Alyssa Cantu’s road to culinary expertise came by way of a punk rock band.
“Back in high school, I wanted to be a singer in my friends’ band, but I needed a microphone and amplifier,” Cantu laughs. “My mom said I’d have to earn the money myself, and somehow we came up with the idea of selling breakfast tacos to the kids at school.”
Those one-dollar tacos quickly caught on, and pretty soon Cantu and her partner were also peddling a lunch option that proved to be especially popular with teachers. Cantu became known as the kid who walked the hallways with thermal bags full of breakfast in the early mornings and an ice chest with lunches a few hours later.
The punk rock dream eventually faded, and Cantu found herself at South Texas College a few years later, taking classes and trying to find her passion. She started out by studying radiology, but it didn’t stick. After making the decision to switch to journalism, she thought she’d take a cooking class “for fun.”
“It ended up consuming my life!” she admits. “I knew I could cook, but the culinary program brought me to a whole different level. I learned knife skills, how to plate food, and all about the development of flavors. Before, I was definitely an amateur. Now, the flavors in my dishes are much bolder.”
After graduating from South Texas College, Cantu worked for several restaurants in the thriving dining scene in downtown McAllen. She had accumulated plenty of experience, but eventually knew it was time to make a change. When her friend Antonio Reyna brought up the idea of turning a nearby 100-year-old house-turned-art-gallery into a restaurant, she offered to help him, and the two quickly became partners. Their restaurant, The Gremlin, opened in 2018. Its eclectic vibe has attracted a lot of attention, along with a disparate bunch of regulars. There are families that come in early in the evening, lots of millennials, and “industry” people who hang out after their shifts end at McAllen’s tonier restaurants.
As for the menu, Cantu had to create one that she could create in a tiny kitchen. She hit on the idea of international street food, like a Nashville hot chicken sandwich (chicken dipped in a hot oil infused with cayenne, paprika, and garlic) or the Miami 88 (fried pork belly topped with an egg, reminiscent of the after-hours food eaten in the Philippines and Thailand once the bars close down). And it’s safe to say The Gremlin’s Korean fried wings are legendary.
“They’re fried in batter until they’re really crunchy, and covered with a sauce made with fermented chili paste and garlic,” explains Cantu. “Crunchy, hot, spicy, and very complex, they hit all your flavor receptors!” Hand-tossed pizzas, rice bowls, and lobster tacos are perennial favorites. Washing those heady flavors down is a rotating variety of reasonably-priced craft beers – most of them brewed in Texas – which the patrons seem to relish at the end of the day.
