House Made
Tamales From Rosa Linda’s…
Just before thanksgiving, the phones start ringing at Rosa Linda’s Alta Cocina Mexicana and they don’t slow down until the new year. The fall and winter holidays drive demand for tamales, and locals have known for years to call in their orders to Rosa Linda’s, either in Fresno, Clovis or the original Selma location. The tamales, along with Rosa Linda’s menudo and salsa, have won local competitions, and owner Rosalinda.
Tovar displays a large silver award tray designating her as having The Best Tamales in Town in 2003 at the B95’s Tamale Festival. “I feel our tamales are a good ratio of masa and meat,” says Tanya Tovar, Rosalinda’s daughter and owner of the Clovis location. “A tamale is a tamale as to how you assemble it. It’s about the masa and the meat.” The masa, she continues, can’t be too dry. At Rosa Linda’s, masa is always house-made.
Keeping that consistency of moisture in the masa and maintaining a proper meat-to-masa ratio is a dedicated team of cooks that have been with the Tovars for decades. Catalina Ramirez has worked side by side with Rosalinda since the first restaurant was opened in Selma in 1997. The elder Tovar taught her the recipes, which she then passed on to Carmen Ayala, who now oversees tamale production for all three restaurants. “She’s the backbone to this,” says Tanya of Ayala. In peak season, a team of six tamale makers band together to cover the additional 3,000 chicken, pork and beef tamales needed to meet demand. Carlos Miranda, now retired from the restaurants, often pops in to help, unable to stay away too long.
“Consistency in food and preparation is key,” says Tanya, “as is having great customer service. It all goes hand in hand.” She recognizes that Rosa Linda’s ability to keep dedicated staff over the long haul is paramount to their success.
When Rosa Linda’s first opened in 1997, Rosalinda was freshly divorced and without capital. “She was starting from scratch,” says Tanya. “She was a woman and a minority. It was really hard in the beginning.” It didn’t take long, though, for a reporter from the Fresno Bee to write an article about her restaurant’s tamales. “After that things, were never the same. Business got really good.” By 2005, Rosalinda was presented with an award for Best Woman Owned Business in a Salute to Small Business award.
For Tanya, who opened the Clovis location of Rosa Linda’s in 2011 after returning to the Central Valley from New York in 2007, commitment runs deep. “This is a legacy I need to uphold,” she says. “It means that I can’t fail. It’s a hard business. You have to love it.”
While she admits that a certain anxiety starts to build around September as she anticipates the onslaught of tamale orders that will come, there is also the joy in knowing that some of those tamales will go to the Sweet Eats Program in Memory of Hendrix Wille at Valley Children’s Hospital in Madera. The restaurant, which donates food to the program every month, makes a big splash in December by cooking up 130 to 150 meals of a dozen tamales, rice, beans, chips and salsa for families with children at the hospital.
While tamales are particularly popular as a traditional food this time of year, the Tovars know they are good year-round, which is why they are a menu staple, served up smothered in red enchilada sauce with melted Monterey Jack cheese and sides of rice and beans. They can be ordered to go by the dozen or half dozen, and either ready to eat with sauce on or on the side or frozen.
Though tamales are a huge draw, so too are the famous Selma tacos originated at the first restaurant, which include carne asada in a hard shell made from house-made corn tortillas and shrimp enchiladas made with a green tomatillo sauce. The Selma and Clovis restaurants serve breakfast, where award-winning menudo is served up alongside chiliquiles and huevos rancheros. A full bar was recently added to the Fresno location and staff is having fun developing hand crafted cocktails to accompany the food.
As tamale season begins and customers clamor to put them on their holiday tables, a decidedly modern way to order has come their way via the internet. Of course, Tanya or Rosalinda or anyone else on their team would certainly be glad to take a phone order. A ringing telephone is just another joyful sound of the season at Rosa Linda’s.
Rosa Linda’s • www.rosalindascuisine.com
2905 McCall Ave., Selma
1420 Clovis Ave., Clovis
2057 Bullard Ave., Fresno
