TORRINGTON – Hearts were broken across Goshen County last fall when a local favorite, Taco John’s, closed its doors after serving the community for many, many years. For months, the building sat vacant, with a simple “for sale” sign and many community members wondered if the building would ever be purchased. 

The building was finally purchased in mid-spring and the community watched and waited as the building began a facelift. It wasn’t long before an “opening soon” banner emerged reading, “Marlene’s Tortillas and More LLC.” 

On June 20, the door opened to the public, and the crew has not stopped since. 

The crew includes Marlene Galvan, her son, Patrick Carr, her brother, Leo Galvan, and her niece, Samantha Galvan. Some of the family has traveled from locations as far as Texas to help Marlene live out her dreams. 

“I started out making tortillas at home,” Marlene explained. “I got my license there and then everybody just kept saying, ‘You should do more,’” she said with a chuckle. “Alice (the new owner) asked if I wanted to rent this (the vacant building) out. We talked about it and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do this.’”

Carr, who traveled to Torrington just to help said he remembers a life-long love of cooking in his family. 

“I remember, from an outside perspective, I remember her selling to the workers at the cosmetology building. We would go over there and have her little pots and burritos and everything. From there, I felt like it just jumped,” Carr explained. “I felt like from that time when they started building up to the end, she was selling burritos and tortillas. They would call her up or see us drive by and ask, ‘Got anything for us?’” Carr recalled. “I think that was a big step to her story. The foundation of her business because it just popped off.”

Carr attributed his mother’s success to serval different construction projects around the community, in which Marlene and her crew would serve burritos and tortillas too.

“She would be at home making it and my brother and I would go do the deliveries,” Carr explained. “I think that’s when she realized, ‘Okay, I can do this,’ because that is a big thing. People have a hard time fathoming, ‘I can do this.’” 

Carr expressed it is even harder for someone to pursue a goal in this community because, after all, Goshen County has a few Mexican restaurants.

“Their (the community’s) first outlook is, ‘Oh, another one?’ But it’s not like any of the other ones, it is definitely special,” Carr explained. 

When it comes down to what’s cooking at Marlene’s, the entire family seems to have a knack for making the cuisine. 

“I love cooking. We all do,” Marlene said with a smile. “I used to watch my mom. We used to get together on Sundays, and I would be cooking. My mom would sit there and watch because she couldn’t help anymore.”

“We would have family cookouts and every birthday party would be, ‘What’s Marlene doing? What’s Aunt Marlene doing? Can she do rice at least?’ Any small gathering, we would do she would cook,” Carr explained.

The decision was made to rent the small restaurant a few months ago.

“We came and looked at it and thought, ‘Yeah, this could work,’” Marlene explained. 

The crew quickly got to work on cleaning the location and getting it up to regulation for health codes. 

“That’s when my niece (Samantha) came. She cooks too. She is here from Texas,” Marlene explained. 

Since opening, the business has been extremely busy and often sold out of items listed on the menu. 

“We had a couple of lines,” Marlene said. “We have been busy.”

“We’ve been selling out every day we have been open,” Carr explained. 

“We had to close a couple of times because we sold out,” Marlene said. 

The business continues to adjust its hours for what works best for the public and the crew together. 

“Right now, it’s just family (working),” Marlene explained. “We want to start trying to hire.” 

Marlene wanted to express her sincere gratitude to her brother, Leo, for all of the assistance he has provided for the restaurant as well as the rest of the crew. 

The restaurant has tacos, burritos, and much more and they are looking forward to many partnerships within the community. 

A grand opening will be held at a later date for the establishment. 

“We can’t make everybody happy; we just do our best,” Marlene said.