As the youngest of 15 siblings, Ale Bustamante took an interest in food and cooking as far back as she could remember.
With 32 years of cooking and restaurant experience, she, along with her partner, Mark Foster, began managing the café at Lake Chapala Society (LCS) a few years ago, transforming the underused snack bar into a healthy, outdoor eating and meeting hotspot, catering almost exclusively to the expat community. According to Foster, 99.9 percent of their clientele are expats.
“Ale is the heart of Café Corazón and I am the head,” says Foster. “Ale is the chef. She creates the menus and the portions and handles the staff. I deal with the business end, the logistics. I’m the guy who calls this person, calls that person, gets the needed permits. I am also the waiter and will occasionally cook if I’m asked to.”
Bustamante began working as a caterer in Mexico City when she was 17, a single mom with a one-year-old son. Four years later, she enrolled at a chef school, thanks to the restaurant owner, where she worked, who offered to pay 50 percent of her tuition. Going on to earn ten certificates, each one taking seven months to complete, she learned to prepare basic specialty foods such broths, sauces and dressings, and how to organize a kitchen, create menus and train staff.
“This is what an executive chef does,” adds Bustamante. “Besides being a mom, I attended classes during the day, studied every Saturday morning and worked evenings at different restaurants and hotels. I’ve always worked two jobs to make ends meet.”
Having owned four restaurants in Mexico City, her last one was a Mexican restaurant called El Local. Foster, who was born in Mexico City from British parents, would frequent the restaurant, not only because he enjoyed the food, but because he had his eye on Bustamante. It wasn’t until months later that he found out that Bustamante was the owner.
Before long, the two got together and formed a romantic and business partnership. Foster’s background was in entertainment, working with everything technical having to do with show business. He was able to help Bustamante with her restaurant by adding a taco bar. Meanwhile, they were considering other options.
“Everyone tries to survive in Mexico City,” says Bustamante. “We were talking about leaving the city for quite some time. The rent was expensive and the competition became more difficult for us. Even though one can have plenty of restaurant experience, there’s always someone better than you; someone with a fresher restaurant, better technology.”
They made the decision to sell the restaurant and arrived in Ajijic in July 2015, having visited the area a few years back, since Foster’s parents live here.
A short time later, a friend told them about an opportunity to manage the café on the LCS grounds when the prior owners left. Bustamante got to work putting together a sample menu, which she presented to the LCS board.
A few days later they received the good news that they had nabbed the position.
They started off serving fresh fruit juices, salads and Mexican food, but soon learned that Mexican food wasn’t what the people wanted.
“Our intention was to create a healthy menu that was low in sodium and geared toward diabetics and elders,” says Bustamante. “It became obvious that our clients weren’t interested in that kind of food. Instead they would ask, ‘Do you have donuts, bagels?’”
Slowly, they began changing their men and posted weekly specials. Last year, they added a bar after receiving a permit to serve wine and beer.
Says Foster: “We’re open five hours a day, six days a week and since we’re working with very limited hours in a very limited space, we can expand our menu only so much.”
“Even though it’s a small space, we make magic,” adds Bustamante. “We strive to make the best food in the space we have, within the limited hours. We cook from our hearts, using fresh produce and healthy ingredients. Plus, we believe in supporting the local community, buying from the local farmers and tiendas.”
Eighty percent of their produce is grown by a Mexican man with a small farm near San Juan Cosala who grows a limited amount of produce, solely for them. “We started off buying a small amount from him,” says Bustamante, “but now he’s expanded and has helped us to grow our menu.”
At the end of each week, they donate their unused food to underprivileged families. “Some very poor families live here at Lakeside and we want to help them however we can.” Priority goes to their three employees and their families.
“We feel very grateful for the opportunity to manage Café Corazón on the beautiful LCS grounds,” says Bustamante. “We continually work with the LCS board to discuss what we want to see happen. They give us their feedback about what we can do and where we can go with the café. We are not a fast food restaurant and we plan on sticking to fresh food made from our heart, our corazón.