The Little Shop That Could
Irma Gonzalez laughs when she’s asked how long La Cabaña has been in business. “I don’t remember,” she jokes, “I know it’s around 20 years.” Ottawans looking for Salvadoran cuisine and pupusas — warm handmade tortillas stuffed with mixtures of cheese, meat or beans — have long been familiar with her stalwart spot in the Carlington neighbourhood.
“When I left El Salvador, I was only 18 years old, so I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do,” Gonzalez says. Prior to arriving in Canada, she stayed with her sister in the United States and helped at her restaurant while she took English classes. That restaurant experience would come in handy when she and her now-late husband settled in Ottawa. “If we wanted to eat food that was traditional to us, we had to go to Montreal,” Gonzalez explains. So the couple opened La Cabaña to fill that gap in their new hometown.
La Cabaña became well known especially for its pupusas, which is El Salvador’s national dish. Authenticity in her cuisine was important from the start — unable to find the Salvadoran quesillo that she was used to using to make pupusas at home, Gonzalez came up with a mixture of several different cheeses to achieve the flavour and texture she was seeking to replicate.
Not long after opening the restaurant, Gonzalez was getting requests from diners to buy ingredients from her kitchen on their way out, and so La Tiendita (“the little shop”) was established within La Cabaña. “When I started, the store was almost empty,” Gonzalez remembers. La Tiendita’s initial offerings were based on customer requests, which could be as broad as corn tortillas or as specific as oregano from Mexico and oregano from the Dominican Republic (they have different flavours.)
Over the years, her customer base and product selection grew at La Tiendita, and Gonzalez speaks proudly of the varieties of products she carries, whether it’s different types of chili peppers or an array of flavours of Jarritos soda.
The COVID-19 pandemic came with challenges for her businesses that are now well known across the food and hospitality industries — supply-chain disruptions, takeout only and staff shortages. But Gonzalez says that despite it all, the shop has been doing well. She thinks people cooking more at home led to them wanting to be more adventurous in their kitchens and trying to recreate dishes they had enjoyed during past travels.
“In general, I have two different kinds of customers,” she says, “the ones who come for staples — they come all the time for tortillas and plantains — and the ones who go on vacation and when they’re back they want the lizano [salsa] from Costa Rica, the tostones from the Dominican Republic, the yerba mate from South America, products from Chile, and Argentina.” Her list goes on and on. It’s like a way to continue a vacation from home.
Even when folks were less able to travel, Gonzalez points to another factor influencing home cooks: TikTok. “Ah, it’s a crazy thing!” she chuckles describing the popular app’s reach, “but I enjoy it, because people are coming in looking to try new things.” She lists the chilis to make birria tacos, the Tajin spice mix (popular to sprinkle on fruits, drinks and salads) and Topo Chico (sparkling mineral water) as products in her shop that got a noticeable bump in popularity due to folks online sharing their enthusiasm.
Since her husband passed away four years ago, Gonzalez has been running La Tiendita and La Cabaña on her own, keeping the restaurant to takeout only for now. She’s still the one making the pupusas to order while customers browse the shop’s shelves, and she’s still taking requests for La Tiendita. “All the time people come and ask for something — I make a list and say give me two weeks and I find it for them,” she says.
La Tiendita
848 Merivale Rd., Ottawa
facebook.com/latinproductsottawa | 613.724.7762
@latinproductsottawa | @pupusasottawa
On the shelves
Tucked just inside La Cabaña, the restaurant's sister store stocks the shelves with a selection of Latin American products, such as:
Tropical fruit when available: anonas, sapotes, guayabas, mangoes, tomatillos and aguacates
Sodas: Jarritos fruit-flavoured sodas (including guava, lime, mango and pineapple), Peruvian Inca Kola, Mexican Coke, Salvy Kolashampan
Queso: panela, Oaxaca, Cotija, fresco
Dried chiles: ancho, arbol, cali, guajillo and piquín
Plantains, plantain leaves, corn husks, tortillas, corn flour, tortilla presses, salsas, coffee, chocolate, dulce de leche, piñatas and much more.
