La Típica Oaxaqueña in Seattle’s White Center neighborhood to reopen after devastating summer fire

In the early morning of July 5th, when Yesica Lopez’s mother called her to tell her to go to her Seattle store because it was on fire, she barely understood. Her mother, Concha Reyes, was out to pick up products for the pair’s White Center store, La Típica Oaxaqueña. Lopez arrived at 5 a.m., quickly saw the damage to neighboring LumberYard Bar and Rat City Tattoo businesses, then watched the fire reach her year and a half old store selling products from her home state of Oaxaca, Mexico.

“It was hard to watch,” Lopez says of the fire, which was later classified as arson, but it stayed while the firefighters worked for hours. “As the day went on, it became more real that we could lose it and everything in the store.”

When she finally entered the building, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling and significant water damage. But on Saturday September 18, more than two months after the fire, La Típica Oaxaqueña will reopen in a new location, just a few doors from the original, on 1601 Roxbury St. SW

“My mother was so heartbroken,” says Lopez. Reyes started the business about nine years ago selling specialties such as tlayudas, chilies, and chapulines in homes and to friends. When Lopez finished school, she realized that she wanted to get into the business with her mother. Although she was born in Oaxaca, Lopez grew up here and found that importing and selling products from her homeland helped her learn about and fall in love with her own culture.

“I wanted to instill this love in my children,” she says, and wants to teach the general public more about Oaxaca. “I had noticed that Oaxaca was pretty trendy lately,” but she also noted that many of the restaurants in Oaxaca weren’t owned by the people of Oaxaca or even Mexico. “I wanted to get into this business, but from someone who loves Oaxaca and knows the culture.”

Lopez’s sister and brother help out at the store while another brother and wife who live in Oaxaca help them source products and sometimes drive 8 or 9 hours across the state to find unique pottery, crafts, or ingredients. They concentrate on purchasing directly from the manufacturer and in particular on women and people of indigenous origin. The resulting variety in their business includes hand-woven clothing, endless varieties of Oaxacan beverages, and corn heirloom products. “I love it when customers come in and discover something they haven’t seen in 20 years,” says Lopez.

They had just received a large shipment from Oaxaca when the store burned down – which meant they had little money and little on hand to reclaim it. As a first-time business owner, Lopez regrets not realizing the importance of insurance. “But my mother and I had just been through so much,” says Lopez. “We accepted what happened and immediately looked for ways to get out of it.” They immediately started selling what they salvaged from the store at outdoor flea markets in the Yakima area on weekends, and Lopez was selling to regular customers from home. “It was really hard.”

A GoFundMe raised more than $ 16,000 for the family, which allowed them to secure and top up a new lease right in the same neighborhood so they can reopen this month. They are now filling the shelves with brand new supplies from Mexico including handmade Oaxaca mole paste, Pluma Hidalgo coffee, chocolate, and hand-painted black and green clay vases. They carry costeño chillies, dried Jamaica flowers, worm salt, and ground red corn for making atoles. They have different sizes of tlayudas that Lopez says had a rush of people who came in to try the food after the food was featured on the Netflix show “Street Food” as well as Oaxacan frozen bread, Chilacayote and Chicatanas – The Kind of Ingredients Food nerds and Mexicans (and Mexican food nerds in particular) pass out.

But even those who have no idea what to do with carne seca or how to serve crema de mezcal should stop by, encourages Lopez. “I love it when people ask questions,” she says. After all, sharing their culture was one of the main reasons the store opened. “I just want you to come in and ask.”