Owners Alexis Carbajal, left, and Juan Ayela, with two favorites from their Phoenix Coqui restaurant (photo by Darryl Webb for North Central News).
In 2013, Alexis Carbajal was burned out by his demanding business career and looking for a less stressful lifestyle.
“I speak Spanish and didn’t have to convert money or need a passport, so I decided to try Puerto Rico,” the ASU grad said.
On the island, he found the lifestyle he needed, along with the love of his life, a restaurant professional named Juan Ayela. “They call it the ‘Island of Enchantment,’” Carbajal said, and for the couple, it was. They moved to Phoenix, Carbajal’s hometown, looking to start a business.
“Once we moved here, we tried to find places that reminded Juan of home, and he couldn’t find any,” Carbajal said. “There’s a handful of Puerto Rican restaurants in the Valley at best.”
In 2017, after two years of saving and planning, they opened Phoenix Coqui, a food truck serving local Puerto Ricans hungry, like them, for a taste of the island.
“We were just trying to introduce people to some of the cuisine that Juan grew up with and that people like me hadn’t experienced,” Carbajal said. “I didn’t ever try Puerto Rican food until I went to Puerto Rico.
“We wanted the quickest, easiest way to get people to try our food. We thought, ‘If we’re on wheels we can find our people, our market.’ That really sealed the deal for us. We wanted to reach the most people possible in the shortest time possible, and that was a food truck.”
To help them get started, they signed on to ASU Prepped, a program that helps food entrepreneurs learn what they need to succeed in starting and operating a business. “They worked with us on everything from social media marketing to pricing our menus,” Carbajal said. “We also did a small business incubator called Local First Arizona.
“By the time we opened, we had built connections, and our first job was a ‘women in tech’ conference at ASU that hired us to do a huge event for 500 people. We had to hit the ground running.”
Favorites at Phoenix Coqui include empanadillas, left, with chicken, cheese and sautéed mushroom fillings, served with mayoketchup sauce; camarones mofongo with plantains; and slow-cooked pernil served with arroz con gandules, seasoned rice with pigeon peas (photo by Darryl Webb for North Central News).
In their early days, Carbajal and Ayela needed to correct some misconceptions. “We had a sign that said, ‘Not a taco truck,’” Carbajal said, “because it was so common for people to come up to us and ask for tacos, even though we had the Puerto Rican flag waving.”
Spanish is one of the two main languages of Puerto Rico (the other is English), and it’s an understandable mistake, but Puerto Rican cuisine is its own culinary hybrid, blending local ingredients Caribbean people had used for generations, along with heritage foods from Africans and Spaniards who came to the islands; from Mexico and other neighboring Central and South American regions; and most recently, from the United States.
In addition to educating customers, the pair needed to establish a regular schedule so they could make it easy for those customers to find them, Carbajal said. “I reached out to The Rock, a bar in the Melrose neighborhood, and right off the bat they said, ‘You can come out, we’re having an event.’ That was in March of 2017, and we started a regular schedule at that bar every weekend.”
Moving from the truck to a brick-and-mortar location “came as a surprise to us,” Carbajal said. “We were at the point if we went out on a weekend, everything on that truck would be sold. We needed more space. The kitchen we were renting was no longer going to be available, and we started thinking it was time to find a more permanent place.”
They looked for a place to buy, not lease, having heard horror stories of restaurants suddenly losing their location when owners wanted higher rents. A friend tipped them to Crazy Jim’s Greek restaurant on 15th Avenue, just south of Indian School Road. It was closing and offered a perfect spot for their new Phoenix Coqui, which opened in 2022.
“It just all came together at the right time,” Carbajal said.
As Carbajal talks about Coqui’s food truck roots, Ayela is in the kitchen, whipping up a sampler using tried-and-true family recipes: mofongo con camaron, savory shrimp served on a thick disk of sofrito-laced mashed plantains; empanadillas stuffed with chicken and beef and served with mayoketchup, the ubiquitous dipping sauce based on a blend of mayonnaise, ketchup, garlic and spices; and pernil, luscious slow-cooked pork with a side of arroz con gandules, seasoned rice with peas.
“Mofongo with shrimp is one of the most typical Puerto Rican dishes,” he said. Pernil, the most popular dish on the menu, is another, marinated with garlic, oregano, oil, adobo seasoning and Puerto Rican spice mixes. The empanadillas are available with several fillings, including mushrooms and vegan and vegetarian options, along with tostones (fried plantains). Plantains are a foundation ingredient – looking like bananas but with a starchier, potato-like flavor and texture.
Desserts include flan, mango cheesecake and quesito bites. And don’t miss the coquito, similar to eggnog and made with coconut milk, cream, spices and rum. A Christmas favorite, it’s on the menu year-round at Coqui.
Phoenix Coqui, 4041 N. 15th Ave., is open 11 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday; and 11 a.m. to 8:45 p.m., Friday and Saturday. For information, call 602-768-7894 or visit www.phoenixcoqui.com.
