Meet Hugo Valdez of Viva La Masa in Metro Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hugo Valdez.

Hugo, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Viva La Masa started out from necessity. It was a project I had been working on for about 6-7 years while working in some of Atlanta’s hottest restaurants. After eating at many Mexican restaurants in the city, I realized that a good number of them have the exact same menus and thought Man, no one is doing anything innovative towards the culture and it’s upsetting. Mexican food is way more than just queso and guac. This was 6-7 years ago. Then COVID-19 happened. The restaurant industry was in turmoil and the uncertainty was slap in the face. Many of my peers and myself included always said, “we will always have a job because people will always be hungry.” The pandemic proved that it was not true. My job closed down and I was home until further notice. My mother is a Spanish teacher and her job closed as well. We did not know what to do. We talked in the dining room that night and she was selling tamales to her friends, so I suggested we sell tamales to see if we could scrape by at least. Mom said, “well, see if any of your friends want some.” The rest was history.

We sold 750 the first day, 700 the next drop and maintained the numbers that high and kept selling out every time we would market the drops on social media. While the restaurant was shut down, I was still able to use the space and began doing curbside pop-ups. No one was doing it at the time, so we had to act fast. It would take all of us hours (13+) to make all the fillings, prep the masa, and put together the tamales. This didn’t even count cooking time in which waking up at 4 am to get the tamales started, so they could be ready by 12 and we could start packaging them by 1. We wanted authenticity with a touch of home, so we wrapped up every single order in a brown paper bag, slapped a Viva La Masa sticker that was Handmade by my friend Jimmy who owns a car wrapping company and wrote everyone’s name on the bag for a personal touch.

Further down the line, we added more chef-inspired things such as a 12 hour steamed barbacoa that marinated for 48 hours, cold smoked carnitas served with handmade fresh tortillas and tortas. While people loved the tamales, they enjoyed the new pops of flavor. Soon we added all organic and fresh-pressed juice cocktails and spiked jarritos, which we named pericos due to the colorful nature of the sodas and also the parakeets my Aunt owned in Mexico. It was old school meets new school of Mexican food. The business model was to keep it real. No frills, no shortcuts but use techniques learned from various kitchens in my career with bold flavors. It worked. People loved it! All in all, we would like to thank the community for their support. Special thank you to Chef Sara Ash, Jimmy Diaz, James Clopton, Stephy Cadenas, Noemi Melendez, Anna Hoang, Vianey Perez, Ryan Fish, Peyton White, Alex Mackey, Zadee Nelms,Shawan Emer and Sonia Betanzos for their INSANE amount of support! You all are AMAZING!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It hasn’t been smooth, but it has been a wild one. Because of the pandemic, there was a shortage of masa flour and sometimes purchasing the right flour to get the right texture and consistency was TOUGH. There were several tests that failed and we thought, “this isn’t right and we cannot sell this to our clients.” We even cancelled a drop and gave the money back once because it was not up to par. All the marketing and flyers were all done on my phone and blasted on social media and that on itself was hard because SO MANY PEOPLE CALL, TEXT AND MESSAGE YOU! I, for one, was not prepared for that. Since it was only three of us (my mother, father and myself) doing this, we had to set a limit on how many we could do per batch. Due to their age, and also because of the pandemic, we had to limit what we could do per drop. Realistically between three people, we couldn’t keep up, so we had to think of some system to keep things in order. In which we did eventually!

Please tell us about Viva La Masa.
We specialize is Mexican cuisine with worldly inspired techniques and flavors but also staying true to the culture. Cold smoked and then confit carnitas or barbacoa with hints of pineapple and soy to break down the protein and make a very tender product or you can keep it classic with a salsa verde braised chicken tamal and slather it up with our salsa verde. While we are known for our tamales and also selling out rather quickly, we are known for our salsa verde. We make it fresh the day of, every single time. People notice those things and thoroughly enjoy it. The authenticity is what people come back for. Not just the food but the entire experience as a whole. Menu gets blasted online, place your order, you get directions to a restaurant and you pick up your pack in a brown paper bag and head home. It has a very secretive feel to it but also when has food in a brown paper bag let anyone down? The marketing for it set it apart from it because it was a vibe that we felt worked for Atlanta. Atlanta loves pop-ups, hole in the wall places with great food and a raw sense of authenticity meshed with passion. That’s what the pop-up series became. That was the vision all along.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Definitely living in Mexico and traveling back every summer. Spending time with family and learning my roots will always be a fond memory of mine. I’ve loved food as a kid and remembering the flavors of freshly made churros down the street from my aunt’s shoe store, barbacoa tacos with bone marrow in them, raspados (Mexican snow cones) and all the fresh ingredients at the mercados with the smell of huizotle running rampant. Eating red masa tacos with my grandfather from the traveling taco cartman and waking up early to chocolate milk, my aunt made every single morning. My heart definitely never left México.

Contact Info:

• Email: vivalamasaatl@gmail.com
• Instagram: @vivalamasaatl
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vivalamasaatl/

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