Jolman Nunez / co-owner, Sueño Latino ONE on

Why did you and your brothers decide to base the restaurant on Cherokee Street?

As many people know, Cherokee Street is a Latin American street. There was a Honduran restaurant here 10 years ago, but there hasn’t been one here since. The Honduran community has grown a lot in St. Louis. We’ve always worked in the restaurant business, and one of our main goals was to open a restaurant. So, why not here?

What do people order when they come in?

Our main customers are Honduran customers, so they know the food, but we’re trying to get into the American business. Our goal is to have more people try our food, because we know if they try it, they’re going to come back. It’s very different from Mexican food; it’s not spicy, but it is flavorful. We use more bananas, more plantains. We don’t use plain rice; our rice is usually mixed with vegetables and whole beans. We use a lot of condiments on our food, like our mayonnaise- based dressing; it’s kind of like a chipotle but not exactly a chipotle sauce. And most of our proteins get topped with homemade barbecue sauce.

On weekends we have specials, like Honduran soups. We switch it up every weekend. In the beef soup, you get pieces of steak in your soup, with vegetables like corn, green bananas and cassava. I don’t know if you’ve had menudo, but we have one that’s the same concept but a different flavor. We use coconut with it. Same with our seafood soup – it’s different. You get a lot of seafood, and it’s also in a coconut milk base. That’s our Sunday special; people enjoy it a lot.

What’s it like owning a restaurant? Do you like working with your brothers?

Luckily, we usually handle things in the best way possible for the business. I’m 26, my younger brother is 24 and my older brother is 29. We started really young; we would always go to

WRITTEN BY EMILY STANDLEE | PHOTOS BY SEAN LOCKE

Along with his brothers Jesus and Ever, Jolman Nunez opened Honduran restaurant Sueño Latino in February 2020. "[At a certain point, due to the pandemic, it became] more expensive to be open than be closed,” Nunez says. “We started doing carryout. That’s how we survived.” The brothers persevered using their shared determination and experience – they’ve been in the restaurant industry since they were teenagers. Their mother, Ana Nunez, shared her traditional family recipes; two of the brothers are married to two sisters, Kelin and Rachel Perdomo, who started selling food from home while the idea of a restaurant took shape. As the only Honduran eatery on Cherokee Street – and as Sueño Latino becomes increasingly popular – the brothers hope to show off their distinctive cuisine to all of St. Louis.

school and work. We love what we do, but it was also something we grew up doing. When you do something for so long, you want to master it. You want to be the best at it. This isn’t something I dreamed of, but this is something I’ve done since I can remember. I’ve known different types of businesses, and the restaurant business is really tough – you’re dealing with so many different people every day, and sometimes, you can’t please everybody. There’s a lot that goes [into] presenting a nice-looking dish. As a restaurant owner, I have to wait tables, cook, clean, wash dishes – whatever it is that needs to get done, [we] have to do it. It takes a lot of courage and responsibility to keep the business going. I always tell my brothers, “We survived the pandemic; we can survive anything.”

Sueño Latino, 2818 Cherokee St., Gravois Park, St. Louis, Missouri, 314-899-0777, instagram.com/suenolatino.stl

Must-Try Dishes From Sueño Latino

If you’ve never had Honduran barbecue, consider this dish your initiation. This customer favorite is meant to be shared among friends or family. It’s a mixed grill of steak and chicken, plus pork chops, cabbage salad, pickled onions, refried beans, Honduran cheese and banana chips. The meats and veggies are accompanied by housemade sauces.

BaLeada esPeciaL

A Honduran specialty, the baleadas at Sueño Latino come in three types: normal, with eggs or with meat and eggs. The third variety wraps up refried beans, eggs, meat, cheese and crema in a homemade flour tortilla. If you’re stopping in for a Margarita, this traditional appetizer makes for a standout accompaniment.

seaFood souP

This beloved special is only available on Sundays. “You get a whole blue crab, shrimp meat, mussels, tilapia and the vegetables,” Nunez says. “It’s a whole meal. In Honduras, we don’t do sides of soup. People usually come in hungover, drink the soup and get out of here brand new. I have a lot of friends who are Americans who go out drinking on Saturday night and come in on Sunday.”

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