Aqui Me Quedo Restaurant
Hartford
May 15, 2024
Aqui Me Quedo (“I’ll Stay Here”) is located on Albany Avenue just a few hundred feet short of where the road merges with Main Street. I’d been to the restaurant a few times for dinner, but this was my first time getting breakfast from the North End staple.
I went with one of my favorite breakfast meals: steak and home fries, with eggs, toast and bacon. I did spice the order up a little with a side of passion fruit juice instead of my standard orange juice. The juice had just enough tartness to make my cheeks pucker with each sip.
One thing that locally owned restaurants always have over big chains is the amount of food they give you. When my plate arrived, my eyes grew wide as I looked at the pile on my plate.
I started with the home fries, which were cooked to perfection with a perfect crunch on the outside and piping hot potato on the inside. The bacon was crispy and flavorful, with just the right amount of too salty that you want from bacon. The eggs were good; honestly I’m not that into eggs, but they come with most breakfast meals, so I eat them.
Then there was the steak, smothered in onions and peppers. It was tender and easy to cut. When I took a bite, I could taste the seasonings mixing with the juice from the peppers. I had an assortment of dipping sauces to choose from, but I felt like they were masking the taste that I really wanted, which was the steak.
The toast, buttered and presented like the roll for a grinder, topped off the meal. I struggled with the amount of food for half an hour; I refused to let even a morsel go to waste.
After the morning rush had died down, I was able to talk to Joel Rohena, the owner of Aqui Me Quedo. Before he became a restaurateur, he drove trucks for the Coca Cola company. His introduction to the business was helping his then-girlfriend Wilma bus tables; then he began waiting tables himself. He has owned the restaurant with his now-wife since 2005, when they took it over from her father, William Mercado.
“He offered it to us back in 2001, but I said no. When he offered it again in 2005, he said he was selling it no matter what, so either I could take it or someone else would.”
Aqui Me Quedo, in business for 54 years, has moved from its original location on Main Street, where the San Juan Center is located today. The restaurant has also opened a second location on Park Street. Joel and Wilma’s son took over running the Park Street spot last year.
Joel is a true son of Hartford, having moved to the city when he was 10 years old. He grew up in Stowe Village in the North End of the city, and attended Freddie Wish Elementary School before graduating from Weaver High School in 1983. His future wife was never far away though, as she graduated from Windsor High School the same year.
The two have six children all together, five boys and one girl, and seven grandchildren. Family is the foundation of the restaurant. Joel showed me a board he keeps in the back of the restaurant covered in images of the extended family from across the decades.
He said that his favorite part of owning the restaurant is serving the customers and getting to know them. It shows. The food is worth the trip to Albany Avenue to experience; the stories are what makes it a place worth staying at.
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Aqui Me Quedo is open seven days a week.
Jamil heads to church to learn how to knit.
