COVID-19, fire, theft: Nature cannot nullify two Garcias
Ramses serves a Fort Myers resident five plates of yellow rice, seasoned chicken, black beans and sweet plantains. Jorge Mendoza, a Las Palmas regular who traveled with Ramses and Ana, told passersby they had free food for all. (David Hoffman Viñas/Atrium)
March 22, 2023 | Story by David Hoffman Viñas | Photos by David Hoffman Viñas and courtesy of Ramses Garcia
Tony Montana is coming to town.
He delivers no machine guns or illicit drugs. He deals in sustenance, feeding gym goers, barbershop and construction workers. Bellies bust in bliss. Adults become kids. They reminisce. An osprey blesses the enterprise from up high in the pines nearby.
Anyone from Wesley Chapel or New Tampa, Florida, will tell you: You can’t miss the “Scarface”–themed food truck, otherwise known as Las Palmas Latin Grill Food Truck. Nor can you miss the bulging pair of ’80s Al Pacino’s eyes glaring you down as you order.
No food establishment thrives without a mad scientist in the kitchen — or a pair who fell in love.
For Las Palmas, that genius duo is husband-wife team Ramses Garcia and Ana Garcia. Ramses, 48, and Ana, 43, are the truck’s only employees. They are a family force to be reckoned with.
They have two daughters: Andrea, 13, and Catherine, 10. Two dogs: Luna, a toy poodle, and Lola, a maltese. And one source of income: Las Palmas.
Ramses and Ana Garcia run Las Palmas Food Truck in Tampa, Florida, more than a year after an electrical fire burned their restaurant down. (David Hoffman Viñas/Atrium)
“How old are you?” Ana asks me, breaking my staring contest with the truck’s Al Pacino design.
“26,” I tell her.
Their humor is served dark and sarcastic. It comes hand-in-hand with the food; it’s how you know you’re part of the family.
“We’ve been married almost 25 years,” Ana says, eyebrows raised, anticipating the reaction from her comedic counterpart.
Countdown.
“It’s been too long!” Ramses yells from the other side of the truck.
Whether parked in its shopping center home at 6431 E County Line Rd #104 in Tampa or on I-75 moving pushing 75 mph toward a food donation or catering event, Ramses and Ana’s “Scarface”-themed food truck steals the wandering eye’s attention. Ramses says he chose the “Scarface” theme to reflect the resilience and self-determination the last two years have required of him. (David Hoffman Viñas/Atrium)
He tosses two thin Palomilla steaks on the grill after a fresh vinegar squirt. The sizzle of the steaks rattles the truck like falling rain.
Psssssssss. Psssssssss.
“The contract’s done! We’re getting a divorce,” Ramses booms with a grin. He eyes Ana to gauge her reaction.
She laughs, then presses another butter-brushed Cuban sandwich.
Pfffff.
“Uh-huh. We’ll see,” she quips.
But her smirk says their relationship is as evergreen as the pine scrub to the truck’s south and southwest.
Pfffff.
Another sandwich.
The Garcias’ business went mobile 16 months ago.
It started as brick-and-mortar, in 2013. Then, they opened at a new location in 2019. This Las Palmas sported a sunlit interior, with everything from Celia Cruz to Bob Marley playing on the surround sound and a staff of seven. It was a move up for the couple: closer to the highway, more customers from Pasco County and more foot traffic from adjacent businesses and the nearby Wiregrass Mall.
But the last two and a half years enmeshed Ramses and Ana in misfortune.
Plague. Fire. Theft.
“God hates me!” Ramses concluded.
Still, five days a week — sometimes six, sometimes seven — they wake up at 6 or 7 a.m., tend to their daughters and don their food worker uniforms. Both wear label-free black T-shirts, glasses and comfortable running shoes. In the food industry, there’s no sitting down. And there’s no stopping.
“You’ve gotta be dressed for the kitchen, bro,” Ramses warns. “If you’re not prepared, you’ll be dead by 4 p.m.”
And the Garcias have no plans for their dream to die.
After the federal government declared COVID-19 a national emergency in March 2020, Ramses and Ana closed their indoor dining room. They survived by running orders at a makeshift table in front of their restaurant’s doors. Brick-and-mortar Las Palmas, pre-pandemic, made about $60,000 a month. The pandemic sliced sales in half.
Then in November 2020, Ramses, Ana and their two daughters all caught COVID.
Ramses went to the hospital twice.
“I’m fat, overweight and Latino,” he recalls. “I thought I was gonna die, bro.”
A father and leader, Ramses smiles through pain. He laughs at it, even. But COVID put death in his chest. Long-time customers of Las Palmas had passed away from the virus. Ana drove him to the hospital for the second time, and he feared he would leave his daughters behind.
“I’ll see you in the next life,” he told his girls.
But by December, COVID-free, he was catering for Christmas dinners.
Ramses usually leaves his phone off after work to de-stress.
On the weekend, those de-stressors include Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch and his electronic drum set. Pounding pads, mounting his drum throne, he is king, crowned in Iron Maiden fantasy.
Weeknights are saved for sobriety. He shares serenity with silence, away from his phone.
But Oct. 11, 2021, was hardly serene. To this day, he can’t remember why his phone was on that night. It was 10:30 p.m.
“Your restaurant is on fire!” the next-door Hungry Howie’s owner yelled from the other end of the line.
Ramses drove at 130 mph to reach Las Palmas. At 10:33 p.m., he confronted the remains.
Twelve fire trucks obstructed his view from the carnage: eight years of financial livelihood up in flames. He descended to asphalt from his Ford F-150, level with his personal bedlam. The glaring red pandemonium bathed him in panic. His stomach struck the iron core of the earth.
“Never start your own business,” he said. “Make sure you work for someone else. It all comes crashing down.”
On Oct. 11, 2021, an electrical wire fire scorched the inside of Ramses and Ana’s brick and mortar restaurant. (Photos courtesy of Ramses Garcia.)
After just one week, Ramses hit Google: “Food trucks for sale?” “Graphic designers?”
Reduced to his foundations, he knew exactly the right theme: Tony Montana, the industrious Cuban immigrant with attitude.
“Except instead of two machine guns, I want him holding up two Cuban sandwiches!” Ramses roared. “And a gold chain that says, ‘Las Palmas!’”
The bulging eyes were born.
It’s not the cocaine glorification Ramses is after with the “Scarface” design. Rather, it’s the DIY philosophy. He is after all, he acknowledges, an Aquarius: not just a pair of seasoned industry hands for hire, but a mind full of ideas.
Within a month, Las Palmas officially reopened, ready to ride.
The Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving 2022, 13 months after the fire, Ramses opened the truck for business.
Naked. The inside felt naked.
Where are my rice cookers? he thought, panicking. His heart pounded.
In seconds, he pieced it together: burglary. His first time after 30 years of working in food service.
Two hundred dollars from the register, all their cans of soda, their two rice cookers, the truck’s outdoor Tony Montana-themed menu — all gone. They didn’t close for the day. They did what they do best: endure.
But they couldn’t serve rice or coffee. Ramses packed the truck’s espresso machine and brought it home.
A rice cooker he can afford to replace. An espresso machine? Absolutely not. Anyone familiar with Cuban cuisine knows: Coffee is a non-negotiable.
“It’s Cuban crack,” Ramses jokes, acknowledging the loss he’d be operating at without the espresso machine. “I can’t risk losing it.”
But despite adversity upon adversity since 2020, Las Palmas remains.
“This whole time, no one’s come to the rescue,” Ramses reflects. “These last two years, I could have cried, ‘Oh, why me? Why, God?’ That doesn’t pay the bills.”
His customers do that, Ramses acknowledges. He is eternally grateful for them. Las Palmas represents what Ramses loves: nourishing his community. And being his sarcastic, Tony Montana-loving self while doing it.
No matter what the 2020s throw at him, Ramses still remembers the ‘90s.
Twenty days without power.
“Pure devastation,” he recalls.
Born in Havana, Cuba, Ramses feels most at home in Miami. In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew leveled his city. Ramses was 17, living with his mom.
Twenty years and one month later, Ramses didn’t need to look at his phone. Tucked in his memory were all the images he needed. Bleeding pains. Hungry, aimless nights. He knew what awaited his fellow Floridians down south as Hurricane Ian hit Fort Myers.
“That could have been us,” Ramses told his customers.
The morning after Ian made landfall, Ramses and Ana were in bed.
“We’re going to drive down and do a donation,” Ramses declared with no hesitation.
“You’re crazy,” Ana told him. Their finances were too tight.
“I know.”
But Ramses’ mind had already begun the charge forward.
And so on Oct. 5, the culinary chariot hit interstate pavement.
At the Gladiolus Food Pantry in Fort Myers, Ramses, Ana and two regular customers who took the trip south with them gave away more than 700 meals in just three hours.
No rules. No stipulations. A hungry belly at the food truck window? Immediate warm-food remedy: yellow rice, seasoned chicken, black beans and platanos maduros (sweet plantains).
By 8 p.m., they’d given away more than 1,200 meals.
Ramses, Ana and two Las Palmas regulars served more than 700 meals in under three hours at Gladiolus Food Pantry in Fort Myers. (David Hoffman Viñas/Atrium)
“Dios te bendiga.” (“God bless you.”)
“Toma, mi amor.” (“Take it, my love.”)
The four-person Tampa team gave Ian victims more than just meals. They gave them hope.
“There is no making it up,” Ramses said of the trip’s cost. “It’s a donation.”
In Fort Myers, Ramses sported a red, yellow, aqua, white and gray headband he purchased in the Navajo Nation during a trip out west in 2020.
“It’s a spiritual thing,” he says of the headband — and the Fort Myers donation.
“I want to nourish people,” Ramses said. “These people need help. I remember what it was like with Andrew … I was there.”
Shadows of what’s passed since 2020 follow Ramses and Ana.
Ash stains from the restaurant fire linger on Ramses’ yellow meat thermometer. Fingerprint powder from Tampa Police sullies the truck’s front door.
But the only direction that matters to Ramses and Ana is forward. What Ramses hopes for more than anything is another trip out west. In 2020 and 2021, Ramses, Ana, Andrea and Catherine took two road trips. They saw Utah, Montana, New Mexico and Arizona. Winding rivers. Giant rocks. Star cluster choruses.
“The kids never shut up about it!” Ramses says, proudly. Happiness glints in his eyes when he remembers the trips. “Those views were savage, bro.”
How do they stay motivated?
“I don’t know,” Ramses says.
“I don’t know,” Ana echoes.
Across all challenges, the one thing they do have — and have always had — is each other.
Ramses and Ana, married almost 25 years, are Las Palmas’ only two employees. The inside of their truck is cramped, at 36 inches wide and 18 feet long. But the two still prepare food daily, side by side, in the silver trenches. (David Hoffman Viñas/Atrium)
They met in Miami when Ramses was 23. Ana was 19 and had moved to Miami from her hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela. He was a waiter and bartender. She was a cook at the same restaurant.
“Why did I like you?” Ramses asks her.
“I don’t know.”
“Big butt?”
“Why did I like you?” Ana pushes him.
“I was sexy!” he howls.
Pfffff.
Ana presses another Cuban.