Alberto's reopens

By AARON BOHACHEK

Staff writer

BONNERS FERRY — On Aug. 25, Bonners Ferry will once again have a Mexican restaurant in the log cabin across from Safeway.

Alberto’s will reopen Monday with a new roof complete with skylights, a new fence and the same menu that was served before 2011.

The new owners are actually the old owners. A three-year lease to Mario’s Mexican restaurant with an option to buy fell through and Mario Deleon moved his business to Bayview on Lake Pend Oreille.

“We came back to fix the roof,” says owner Connie Mier Y Teran, “We knew it wouldn’t last, and I’ve always dreamed of skylights. We ordered them from Vern at Bonners Ferry Glass as soon as we returned to town.”

Mier Y Teran and Dave Fox, former owner of Bear Creek Lodge, have spent their time since turning over the location to Deleon in 2011 traveling. Until this summer, they were spending time in Mexico and seeing relatives.

Mier Y Teran and Fox had planned to be in Mexico for the Day of the Dead this fall, now living full-time in the RV they had purchased together. They returned to town to fix the roof and the fence around the building’s backyard patio, and decided to raise the building rent $200 a month to help defray the costs.

After discussion with Deleon, who decided he wouldn’t be able to pay the increased rent in January after his current contract expired, the couple worked out a deal to resume operation of the restaurant as Alberto’s in August.

“I left to be a professional grandmother,” says Mier Y Teran, of turning the location over in 2011, “I was very happy to leave. But you grow with the care of a place. Like a child, I love this building. It took me years to put in my dream tile floor, and now I have my skylights.”

Mier Y Teran originally moved to Bonners Ferry in 1988 to work at Rocky Mountain Academy with then husband, Alberto. The restaurant that still bears his name was opened in 1992 when the Safeway location was still a horse pasture, Mier Y Teran recalls.

“I was kidnapped into the restaurant,” Mier Y Teran says, “but we would fight every night over who got to make the dinner. We were very blessed by this community, warmly embraced and given a good livelihood for many years.”

The business received a lot of attention over the years, with features on NPR’s Splendid Table in 1997, Gourmet Magazine’s “Side Road” in 1998 and was featured in “Eat your way across the USA.” They also received Panhandle Health District’s excellence award.

“With all that history, history has also gone through my body,” Mier Y Teran says, “I still feel proud, and still love to do the cooking that got the awards, but I want to simplify a little.”

The restaurant will focus on tasty, affordable food, with a friendly atmosphere and will pay special attention to cleanliness and food handling safety, Mier Y Teran says.

“This is what we want and expect when we go out,” she says.

The menu is very much authentic Mexican food, which evolves into every community as the locals like it, Mier Y Teran says. One of her specialties is her almond mole’, a recipe that comes from her grandmother and the Puebla Mole community in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico.

As she blends the 29 ingredients, she likes to put on beautiful music like her grandmother enjoyed and think about her heritage. It’s almost a spiritual journey to the past, she says.

“It’s one of the oldest recipes that exist from early colonial Mexico,” she says, “a blending of Aztec and Spanish flavors.”

The chocolate in her mole’ was originally reserved for royalty in the Aztec culture, she says, and the mole’ itself was served to visiting dignitaries at colonial Spanish convents. Like the blending of the two cultures, she says her recipe blends the flavors so no one ingredient stands out, but a new flavor is created.

“A dish fit for kings,” she says.

As she gets older, Mier Y Teran is more concerned with healthy eating, she says. She has added more vegetarian dishes to her menu to this end, and will only fry food in olive or canola oil. She intends to further take care of her older customers with an “accumulated youth” discount for those 60 and older.

The reopening of her restaurant is incidental, but not accidental, Mier Y Teran says.

“It’s a good thing. It must be meant to be,” she says.

After they open, Mier Y Teran wants to have Patio Sundays, with outdoor barbecue as long as the weather holds. She has hired a pair of experienced local cooks in Celia Knott and Epi Hovish to make sure customers get the best. She is confident in their abilities to deliver her recipes to customers, she says, using a Mexican proverb to describe their abilities.

“The baldest one can braid her hair,” she laughs.

Alberto’s Restaurant can be contacted at 267-4477.