By Senhao Liu

Originally built with leftover wood from a construction job, Urubamba, the oldest existing Peruvian restaurant in Jackson Heights, has been around for 41 years.

Its dining room is decorated with oak paneling and Inca masks and textiles. Its owner and chef, Carlos Astorga, stands in the kitchen cutting Tilapia fillets for the diner’s most popular salad, Jalea, made with deep-fried calamari, shrimp, and fish.

Carlos Astorga, 59, the chef and owner of Urubamba, cuts Tilapia fillets to prepare to cook Jalea. Photo: Senhao Liu.

Jalea, made with deeply fried calamari, shrimp, and fish and fresh onion slices on the top. Photo: Senhao Liu.

The 59-year-old Astorga came from Peru with his parents when he was four. They made their first stop in Los Angeles, but eventually made their way to New York and opened Urubamba, in 1976, in a long, narrow storefront at the corner of 87^th St and 37^th Ave in Queens.

“We started the restaurant because we had so much excess material, ” said Astorga whose father was a carpenter who mainly did restaurant renovations, and whose mother was the chef. He started out working in real estate after high school – but eventually he came back to the family business, because he felt he could better support the family. He took the business over in 1985, and his mother, now 85 years old and a widow, lives with his brother on Long Island. Astorga married his first wife when he was 23 and had two children. After they divorced, he married his second wife, Estela Marin, who is now the restaurant’s cashier and hostess.

“When we opened, there were only three more Peruvian restaurants [in Jackson Heights],” Astorga said, “but they all closed down after a few years”. Now, there are at least ten, serving a Hispanic community that grew by one percent in the past five years, according to U.S. Census Bureau, to roughly 20,000 people out of the 2.2 million residents of Queens.

“I have seen people who brought their children and now their grandchildren here,” Astorga said. That is what keeps him in the kitchen to this day. On weekends, about 80 percent are loyal Spanish-speaking customers; on weekdays, it’s a more diverse crowd.

Customers dine at Urubamba. Photo: Senhao Liu.

Twenty-nine-year-old Massiel Megia, a New York Institute of Technology student who is Dominican, has been visiting the restaurant at least twice a month since she was 13. She ordered papa rellena, which is a fried potato stuffed with meat, one to eat at the restaurant and another to go for her mother at home on Long Island.

“The recipe never changed, ” Megia said, recalling that her family would often make the trip from Long Island for their favorite dishes. “I grew up with the restaurant. ”

To make the nightly batch of jalea, Astorga first cuts the fish fillets into squares, mixes them with shrimp, salt, pepper, and soy sauce, and coats them with flour.

“You can not cut corners on buying cheap beef or buying cheap fish. I eat here also, ” Astorga said, as he fried the seafood mixture. He said  that some restaurant owners cut corners by using bottled lemon juice or cheap beef instead of fresh lemon and better cuts of beef, but to him the food does not taste the same.

“To make it authentic, I pay a little more, ” Astorga said. “Everything here is fresh”.

He used to import a lot of ingredients  from Peru, such as Peruvian corn, which is not as sweet as American varieties. Now he buys imported corn from a retailer in New York — at $1.25 each for at least 60 each week.  American-produced corn costs only 25 cents each, but Astorga refused to switch, in an effort to provide authentic Peruvian flavors.

“We want to make you feel like you are not in New York,” he said. “You are somewhere in a little town in Peru.”

Like many restaurant owners, Astorga worries constantly about maintaining a profitable business. Food costs are high because he prefers fresh products. Rent is much higher than it used to be, from $475 a month in 1976 to a monthly $11,750 today. And since the presidential election, he has faced new issues because of immigration.

Astorga planned to attend the day without immigrants march in Manhattan on February 16, but ended up keeping the restaurant open to avoid having to waste fresh food. Still, he feels strongly that undocumented immigrants should have a voice.

“They are not asking anything that is not reasonable and they work hard,” Astorga said. “I mean they pay taxes on everything here. They never go to do the tax refund because they are afraid to go. So they lose that money. That is a shame.”

Immigration headlines have cut into his business, because some of his customers are more reluctant to be out in public. “Seventy-five percent of our clients were Spanish-speaking people. Since he had become the president, my business had gone down for a good thirty percent, ” Astorga said.

“Why?” he asked. “A lot of people are not sure [if] they are going to stay in this country.”

All of this makes it more difficult to predict the future.

“I was planning for a vacation but now I had to postpone it since I was trying to save some money so I could retire without worrying about my future,” he said. “You cannot live off social security.”

“At least we are now still on the positive [of income],” he said, laughing. “If I am starting using my savings, then I will have to sell the restaurant or close it up”.

Someday he hopes to return to the south.

“My idea is to go to Costa Rica when I retire in 10 years,” Astorga said. His children, a son and a daughter who now manage another restaurant on Long Island, will run this business. He thought about going back to his birth country, but concerns about security in Peru drove him to choose Costa Rica. His wife, Marin, who is from Peru, will go with him.

“I enjoy taking care of our business simply because my husband is the chef,” said Marin. They first met in the restaurant and felt in love while they were coworkers; now they arrive at 10 every morning and spend the next 14 hours at work.

Astorga usually has a well-prepared breakfast in the morning and a simple meal at midnight when he goes back home. During the daytime, he occasionally eats fruit. “But today, I have not eaten yet and just drank a lot of water,” because he was too busy.

As he talked, a new order came in, so he dipped slices of meat into the sizzling oil.

“We are just the people, cooking here,” he said, starting to whistle.

Senhao Liu