Peruvian Americans have flocked to this Queens restaurant for nearly 50 years

A restaurant in Jackson Heights called Urubamba — after an Andean folk band — has been a destination for New York City's Peruvian American community since 1976.

Three generations of the Estorga family have served rotisserie chicken and traditional comfort foods beyond the better-known ceviche.

They cook up homestyle dishes like tamales, lomo saltado (a stir-fry of sirloin steak and vegetables), papas a la huancaina (potatoes in a spicy, cheesy cream sauce) and a variety of stews that make up the everyday Peruvian diet. There’s also a weekend breakfast plate that includes blood sausage, fried yuca, salchicha huachana (pork sausage) and scrambled eggs.

Urubamba has achieved a feat that has eluded most restaurants: generational success. It has withstood recessions, a pandemic and even a fire. And 48 years on, it still stands as a go-to spot for celebrating Peruvian holidays like Independence Day (July 28) or for simply enjoying a traditional Peruvian breakfast.

Every table at Urubamba was taken on a recent Sunday afternoon. The restaurant was abuzz with families, couples and friends chatting in Spanish, with snippets of English every now and then. Some of the customers had gone there as children and were now returning with their own families.

“It’s one of the few restaurants whose food has the true essence of our food,” said diner Roxana Cordoba. She and her husband left Lima in 1992, and have been dining at Urubamba at least twice a month, even after they moved an hour away to Glen Cove, Long Island.

“Every immigrant tries to find their food,” said Cordoba. “Thank God we found this restaurant. The food here tastes like home.”

“We have been serving three generations already,” said Alex Rojas, whose parents own Urubamba. He recalled serving the same families every weekend through the 2000s and his parents recognizing adult customers who’d been coming since they were children.

But it wasn’t so easy in the beginning. Julian Estorga, Maria Ruiz and their 4-year-old son, Carlos Estorga, left Lima for California in 1962. They eventually settled in Corona, Queens, where Julian landed a carpentry contract.

One job left him with an unclaimed wok, and Ruiz, a savvy home cook who had always dreamed of running a restaurant, claimed it. The couple opened Inti Raymi, the first iteration of Urubamba, based on her home cooking. They chose Jackson Heights because a Hispanic community began to coalesce there following the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Hispanics now make up half of Jackson Heights' population, although a higher concentration of Peruvian Americans reside in New Jersey, whose city of Paterson is home to Little Lima.

Carlos said that when his parents were starting the business, there were only two other Peruvian restaurants in the city: Arriba Peru and Chimu in Corona, which have both since closed. That meant Peruvian food distributors hadn’t amassed enough scale to order all the ingredients of Peruvian cooking.

“There was no aji amarillo so we had to substitute that with yellow bell peppers and jalapeños to try to get that flavor,” said Rojas, 36, who is Carlos’ son and the grandson of Urubamba’s founders, who died a few years ago. “It was very challenging, but they tried to do the best with what was available."

Rojas has worked as a line cook and server at Urubamba since 2007, along with his sister Silvana Rojas, who is assistant manager and a server.

Importers and suppliers slowly got their hands on more products. Today, the spicy, creamy, yellow sauce that tops the potatoes in Urubamba’s papa a la huancaina has the proper kick of the aji amarillo, a yellow pepper considered a staple in Peruvian cooking.

Other ingredients also began appearing in the kitchen over time. The huacatay herb powers the green ocopa sauce, while sun-dried Peruvian potatoes form the base of the carapulcra pork stew.

The menu features homestyle dishes cooked with traditional techniques and ingredients, ranging from the chicha morada made from purple corn and cinnamon to the moist masa of the banana leaf-wrapped tamales stuffed with chunks of meat, whole black olives, and slivers of hard-boiled egg.

Carlos and his wife Estela Estorga now own the restaurant, and she confirmed they’re committed to imported Peruvian ingredients. But the food isn't all that's been drawing Peruvian Americans to Urubamba over the decades; it's also the people.

Two cooks have worked at Urubamba for 20 years, and Carlos, who took over the restaurant once his parents got older, still works the kitchen.

“Whenever we were making tamales at the huge assembly table we have downstairs, my grandmother would oversee that until her last days, even though my dad has been making them for decades," said Rojas, who founded his own modern, upscale Peruvian restaurant called Jora in Long Island City.

Estela manages the front of house, serving guests and bussing tables herself, particularly during the bustling weekend brunch service. Customers like the Cordobas said they feel a connection to the family.

Despite the careful attention to his restaurant’s history, Carlos has also introduced some new dishes, like grilled baby octopus. They’re charred and tender, but seasoned just like the traditional anticuchos (barbecued skewers one might find throughout Peru). And the yuca rellena croquette is a creative take on the traditional papa rellena — stuffed with minced shellfish instead of beef in an outer layer of mashed yuca instead of potato.

"I’ve been running this restaurant for 48 years, it’s almost an extension of my body," Carlos wrote in a text message. "My whole family, parents and brothers have been part of this restaurant. I don’t ever think about retiring because the restaurant is part of my everyday life and on top of it, it generates profit."

He signed off with a smiley face emoji.