‘It’s like a dream come true’: New restaurant on East Main Street opens for business

In 2017, Raúl de Jesús Dorado and Xiomara Guevara struck up a romance while working together at the De Jesus Deli Taqueria in Roanoke Plaza.

Now married, the Riverhead couple has opened their first restaurant together as husband and wife. That restaurant, Casa Dorado Deli Taqueria, opened over the weekend on East Main Street in Riverhead.

“She’s my partner and we do everything together,” de Jesús Dorado said. “We worked in the restaurant together and one day we just decided to do something for ourselves.” 

“We have three kids. We want to teach our kids to do something different, not to be scared and go for it,” he said.

The couple said they share a love of working in the kitchen. Both of them are immigrants — de Jesús Dorado from Mexico and Guevara from El Salvador. The restaurant serves tacos, burritos and other Latin American foods, along with drinks like homemade tamarind juice, horchata (rice milk) and agua de jamaica (hibiscus). The restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The inside of the restaurant is colorful, with the walls painted bright green and orange, and multicolored banners strung across the ceiling. The staff of the restaurant wear black shirts with the Mexican and American flags on each arm, colorful phrases including “Taco squad” and “You’re the salsa to my tacos!” along their backs.

“It’s been a long, long road to open here, but we’re finally here,” de Jesús Dorado said. The business has been in the works for roughly two years now. “For us, this is like a dream come true right now.”

“We have a saying in Mexico that says: ‘mi casa es tu casa,’ My house is your house,” de Jesús Dorado said. “So we want everybody to come here and feel like they’re home. That’s our goal.”

Casa Dorado Deli Taqueria is on the ground floor of the Riverview Lofts apartment building located at 221 East Main Street in Riverhead.