In the Little Village home of Maria and Jose Alejandre, no one cares about the traditional Thanksgiving Day feast. “We don’t like turkey,” says Hector, 28, one of the Alejandres’ ten children. “It’s too dry.” Instead, Maria’s homemade chicken with mole sauce–full of cocoa, spices, nuts, seeds, and dried jalapenos–simmers in an enormous pot while tamales steam in their husks.
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Former carpenter Jose Alejandre originally left Puerto Vallarta in the mid-1970s, leaving his family behind to find a better-paying job to support them. When he couldn’t get work in Texas, his sister in Chicago offered to help him find something. Jose picked corn and squash in Indiana in the summer, and come winter he took several temporary jobs in Chicago–in a hotel laundry room, in a steel factory–until he found a steady job at a banquet hall in Batavia, washing dishes and helping in the kitchen.
Roy came to Chicago around 1977, after he learned Jose was undergoing eye surgery. “My father sent us a sad letter saying, ‘I do not know what is happening to me. I might die,’” says Roy. “So I decided to surprise my father.”
It also taught him how tough some Japanese chefs were to deal with. “They want to keep their knowledge to themselves, and they really have to like you to teach you,” he says. “I have been lucky. I like to beg people to teach me by working for them. Whatever I do, I want to do it right.”
At Thanksgiving dinner, Roy carefully explains each sushi item in detail to make sure his guests use the right sauces. Roy thinks many Americans get bored with traditional sushi because it’s too simple. “Americans want to experience something new every day.”
The brothers close their Thanksgiving sushi bar around 11 PM, when a DJ takes over. The sushi chefs start dancing the Mexican polka with their wives, children, mama, and papa. “We dance till four o’clock in the morning,” says Hector, grinning. “It’s like this in Mexico.”
