Five generations of customers

Matta’s celebrates 40 years of serving Mexican fare in Mesa

By Randy Kull, Staff writer Mesa, Nancy Engebretson/Staff photographer

FORTY YEARS AGO a young Texas couple opened the city’s second Mexican-style restaurant in a small diner in east Mesa.

He did the cooking, she served the food. They both prayed.

The $1,000 they invested in a half-dozen booths and tables generated a modest $25 a day, but they offered a great promise: 

“When you are our guest you get the very best.”

Today, Matta’s family-owned and operated restaurant at 932 E. Main St. has grown into one of the Valley’s most popular Mexican-food outlets. It boasts service to five generations of families in Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, and Gilbert.

Manuel Matta 75, and his former wife, Mary Lou Matta-Garza — she won’t tell her age — though divorced a dozen years ago, still share equal interest in the establishment.  

Sons David and Louie manage the day-to-day operations while other family members help out, including daughter Lisa: another son, Allen; and David’s son Peter.

Five years after opening in a rented building in 1953, the Matta’s bought a lot across the street and paid $23,000 to build their own restaurant. It has been expanded three times since, and now seats 350 and employs 55.

Numerous trips to Mexico artisans led to truckloads of the real thing hauled back to enhance Matta’s Mexican Colonial theme. Among the items are colorful Spanish tile, carved-wood and wrought-iron partitions, artwork and chandeliers.

The food, Matta-Garza said, is “pretty much the same” as that served at the original diner, with addition of patron favorites along the way, including fajitias and chimichangas.

Menu prices have edged up somewhat, however.

Last weekend in a celebration of four decades in business, menus offered food for the same amount charged in the 1950s, when that first restaurant opened.

T-bone steak, french fries, salad and drink were $2.35, combination plate No. 4, featuring Matta’s specialty chili relleno, was $1.10. A cheeseburger was 35 cents; a cola went for a dime.

When it opened, Matta’s competed with El Charro Cafe, down the street, at 416 W. Main St. had been Mesa’s only Mexican restaurant. At first, (which closed in February after 47 years), which had been Mesa’s only Mexican restaurant. At first, 

Matta’s seemed to be on the short end.

“We didn’t have very many customers,” Manuel Matta said.

Today, nearly 1,000 people a day are served a meal seven days a week.

On Friday and Saturday nights, hungry people form a line flowing onto the sidewalk out front as they wait for a chance at the $1 margaritas and cheese crisps and the house special — chili rellenos, a stuffed green pepper.

“Nobody fixes them chili rellenos like we do,” Matta-Garza said.

Matta’s uses 15 tons of chili peppers a year and mixes them with cheese, ground meat and spices that form a family recipe on loan from Manuel’s brother Ben who featured them at his Texas restaurant.

Within a few years, the Mattas opened two other restaurants — one in Chandler and the other in Tempe. Both were later sold when they stretched time and effort beyond the couple’s limits.

David Matta a couple years ago opened Matta’s Too in Lakeside, a remake of the original restaurant where summer business triples when valley residents familiar with Matta’s vacation there to escape the desert heat.

Do not expect canned fare at Matta’s. Homemade’s the order. 

“Everything is made fresh every day,” said Manuel Matta, Mesa’s 1975 Mexican-American Small Businessman of the Year.

The couple, who raised six children, over the years made time for what they saw as their civic duties. Matta-Garza was named Mesa’s Woman of the Year in 1973 and served on the city’s parks board, chamber of commerce and charter review committee. In 1954, she was state director of the League of American Citizens after establishing LULAC’s Mesa chapter in 1952.

Manuel Matta, a former Marine, dairyman and welder, was named by former Gov. Jack Williams to the Arizona Civil Rights Commission in 1968 and served through 1975. He helped create the Tri-City Social Service and served as its president in 1965.

Despite years of hard work, the Mattas modestly give credit for Matta’s popularity and survival to others.

“We attribute success to all our faithful employees and customers,” Matta-Garza said. “Five generations of customers.”

Tempe Community, SERVING Ahwatukee Foothills Guadalupe Southeast Phoenix Tempe. Community View. The Arizona Republic, (The Phoenix Gazette) PHOENIX, ARIZONA, Wednesday, December 1, 1993, A-page 2