Las Trancas

The idea of this family restaurant began in the north part of our beautiful state of New Mexico, the small but culturally rich town of Espanola. It was 1990 when my Mom began this journey. After having to overcome the many barriers and obstacles that any first generation immigrant has to endure, she decided it was time to become a business owner. At the beginning of this quest, many times our family thought of giving up. It was difficult to have to deal with the many city codes and other difficulties that we, as a family, had when opening the restaurant. Shortly before our grand opening, my mom got one more impediment, when she received a letter from an attorney saying that we had to change the name that she had register the restaurant under since there was another one in Santa Fe with the same name. As we were talking about this, my mom said in Spanish, "cuantas TRANCAS hemos tenido"; which means "how many obstacles have we endure". In reality the word trancas means gate latch, but it is also use in the Mexican slang for obstacles. And that is how our name became about.