Cultivating Mexico in Northwest Arkansas

Gravy

In “Cultivating Mexico in Northwest Arkansas,” Gravy producer Mackenzie Martin digs into the story of Yeyo’s, a vibrant family-run Mexican restaurant in Northwest Arkansas.

Here, the once-rural Ozarks are now one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country. That’s partly thanks to major employers like Walmart, Tyson Foods, and J.B. Hunt, but there are also many amenities the region offers, like a surplus of hiking and mountain biking trails and Crystal Bridges Art Museum. And as the population increases, so does the diversity of the region.

When the Rios family moved here from California in the early 2000s with dreams of owning land and starting a farm, it was a bit of a gamble. The family of Mexican immigrants says they were the first non-white family at the Bentonville Farmer Market around 2006.

Six years later, chef Rafael Rios opened a food truck, Yeyo’s Mexican Grill, named after his dad’s longtime nickname. The plan was to use produce from the farm and sell farm-to-table Mexican food. At first, he struggled—but he kept with it, and it paid off. Nearly 20 years later, the Rios family has two farms, two food trucks, a bar specializing in mezcal, and a flagship restaurant. Not to mention, Rafael Rios has been named a semifinalist by the James Beard Foundation for Best Chef: South four times.

Most importantly, though, Rios has a bigger mission than just him. He feels like diners in the U.S. aren’t very knowledgeable about the complicated, and often expensive, processes required to make high-quality Mexican cuisine, such as tortillas from scratch or really good mole sauce. That’s why he’s trying to change his customers’ perceptions of Mexican food by bringing them along with the cooking process. The restaurant kitchen is completely open, so guests see (and hear) everything happening there.

Education is a part of the job Rios willingly takes up. If a customer questions whether his tortillas are really all corn, for instance, he will literally take them back to the kitchen and show them the machine they use to shape and cut the tortillas.

He couldn’t do it without his family, though. All seven Rios siblings and their parents live in Northwest Arkansas, and 18 family members are involved with the restaurant in some way, from management to farming to dishwashing. In this episode, Rios shares his family’s journey to Yeyo’s and Arkansas’ changing food landscape.

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