting creative and the response we are getting is truly a blessing.”
Their doors are still open now for pick up and delivery only.
“Our entire family is driving around Mission delivering food. We have to keep going.”
Lupita’s advice during this difficult time is to not lose faith or give up.
“The relationships we have built with each one of our customers is very unique and very special. This has been effecting most of us in many different ways that we didn’t expect. We were truly worried but were quickly assured that we had our town behind us. Mission showed us an abundant amount of reassurance and support.”
Coronas Mexican Restaurant has bleached and sanitized the entire restaurant from top to bottom. They are currently operating with one employee, who will be there to assure safe hygiene during “food-to-customer” transactions to minimize as many interactions as possible.