How Mama Doña Fredes Cruz’s Faith, Food and Vision Helped Start a Latin Food Tradition in Northeast Louisiana
Every successful entrepreneur has a beginning.
For Alex Cruz, owner and founder of Alex Latin Cafe, that beginning wasn’t a business plan, a restaurant lease, or even a cup of Cuban coffee.
It was his mother.
Her name is Doña Fredes Cruz—but to her family and the generations of customers who have experienced her cooking, she is simply Mama Doña Fredes.
Long before Alex became a successful entrepreneur and earned a reputation as Northeast Louisiana’s “Cuban Coffee King,” his mother recognized something special in her son.
She saw his potential.
She saw opportunity.
And most importantly, she encouraged Alex to take a chance on himself and introduce Northeast Louisiana to something the region had never experienced quite like this before.
Authentic Honduran food prepared from the heart.
That mother’s advice eventually helped launch a family business, introduce thousands of Northeast Louisiana residents to Honduran cuisine, and begin a Latin food tradition that continues today.
Mama Doña Fredes Started Something Money Can’t Buy: The Latin Tradition
To understand Alex Cruz and Alex Latin Cafe, you first have to understand where the story began.
It began thousands of miles away in Honduras.
There, Mama Doña Fredes cooked the way generations before her had cooked—with fresh ingredients, handmade tortillas, seasoned meats, vegetables, herbs, and recipes created not simply to feed people, but to bring families together.
Imagine the scene.
A hot grill.
The sound of skirt steak sizzling.
The smell of freshly seasoned meat filling the kitchen.
Mama Doña Fredes takes the grilled steak and places it inside a warm, handmade flour tortilla.
Nothing manufactured.
Nothing complicated.
Just fresh food, prepared with skill and love.
At the time, she couldn’t have known that the food she was preparing for her family would eventually become part of a much bigger story.
From Honduras to Miami
In 2003, Mama Doña Fredes left Honduras and settled in Miami.
Like so many mothers building a new life in a new country, she continued doing what she had always done.
She took care of her children.
And she cooked.
Food became a connection between the family’s past and their future.
The recipes kept Honduras close even when home was thousands of miles away.
But Miami already had a thriving and highly competitive Latin food culture. Latin restaurants, cafés, bakeries, and markets were everywhere.
Mama Doña Fredes began to recognize something important.
Perhaps their opportunity wasn’t in a city where Latin food was already on every corner.
Perhaps their opportunity was somewhere that had yet to experience it.
That realization would eventually lead the Cruz family to Northeast Louisiana.
A New Opportunity in West Monroe
After recognizing the potential in Northeast Louisiana, Mama Doña Fredes relocated to West Monroe in 2009.
What she saw was opportunity.
Northeast Louisiana had plenty of wonderful Southern restaurants, seafood, barbecue, and familiar American favorites.
But authentic Honduran cuisine was something different.
This was an opportunity to introduce an entirely new audience to the food her family had loved for generations.
And Mama Doña Fredes didn’t just recognize the opportunity for herself.
She recognized the potential in her children.
She encouraged Alex to start a small business.
That advice would prove life-changing.
Sometimes the greatest investment a mother makes in her children isn’t money.
It’s belief.
Mama Doña Fredes believed Alex had the drive, personality, business instincts, and entrepreneurial potential to build something special.
She had the recipes.
The family had the work ethic.
Alex had the entrepreneurial vision.
Together, they had everything they needed to begin.
Latin Food Is Born in 2012
In 2012, Alex Cruz following the advice and encouragement of their mother, Doña Fredes Cruz, opened Latin Food.
They had one goal:
Bring the native cuisine of Honduras—their home country—to diners in Louisiana.
Welcome to where it all began.
The Original Latin Food and Cafe.
What started as a small family business became something much larger.
It introduced Northeast Louisiana to dishes, flavors, and traditions many customers had never experienced.
Mama Doña Fredes brought the recipes.
Alex brought entrepreneurial energy, salesmanship, hospitality, and vision.
Together, the Cruz family began creating a culinary legacy.
“These Are All Her Recipes From Back Home”
Ask Alex about the food and eventually the conversation comes back to his mother.
“These are all her recipes from back home,” Cruz says.
That’s what makes this story so special.
The food isn’t a restaurant company’s interpretation of Honduran cuisine.
It’s family food.
The recipes customers enjoy today have roots in the same meals Mama Doña Fredes prepared for her children in Honduras.
Among the dishes that helped establish the family’s reputation were Honduran dinners, pork chops, chicken, Beef Ciebeño, and many other traditional favorites.
Mama Doña Fredes continues to actively prepare her signature dishes, carrying forward a legacy centered around four things:
Faith. Family. Friends. Food.
And, of course, some fierce Latin cooking skills.
This Isn’t Mexican Food—It’s Honduras
Alex has spent years helping Northeast Louisiana customers understand an important distinction about Latin cuisine.
“People sometimes make the mistake that Mexican food is Latin food. Our food is not as hot, as spicy, as Mexican food.”
Honduran cuisine offers its own unique flavor profile.
Instead of overwhelming heat, the food leans heavily into fresh, tropical flavors.
Bell peppers and lightly sautéed onions mingle with tomatoes, herbs, basil, allspice, and subtle citrus.
The flavors complement rather than compete with one another.
As Alex explains:
“It’s tropical food, much different from Mexico. It’s not spicy. The spicy is on the side.”
And there is one rule that has remained at the heart of the family’s cooking from the beginning:
The food must be fresh.
Fresh ingredients aren’t a marketing slogan at Alex Latin Cafe.
They’re part of the Honduran tradition Alex grew up with.
From Latin Food to Alex Latin Cafe
Alex didn’t stop with the family’s original restaurant.
The entrepreneurial potential his mother recognized years earlier continued to grow.
Alex saw another opportunity to introduce Northeast Louisiana to something special:
Authentic Cuban coffee.
Building upon the foundation established with Latin Food, Alex eventually expanded his vision, and in 2020, Alex Latin Restaurant & Cafeteria—better known today as Alex Latin Cafe—was born.
The new concept combined two experiences Alex had become passionate about sharing:
Authentic Honduran cuisine and authentic Cuban coffee.
It was a natural evolution of the family’s original mission.
The food represented home.
The coffee created community.
And Alex’s personality brought everything together.
Meet Northeast Louisiana’s “Cuban Coffee King”
Over the years, Alex became affectionately known as “The Cuban Coffee King.”
The nickname reflects his role in helping introduce and popularize traditional Cuban-style coffee in Northeast Louisiana.
At Alex Latin Cafe, customers can experience favorites including:
Café Cubano. Cortadito. Café con Leche. Cuban Espresso.
For someone accustomed to traditional American coffee, the first cup can be an entirely new experience.
Cuban coffee is bold, rich, sweet, and meant to be enjoyed.
A Café con Leche provides the perfect introduction—strong espresso balanced with warm milk to create something comforting, flavorful, and unmistakably Latin.
But for Alex, coffee was never simply another product to sell.
Coffee brings people together.
And that fits perfectly with the values his mother instilled in the family.
The Honduran Breakfast: A Taste of Home
For someone visiting Alex Latin Cafe for the first time, the Honduran Breakfast is an ideal introduction.
The plate tells the family’s story through food.
Fluffy, seasoned scrambled eggs.
Rich fried black beans.
Fresh homemade tortillas.
Sweet fried plantains.
House-made crema.
And for those wanting an even heartier experience, grilled pork chop, chicken breast, or steak.
The pork chop alone demonstrates what Alex means when he describes Honduran food as flavorful rather than simply spicy.
Seasoned and grilled, then topped with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes, it delivers layer after layer of flavor.
This isn’t food designed in a corporate test kitchen.
This is the food Alex remembers from home.
A Mother’s Legacy You Can Taste
Perhaps the most meaningful part of the Alex Latin Cafe story is that Mama Doña Fredes isn’t simply someone from the restaurant’s history.
She’s still part of the story.
She’s still cooking.
She’s still preparing the dishes that helped establish the family business.
She’s still sharing the recipes she carried from Honduras.
She’s still reminding everyone that sometimes the most valuable things a family can pass from one generation to another aren’t possessions.
They’re traditions.
Recipes.
Faith.
Work ethic.
Courage.
And belief.
Mama Doña Fredes gave her children all of those things.
Recognition for a Family Tradition
By 2019, The Original Latin Food and Cafe was recognized as a Thomas Scott Award semifinalist, another milestone in a journey that began with a mother’s cooking and an idea.
But awards alone don’t tell the complete story.
The greater accomplishment can be seen every day when customers from Northeast Louisiana walk through the doors and order food they may never have known existed before the Cruz family arrived.
A customer eating their first pupusa.
Someone dipping a warm tortilla into a bowl of soup.
A family sharing a Honduran dinner.
A businessman ordering his morning Café con Leche.
A longtime customer walking through the door and being greeted by name.
That’s the legacy.
Alex Cruz: The Entrepreneur His Mother Knew He Could Become
Looking at Alex Cruz today, it’s easy to see the entrepreneur.
He has spent years developing businesses, introducing new products, building relationships with customers, marketing Latin culture, and expanding the audience for Honduran cuisine and Cuban coffee throughout Northeast Louisiana.
But behind the entrepreneur is still a son who received some very important advice from his mother:
Start something of your own.
She saw his potential before there was a successful restaurant.
Before the recognition.
Before “The Cuban Coffee King.”
Before Alex Latin Cafe.
Mama Doña Fredes saw what her son could become.
And Alex had the courage to believe her.
More Than a Restaurant—It’s the Cruz Family Story
Today, Alex Latin Cafe represents much more than breakfast, lunch, dinner, or coffee.
It represents a family’s journey.
Honduras to Miami.
Miami to West Monroe.
A mother’s kitchen to a small business.
A small business to a Northeast Louisiana tradition.
It represents Alex taking their mother’s advice and turning an opportunity into entrepreneurship.
It represents Mama Doña Fredes preserving the flavors of Honduras while building a new life for her family in America.
And it represents what can happen when someone believes in you enough to say:
“You can build something of your own.”
Mama Doña Fredes Cruz started something money can’t buy.
She started a tradition.
Alex Cruz helped turn that tradition into a business.
And together, the Cruz family turned that business into a Northeast Louisiana story.
Come Experience the Cruz Family Tradition
If you’ve never experienced authentic Honduran cuisine or enjoyed a traditional Cuban coffee, Alex Latin Cafe offers something you won’t find at an ordinary restaurant.
You’re experiencing recipes that traveled thousands of miles.
You’re experiencing generations of family tradition.
You’re experiencing a mother’s vision.
You’re experiencing an entrepreneur’s dream.
And you’re experiencing a little piece of Honduras right here in Northeast Louisiana.
Come hungry. Come as a customer. Leave feeling like family.
Because at Alex Latin Cafe, the story behind the food may be just as unforgettable as the food itself.
And it all started with Mama Doña Fredes Cruz.
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