CLEARLAKE >> Veronica Onate believes in karma — that the good or bad a person does will eventually come back on them. She is also a Catholic and believes in God.
Onate and her husband, Gerardo Huerta, are not sure which was in play when they decided to relocate their Mexican restaurant from Cobb to Clearlake in August. But the decision to relocate likely prevented the destructive Valley Fire from claiming their business as a victim.
Even though their Cobb building survived the fire, the couple said they do not believe it would have survived the aftermath. This is because most of their customers were locals and since many houses in the mountain community of nearly 1,800 were destroyed in the fast-moving inferno, a large portion of their clientele is scattered for now.
“Our business would have been open after the fire but we would have had few customers,” she said. “It probably would have forced us to close.”
Their Clearlake eatery, Monterrey Mexican Grill, opened on Aug. 6, about five weeks before the Valley Fire started on Cobb Mountain.
The day the fire started was “crazy busy” at their Clearlake eatery, Onate recounted. Then it got crazier.
“A Cobb man we know came in and said Cobb is burning, He had evacuated and didn’t know if his house had burned or survived,” Onate said, adding, “I haven’t seen him since.”
Onate and Huerta, who speaks only Spanish, typically work 12-hour days and don’t follow television, radio or Internet news, so they were not aware of the fire until told by a customer.
“My heart was broken when I heard the news about Cobb,” Onate said. “I know a lot of people there who need help but I know there is nothing I can do about it.”
Since the fire, Onate said a number of their Cobb regulars have made their way to the Clearlake location, including many who lost their houses.
“I heard a lot of stories, some very sad,” Onate said. “Stories of people who lost everything.”
She particularly remembers talking to a young couple from Cobb who lost their house to the inferno and has since decided to move to Georgia where they have family.
Onate and Huerta moved to Cobb in 2013 after living in Charlotte, North Carolina, for seven years. The couple said they faced a lot of discrimination in the South due to their Mexican heritage. Previous to opening a restaurant, Huerta did construction work.
They decided to move after a vacation to Lake County where they have many relatives.
“Our kids were happier here with all their family around,” Onate said. “So we went back to North Carolina where we had a restaurant, closed it and sold everything we had. We moved here in a pickup truck with our clothes and shoes.”
They opened Monterrey Mexican Grill on Oct. 7, 2013 in the clubhouse of Cobb Mountain Golf in leased space that the couple remodeled. But the building they were in was sold and the new owners indicated they did not feel a Mexican restaurant fit in with the new atmosphere, Onate said.
“We got two weeks notice,” Onate said. “We panicked.”
But Huerta convinced his wife that they needed to “move on” so they began looking for a new location around Clear Lake, including Upper Lake and Clearlake Oaks, before settling on a vacant property in a small strip mall near IGA Foods on Lakeshore Drive.
Their restaurant is just a few doors down from another Mexican cafe, the Laguna Mexican Grill.
“We were not concerned at all about being close to Laguna,” Onate said. “We’re different. We cook our food in a different style.”
In Cobb, the restaurant had only eight tables but their new location has 17 tables plus seating at the bar.
“It’s double the space but that means double the work,” Onate said.
Onate is in charge of the front of the restaurant while Huerta prefers the kitchen, where he does all the cooking.
Monterrey Mexican Grill, 15176 Lakeshore Drive.
