"Sol Proprietor" Keeps Newton Centre Restaurant Fresh, Friendly and all in the Family

As a young man, Gabriel Aguilar–General Manager of in Newton Center–had some pretty big dreams.

“I wanted to be an international rock star,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh. “But I’ve given up those delusions of grandeur now.”

Gabriel, whose father Germán owns the restaurant, even graduated from UMass Lowell with a degree in sound recording with plans to go into the music industry.

But after trying his hand at recording, and then working for several years as a minister, Gabriel found his way back to the family business and took over as GM of their Newton location in 2008.

The first location of Café Sol Azteca opened in Boston, right on the Brookline border, in 1974. Germán and business partner Rafael Osornio had been friends growing up in Mexico City, and they wanted to open a “traditional Mexican restaurant” in their adopted country.

Sixteen years later, they opened a second location in Newton. Over time, they divided up the business so that Osornio ran the Boston location and the Newton restaurant became “Germán’s baby,” says his son. But both original partners still have a stake in both restaurants.

Now the second generation is running the show, with Gabriel at the helm of the Newton Café Sol Azteca and Osornio’s daughter, Rima, in charge of the Boston locale.

But the senior Aguilar and Osornio remain close friends. In fact, at the time of this interview, the two were on a trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico together.

Germán also spends half the year in Mexico -- leaving Gabriel with the reins to the Union Street eatery.

As much as he misses his father during the half of the year he spends in Mexico, Gabriel relishes this time when he can run the restaurant on his own. Germán has, for the most part, ceded the daily operation of Café Sol Azteca to Gabriel, but there remains one area that is all his father’s.

“Every year, he strips the deck,” explains the junior Aguilar, fondly. “He paints it with his employees. He buys all the plants, he does the sorting of how exactly he wants it to look. And every year he tells me he’s going to show me how to do it, but he gets so fixated on doing it himself that that doesn’t actually happen.”

That doesn’t mean that Gabriel hasn’t put his personal stamp on many aspects of Café Sol Azteca. He has updated the menu with new food items, several of which make frequent appearances on the specials menu.

Gabriel has also expanded the drink offerings; the bar menu includes specialty margaritas, including an unusual one made with mezcal rather than tequila, and mojitos, as well as the traditional sangrias and Mexican beers.

Summertime brings its own changes to the menu. With greater availability now, mango and other in-season fruits will make more frequent appearances in dishes and drinks. This fits in well with the changes Gabriel sees in his customers’ dining habits during the warmer months.

“During the summer, we add more appetizers to the menu,” he explains. “People like to be outside, order drinks, order a few appetizers, and enjoy. Hopefully by July we’ll have the watermelon margarita- I’m looking forward to that!”

But these are really the only changes to the menu. Gabriel is emphatic that Mexican cooking “has always been pretty healthy,” so the whole trend towards including more vegetables and whole grains and leaner meats in dishes really isn’t anything new for them, according to Gabriel.

The other constant for the popular Mexican restaurant has been the relationship between Café Sol Azteca and its patrons. This is something Gabriel says he definitely learned from his father whom he says, “really loves these people.”

Gabriel recalls a time a few years ago when some regulars hadn’t been in for a while, and Germán grew concerned.

“He tracked down their number, because we hadn’t seen them in a few months,” he recounts. “They did actually have a death in the family, but the nice thing is they showed up, I believe, that day or the next to check in. You build those kinds of relationships with your customers.”

So while Gabriel may have had to put aside his dream of rock stardom (though he does still make appearances at open mics in the area), he and his father remain rock stars in the eyes of their customers.  And when all is said and done, Gabriel doesn’t really feel like he has given anything up.

“When you’re in the [restaurant] business, it’s a lot like music,” he shares. “You give of yourself, you want your audience to appreciate what you do, you get a lot of similar responses when you really put yourself into it. To see that response of people liking something that came from your head, enjoying it, that is one of the most satisfying experiences you can have in this business.”