CLEVELAND — It’s Caribbean-American Heritage Month, and one Ohio restaurant owner had plenty of experience overcoming adversity long before the pandemic began.
“I tell you, we’ve got the best Mofongo in town,” said Jose Melendez, owner of Twisted Taino.
Melendez was busy making one of his signature dishes at his restaurant in Ohio City. The dish is called Mofongo Relleno and features mashed plantains served with sauteed shrimp and vegetables.
“We are not traditional Puerto Rican food,” Melendez said. “I mean, our roots are strong in Puerto Rican food. However, we put some ingredients in that you can only find for example Columbia or Mexico or some other places and that’s what makes us different.”
Melendez had to learn to cook after his mother had a heart attack and was in the hospital.
“I needed to eat, so I was on the phone with her like, ‘Hey mom, how do you make some rice? How do you do this and do you do that?'” he said. “She was the one on the phone guiding me.”
And at that point, he found a love for food.
The Puerto Rican chef started catering his Caribbean cuisine to get the word out, and people started listening.
“I (said) hey, don’t pay me let me show my food, and I did three lasagnas out of them, three lasagnas that I exposed that day. I had three weddings, and that was the breakthrough I was able to get money for the rent,” said Melendez
Melendez has been cooking professionally for seven years now, but life wasn’t so easy when he arrived in Cleveland almost 20 years ago.
“After a harsh divorce I actually became homeless,” he said. “I was living out of my car for a while. I needed to find a way to get my life back together and this is what happened.”
While many businesses failed during the pandemic, Melendez’s restaurant actually managed to survive and thrive.
“They either order it through Door Dash to go pick up whatever they just wanted the food you know,” he said. “We are the only ones that do things to order. We don’t have things under a lamp, nothing like that. Everything is fresh, just throw it on the grill. Whenever we serve it to you, it’s right off the stove, you know, completely fresh.”
Melendez food has become so popular that he’s opening another location in Parma by the end of July, if not sooner.
