Roberto Rodriguez
FOOD AFICIONADO & BARTENDER
It all started when…
Born in Santa Barbara, CA in 1977 and raised in the sunny city of Ensenada, Baja, Mexico. I grew up in the outskirts of town near the beach. On one side the ocean and the mountains on the other. Had a fun-filled-childhood with amazing memories. Being the 3rd out 4 brothers, we spent most of time outside climbing trees and creating all kinds of adventures to keep us occupied but most of the times in trouble, just like any normal kid at that time.
The house we lived in was huge and was surrounded with fruit trees that you could spot in almost every view. We ate everything from apples, quinces, pomegranates, figs, dates, apricots and my favorite; loquat. This is when I developed my love for all sorts of fruits and flavors as most of the fruit was not the regular ones you would find at the local market as my great grand father had brought all sorts of flora to his ranch. Even though we had so much diversity of fruit trees, I believe that my love of food was from my mother’s side as she always had a lot of creativity with her dishes and from a young age we tasted a wide variety of flavors from all around the world. Even though, at that age, I always wanted to run the opposite direction.
During my teen years we moved to Mexico City where I continued my school and focused my studies in a computer and administration degree. After finishing I bounced in many computer related jobs only to find out that sitting down all day was not something I enjoyed and got to the point where I was fed up fixing computers and creating web pages for different companies. While I figure what to do, I got into the world of sales which started with the first Toyota car dealership in Mexico. A few years later I landed a better job in RCI selling vacations. After 2 years I felt I never quite adapted to the Mexico City fast life and decided it was time to move to a smaller place to live. At the age of 25 I was on my way back to the USA to start a new life. Before getting to California, I stopped to visit my dad in a town in the sea of Cortez called San Felipe which is a very small fishing town filled with retire & veterans from USA. While is was visiting and getting ready to go north I came across a business opportunity that it was too good to pass and this is when life changed for me as I was able to open my own business and spent the next 7 years in what it still is today “Baja Fandango Sports Bar & Grill”.
Built from the ground up with a rocky start due to the lack of experience, I was able to develop my skills as a bartender and survived the first couple of years perfecting the art. With support from my family we were able to manage a spot that hosted some of the most amazing years of my life. We even got voted “Best Restaurant-Bar in town” for two years in a row. It was a true team work.
Here is where life gave me the chance to have my first taste of opening a full operational kitchen from scratch. We were able to serve up-to 60 people and gave me chance to learn a lot of the culinary world and triggered my passion for the grill and opened the door to the world of barbecuing. I had a chef and a menu and it was great to diversify the bar with good local food.
On the first year of this part in my life, I was blessed with my now beautiful wife Veronica which we have been together for 18 years. My better half has been the pillar of my life and has helped me stay on course without getting too far from the tracks. Life was good and we could feel that we were going to be enjoying our experience for many years until 2008 showed up and with it came recession, swine flu and we were not able to sustain the business anymore. In the midst of trying to keep afloat the ship, life gave us our first-born child which we decided to name him “Nicolas”.
With recession still happening not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel we decided it was time to move from this beautiful town. With the dad badge over my shoulders our future required a more stable life in a more developed city. While deciding where life was going to take us, USA was not an option any more, so we went on small trip to Playa del Carmen, Mexico to the opening of my younger brother’s new Restaurant called “ Season Bistro”.
Where I met Juli which was Juan’s partner in the restaurant. For those who have had the privilege of visiting this side of the world, one could easily think that paradise is a synonym for this eye dropping beaches filled with clear blue waters and white sand. We immediately found what it would become our home for the following 10 years.
With the help of Juan & Juli, I got a job helping them in the restaurant for the following 9 months bartending and also in charge of inventory until they decided to close the restaurant to take a better opportunity.
Our first year in the Riviera Maya was not easy, and with the experience I gathered in the hospitality sector with RCI, I was back with my sales hat. I was able to find a job selling time-share in various hotels all-along the Riviera Maya from Cancun to Tulum. This helped me shape my selling skills and after a year of only working for commissions I decided to find a more stable job that offered a salary and all of the medical benefits. Fortune shined on us once again as I was able to find a small thriving new company that helped people with all type of issues with time-shares. With a new job, It felt as if life gave us another treasure as my beautiful daughter was born and gave her the name “Natalia”.
With time the company grew, and I also grew with it and was able to get a very good position which helped me learn a lot of new skills. After several good years in Playa, we started thinking on how we could go back to the idea of returning to live in USA to make our life even better for us and our kids. After visiting Juan & Juli in Colorado and learning about their endeavor with their catering business, we started doing research of the possibility to move there with them. After a couple of years or research, thinking and talking, we decided we had to make one of the most difficult decisions in my life as we were going to leave everything we had built which included several wonderful friends that we consider family and made the jump back to the country I was born. In between doing research and moving to the USA I had plenty of time to figure out what we were going to dedicate the next years of our life. Together with Juan and Juli, we had decided to join forces in this amazing food adventure combining strengths and continue enjoying life while we have fun sharing our love for food as my family and I make ourselves part of this gorgeous community of Fort Collins.