Antonio Sanchez is following the blueprint from his dad, Esequiel, in building the second Mr. Zeke’s Restaurant.
His dad, also known as Zeke, opened the first, a popular spot in the Pinetop-Lakeside area for the past six years, after working up over his life from dishwasher to line cook and saving up some money in hopes he could open his own place one day.
The day came suddenly when the family was heading out to dinner one night. Antonio said he remembers it like it was yesterday.
“We looked over, and we realized that a restaurant that was there was closed, and there was a sign on the door that it’s permanently closed,” Sanchez said. “So we went back, and we started walking around the plaza, asking the neighbors if they had a number that we could call to try to get in there. And right away, the owner just let us jump in. He was like, ‘I don’t care.’ No one else would give us an opportunity. It was not the first time we tried getting a place to open a restaurant, but no one would ever let us in. And this guy was like, ‘you know what? It’s just going to sit there if I don’t rent it, so you guys can take it.’”
The location was the site of a series of restaurants that failed. Esequiel poured nearly all of his savings into the place between the lease and new equipment.
“There was maybe a few thousand dollars left in the bank account,” Antonio said. “We were just hoping for the best. And it went good. After the first month, it just kind of went from there.”
Antonio’s career in restaurant closely matches his father’s. He started as a dishwasher at age 12, then got a job working at the same country-club kitchen as his father at 14. Like his dad, he tried to help out in the kitchen, occasionally, but would get chased away by cooks who found them less than useful. Eventually, though, both were invited in to help.
Sanchez, 26, moved to the Valley to go to school and eventually started working in the medical field, but when his dad opened Mr. Zeke’s, he would return north to help his family with the restaurant some days.
“Then one day I just decided — I realized I wasn’t happy in the medical field,” he said. “I always felt happier when I was in the kitchen over there. And so I just decided to go for it.”
Like his dad, he had saved up some money working. Like his dad, he looked around, unsuccessfully for a while, for a location. Like his dad, he finally found one and sank his savings into buying out the previous owner, getting a new lease and putting new equipment into the space.
He thought about rebranding with his own concept and recipes. But again, he followed his dad in deciding it best to open his own Mr. Zeke’s, albeit adding a few of his own recipes and drinks. In fact, the Lakeside-Pinetop restaurant sometimes picks up new recipes from Gilbert.
The original restaurant has given back, though, as customers from there helped Gilbert get off to a good start when it opened last June.
“I feel like that’s how we survived the first couple months was our Pinetop people coming in and telling all the other people,” he said.
From there, it has been mostly word of mouth and, Sanchez said, the recipes.
The restaurant has a big menu of old-fashioned, café-style food — pastas, sandwiches, burgers, salads, chicken, steaks.
“We have a little bit of everything,” Sanchez said. “So if you have a big family and no one knows where to go eat, you come here. They’re going to find something to eat here.”
The portions are big, too, though not necessarily by design.
“We would bring out the food and the plates, and (customers) would see the portions on the plate,” Sanchez said. “Some people would actually say, ‘I’m on a diet. How am I supposed to eat all this?’ And then we started getting that reputation of ‘oh, they have big portions, big portions.’ And we weren’t even trying to make it that way. It was just how we envisioned our platters.”
It eventually led to a restaurant tagline of “What diet” that is painted on the windows and on a wall inside.
Customers also can get any meal as the restaurant opens at 8 a.m. for breakfast and doesn’t close until 8 p.m., 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Sanchez said they even extend those hours if it continues to be busy as it has been lately.
That would be OK with Sanchez. The move from the medical field to the restaurant business has been a good one.
“Actually, I love it,” he said. “I haven’t had a bad day here since I opened.”
Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on Twitter. We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
Tom Blodgett Senior News Editor | Gilbert @sp_blodgett
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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