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“In the evening, after we close, local churches come to get the food made for that day. I try to give my clients the best,” Rivera said. “The magic here is simple: It’s great food at a great price. Rivera said she perfected the recipes after years of working in Puerto Rican restaurants. Prices range from $5.50 for a traditional jibarito to $16 for mofongo with shrimp and octopus in a sauce.
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(Rivera and her staffers said they make anywhere from 300-500 of them per day.) But the menu is vast.Ī wide variety of sandwiches and mofongos (plantain balls) filled with different types of meat and fish, traditional stews and salads, as well as a handful of entrees like carne frita encebollada - fried pork with onions - and vegetable dishes round out the menu. The traditional jibarito, a sandwich that is believed to have originated in Chicago, is arguably the star. Jibaritos Y Mas is all about authentic Puerto Rican food made with fresh ingredients. “Since the first day I arrived to this country, I started working with Puerto Rican food.” Credit: Kelly Bauer/Block Club Chicago Yelitza Rivera, owner of Jibaritos y Mas, opened the restaurant in 2016. “I’ve been making Puerto Rican food for 19 years,” Rivera said. The island - its people and its cuisine - holds a special place in Rivera’s heart in more ways than one. Fullerton Ave., where she worked for 13 years before opening Jibaritos Y Mas. She left to take a gig at Ponce Restaurant, 4313 W. Her first two years in the city she worked at a Puerto Rican restaurant in the now-shuttered Discount Megamall. Rivera has always worked in restaurants, but it was when she arrived in Chicago that she became wholly focused on cooking Puerto Rican food.
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She moved to Chicago from her hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela, in 2000, when she was 28 years old. ‘The magic here is simple: It’s great food at a great price’ Credit: Kelly Bauer/Block Club Chicago A third Jibaritos y Mas location is expected to open soon. “It feels like the American dream,” she said. On the eve of her first restaurant’s third anniversary, Rivera said the success “feels good.”
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The new restaurant, which she aims to open sometime in May or June, will be dine-in only to complement the existing spot, she said. Last October, Rivera opened a second location at Harlem and Belmont avenues, and now she’s planning to open a third location in an old cell phone store just steps from the Logan Square spot at 3406 W. On any given weekday, the restaurant draws lines out the door or, at the very least, a crowd of customers huddled around the register waiting to try Rivera’s food. Rivera’s enthusiasm for Puerto Rican food must’ve been contagious - the restaurant has exploded in popularity over the last few years. Credit: Kelly Bauer/Block Club Chicago Jibaritos y Mas has quickly become wildly popular in Logan Square. Jibaritos Y Mas is a love letter to Puerto Rico: The walls are covered in colorful Puerto Rico-themed murals, the speakers blare Puerto Rican music and the smell of jibarito sandwiches and plantain balls, called mofongos, waft through the air. In April 2016, that dream became a reality when Rivera opened Jibaritos Y Mas in the very storefront she admired at 3400 W. But she long dreamt of opening her own restaurant - and putting her own recipes to the test. LOGAN SQUARE - For years, Yelitza Rivera would pass a Puerto Rican restaurant at Fullerton and Kimball avenues on her way to work and think to herself, “One day that restaurant will be mine.”Īt the time, Rivera worked at a different Puerto Rican restaurant in Hermosa, where she did a little bit of everything both in the kitchen and out.