BY BEN VERDE
Two sisters are opening
their third restaurant this
weekend — on the same block
as their fi rst two!
Sisters Brenda Castellanos
and Ana Prince hope to open
their newest venture, Antojitos
del Patron, on Lincoln
Road in Prospect Lefferts Gardens
near Flatbush Avenue,
right across the street from
their fi rst two restaurants, Taqueria
El Patron and Ix. The
new restaurant will focus on
traditional Mexican recipes,
as opposed to its neighbor
across the street, which serves
more Americanized, California
Style dishes like burritos
and nachos.
“We’re going to have the
food that you easily fi nd in
Mexico on the streets or when
you go to the market,” said
Castellanos. “It’s real food —
like Grandma’s recipes.”
Menu items at the new business
include tamales, tortas,
guaraches, and atoles, a warm
Mexican beverage made from
corn dough. The team hopes to
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COURIER L 28 IFE, DEC. 13-19, 2019
open their doors this weekend
at 50 Lincoln Rd., the former
site of Nagle’s Bagels.
The sisters say their businesses
don’t compete with
each other thanks to their distinct
styles. While El Patron
and Antojitos focus on different
styles of Mexican cuisine,
Ix, (pronounced: eesh) is part
coffee shop and part restaurant,
and serves up Mayan
food from the sisters native
Guatemala. The eatery was
recently featured in the New
York Times for its unique Guatemalan
stews, which are hard
to come by anywhere else in
the city.
The close proximity of their
three ventures is part strategy
and part happenstance according
to the sisters, who say the
spaces on their block became
available, so they took advantage
of them. Bit by bit over
the past fi ve years, the sisters
have created a mini-empire on
Lincoln Road.
After immigrating from the
town of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
17 years ago, Prince
and Castellanos worked as
waitresses at several restaurants,
but grew tired of having
to answer to a boss every day.
In 2015, they discovered
the space that once hosted a
Mexican restaurant where
Prince had previously worked
was available, and the pair
decided to go in on their own
business together. Taqueria
El Patron was the result, but
within a year the sisters had
nabbed a liquor license, and
were turning the vacant storefront
next door into a cantina
serving beer and liquor alongside
grub from the taqueria
every night from 4 pm to midnight.
After another year, the sisters
opened Ix – named after a
fi gure of Mayan astrology – a
venture that was close to the
sister’s heart because it gave
them the ability to showcase
their home countries delicacies,
which they had been
aching for ever since they left
their homeland.
“That place is a dream,”
Castellanos said. “We feel like
Sisters Brenda Castellanos and Ana Price opened three restaurants on
one block in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Photo by Ben Verde
fi nally, we were able to give
something to this community
that is us, 100 percent Guatemala.”
Despite the heavy workload
that comes with managing
three restaurants, the sisters
say they don’t plan on slowing
down anytime soon, and that
they plan to expand even more
once Antojitos del Patron is
set up – possibly even to another
block.
“We don’t know how long
it’s going to take until we fall
in love with a new place — but
it’s going to happen,” Castellanos
said.
Block-long empire
Sisters to open third restaurant on same block in PLG
2579 East 17th Street
Suite 51,
Brooklyn NY, 11235
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