The first weekend in May was a whirlwind for the Alberto family: parents Oscar and Ana Maria, son Alan and daughter Nathalie. For one, they were together, a rare occurrence for a family spread between Miami and Providence. They had just celebrated Oscar and Ana Maria's 40th wedding anniversary, and Alan's triumphant performance in Swan Lake (he's a dancer with Rhode Island's Festival Ballet.) It was a big few days, but it wasn't over. Monday, May 2 they had a date with some garlic, parsley, and an old family recipe that has been adapted for large-scale production.

In the kitchens of Warren's Hope & Main culinary business incubator, Nathalie and Alan were ready to make their family's traditional chimichurri recipe at scale with their mother, and their father looking on. They have been watching Ana Maria make chimichurri their whole lives; "Cooking always brought us together," says Nathalie. But this is the first day they'll make it all together, in quantity.

Chimichurri is an Argentine condiment, typically served with grilled meats. Oscar and Ana Maria, of Italian ancestry, were both born and raised in Argentina, "the most European country in South America," says Oscar, whose family hailed from Sicily, while Ana Maria's came from Calabria. The couple came to the United States ten days after their 1976 wedding, and liked it so much that they stayed. In the past 40 years they have called New York, New Jersey, the San Francisco Bay area (where Alan and Nathalie were born), Miami and now Charlotte, NC, home.

Ana Maria has always made small batches of chimichurri by instinct. It's a simple, honest recipe, but a few years ago, when friends were offering to pay Nathalie for jars of her homemade chimichurri, Alan (who is also getting a business degree from Johnson and Wales) saw an opportunity. To produce their mother's chimichurri in volume, they needed to both standardize the recipe as well as scale it up—a trial and error process that took a few months. In the process they discussed their identity and brand and came up with "Mesa Fresca", which translates to fresh table. They reached out to Hope & Main in April of 2015, and were in production by July.
Nathalie, who lives in Miami and works in public relations, travels to Rhode Island whenever she can to help with production at Hope & Main, and uses her expertise to handle the marketing and communications end of things. When she can't make it, Alan gets by with a little help from his friends, and even other members of the dance company (on hiatus for the summer, he expects to have plenty of time to devote to Mesa Fresca.)

As the smell of garlic and fresh-squeezed lemons filled the kitchen, Ana Maria laughed when asked if Nathalie and Alan always worked so well together. As Nathalie remembers, it was when she was studying abroad in Itay and Alan was dancing in Croatia that they started to see eye to eye, going through similar life experiences from far-flung locales.

Despite the family's very international roots, Mesa Fresca will likely stay local for some time to come. Alan, who has recently bought a home in Providence, would like to stay put for the foreseeable future. "I always knew, growing up in Miami, that I wanted a place with seasons," he says. Hope & Main has been a wonderful resource, he adds. "The positivity here is great. Everyone is so supportive."

Mesa Fresca's chimichurri is available at Meet Your Maker, the monthly interactive farmer's market at Hope & Main, and they will be selling at the weekly Schoolyard Market starting in June. It is also available T the Pantry at Avenue N in Rumford, Olive del Mondo in Providence, and Dave’s Marketplace in Smithfield and East Greenwich. You can find them on Facebook and Instagram, and their website at www.mesafresca.org is currently in development.