The maladies of modern haute cuisine – high prices, pretension, authenticity as artifice – are particularly acute in a time of inflation, when costs are way out of proportion to value. In recherche restaurants, authentic meals are plated on fine china, eschewing the paper cups, plates and boats of their more democratique counterparts. Menus are the edible equivalent of Balenciaga’s recent garbage bag purse. It is not the unreasonable diner who wonders, am I being mocked?  

At Evelia’s Tamales, a restaurant in Corona, Queens, the menu, almost a rejoinder, is framed above the counter in bold, block, bi-lingual print, to be read by everyone, at once. It reads like a grimoire, the prices an index of incantations summoning and older, more equitable New York: a buck-fifty, $2.00, three. I had to blink twice to believe.  

Like the tamales it sells, the restaurant is filled with a comforting miasma of warm, toasted masa. A playful ballet of primary colors – red, yellow, green, violet – adorns the walls and tables, some of which are quilted, a nod to the proprietor’s origins, Tlaxcala, Mexico, where the main industry is textiles. 

In 2000, Evelia Coyotzi immigrated from Mexico to New York City, leaving her two-year-old son behind. In 2001, she was one of the immediate thousands whose lives were warped by 9/11, losing her job at a McDonald’s nearby. To survive, she leaned on what she knew: home cooking, which she packaged and pushed in a street cart into the shadow of the seven train during morning rush hours. 

For 20 years, her loyal, and large, fan base, which included Anthony Bourdain, sung hosannas – and the police harassed her, for she was one of the innumerable, unlicensed cart operators that crop up like cornflowers on the city’s sidewalks. They came for the tamales, a combination of masa filled varyingly with molten cheese, meat, vegetables, beans and salsa. Or steaming tortas wrapped in tinfoil. They drank hot, blanket-thick atole, a creamy shake of masa sweetened with sugar and spices and milk. 

In January of 2020, she rented a storefront. By March of 2022, the doors had finally opened, onto a new life peopled by old friends. “I felt very happy to see them sitting down,” Evelia said, with a smile so self-effacing it seemed like a prayer. 

 Crammed with devotees at 5 a.m., when it opens, and busy until 10 p.m., when it closes, it feels like the neighborhood hangout, where kids and adults, ruddy-faced from work and play, find sweet succor. They eat everything, from the guajolotos, two tamales encased in a roll, to tacos oozing with earthy adobo or piquant salsa verde. Fresh tamales are still the star, though. Plucked from piping hot pots, they unfurl from their corn husks, wet with steam and salsa, which is “the trick,” Evelia says, to avoid the often dry and friable masa that beguiles most tamales. Many of them have beans and meat, and they’re so delicate, the chicken, the pork, that they seem to have been marinating through the decades Evelia dreamt of this place. Then they’re washed down with horchata, fresh tamarind juice, or Jarritos. You’ll need a nap. 

The chilaquiles are awash in salsa verde, which only accentuates the fresh tortillas made from a masa that tastes like freshly turned earth. But the quesadillas fall flat, the Oaxacan cheese that fills them cooling quicker than they can be eaten. No menu is perfect, not even one at a place filled with years of anticipation and planning. 

In 2015, Evelia finally got her green card – and her son back, bringing him to the city quicker than the ink dried. Now, she runs the restaurant with her husband, Delfino Garcia, and her son, John Garcia. Zoom out and you begin to see something familiar: an immigrant, adversity, a nuclear family, a mom-and-pop shop, all the makings of an American myth. But Evelia’s is not a story about the American Dream, but about dreaming in spite of the American Story. As she said, “It was a tough twenty years. We went through a lot of things. But you keep going.” And you keep cooking. No one wants her to stop.