Maplesville — Valle Grande Mexican Grill

MAPLESVILLE

The staff of Valle Grande Mexican Grill are like family.

A TASTE OF MEXICO

Valle Grande is a popular spot in Maplesville

STORY AND PHOTOS BY JOYANNA LOVE

The scents of onion, tortillas and flavorful meat greet customers as they wait outside on a busy Friday night.

Valle Grande Mexican Grill has become a destination restaurant in the town of Maplesville, popular with residents of not only the town but Chilton County and beyond.

Sergio and Monica Sanchez opened the restaurant in 2017.

While it shares a name with their original restaurant in Valle Grande, the goal from the start with the Maplesville restaurant was to be able to do things their own way, uniquely Sanchez and authentically Mexican.

The couple had purchased the building in 2016 and spent about a year getting it ready.

“The first restaurant we opened just to have something extra … I was the director of the cable company in Montgomery, and she was helping us with the office, and we just opened the restaurant (in Valle Grande) to have something to fall on in, something in case the cable company didn’t work,” Sergio said. “The cable company sold out, and I decided not to go to work for the new company and that is when we made the decision to open a location where we could start our own.”

At the location in Valle Grande, the couple was limited in some of the things they could do because they were renting the building.

“We weren’t really able to say that we had worked on it with our ideas, our vision,” Monica said.

They wanted to have a restaurant that really reflected who they were and their Mexican heritage.

“We focus a lot on how we grew up,” Monica said.

Both are from small communities and lived close to family members.

The Maplesville location uses

Attention to detail is important to Monica and Sergio Sanchez and the staff.

photos from Sergio’s hometown of Michoacán and Monica’s hometown of Jalisco in the décor. Some of them Sergio took when they visited.

His favorite is one of an elderly man on a bicycle in Jalisco.

Monica’s father moved his family to Texas after years of working in the U.S.A. and visiting his family in Mexico. The paperwork took about two years in the 1990s to get everything ready for the family to move. The family eventually moved to Montgomery.

Sergio’s brothers had moved to Wetumpka, and he joined them when he was 15.

“Leaving parents, friends, everything behind,” Sergio said.

He started working in his cousin’s restaurant.

Sergio had initially been through Maplesville during a car event for his Valle Grande restaurant. He liked the town and wanted to open a restaurant there. However, at the time, he waited until Maplesville approved restaurant alcohol sales before pursuing opening a restaurant there.

The customers are the highlight of the restaurant for Sergio.

“We fell in love with the town,” he said. “That is why we decided to move and build a home here.”

The family moved to Maplesville in 2018.

“The main reason we decided Maplesville is because we loved the school,” Monica said.

Inspiration for food comes from their heritage, their family and what they enjoy cooking at home.

Monica said customers are now the “people that we go to school with that we see at the pharmacy, and it feels like the restaurant literally brings whole families together.”

It is common to see customers go over to another table to say hello to friends.

“There is nothing else here that brings them together like the restaurant,” Monica said.

“Good food and a goodfamily environment” is how she described the restaurant.

Good customer service and high standards for the food is important to the couple.

Saturday specials are used as a way to introduce customers to authentic Mexican dishes that are not on the menu.

“This restaurant has become more than just a restaurant,” Sergio said, agreeing with Monica that it has brought

Monica and Sergio Sanchez opened Valle Grande Mexican Grill in Maplesville in 2017. RIGHT: Photos from Michoacán, Sergio’s hometown, are on the wall.

the community together.

The Sanchez approach to the food at the restaurant shifted about two years ago, when Sergio, out of necessity, started working in the kitchen.

Previously, the restaurant had been recipes that had been used at restaurants that Sergio’s brothers owned. With Sergio in the kitchen, the focus on food turned to being authentically, grilled Mexican food as opposed to a Tex-Mex fusion that many were used to.

In 2020, business was slow when restaurants could only do carry out orders because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We tried to create like a family package, because at that point we didn’t know what was happening,” Sergio said. “A lot of people were out of work … We were trying to make like a family meal really cheap, so people would be able to take food home. We did that for like three or four months.”

Sergio said this down time allowed him to work on a new menu, which was smaller, but focused on being authentic without repetition of dishes. With a smaller menu, the emphasis for excellence also increased.

“I think people in the South are ready for a good meal, different flavors, different colors, different everything,” Sergio said.

The goal is for the food to taste like it would if someone was in Mexico in the town where the recipe originated.

The next iteration of the menu is focused on getting them even closer to this goal.

“Make it shorter, so if we have 20 items, those 20 items will be incredible,” Sergio said. “You can order one or the number 20, and it will be (an) amazing dish because we are just going to dedicate ourselves to those dishes.”

The couple said the employees make this level of excellence possible and keep the restaurant a success.

Each plate is viewed in light of if the person would be proud to serve it to their own family.

The couple said the Maplesville restaurant has a combination of passion and attention to detail that is not easily replicated.

“It could be done … but it won’t be the same,” Monica said.

The staff are like family and spend time having fun together outside of work a couple times a year.

TOWN HALL P.O. Box 9 Maplesville, AL 36750

PHONE NUMBER 334-366-4212

FAX NUMBER 334-366-4210

MAPLESVILLE FAST FACTS

WEBSITE www.townofmaplesville.com

POPULATION 636 (2019 estimate)

LAND AREA 3.3 square miles (8.5 square kilo meters) ZIP CODE 36750

ELEVATION 351 feet (107 meters)

MAYOR W.C. Hayes Jr., 334-366-4383 TOWN COUNCIL District 1: John Caudle, 334-366-4211 District 2: Sheila Hall, 334-366-0052 District 3: Hal Harrison, 334-645-7026 District 4: Richard Davis, 334-366-5214 District 5: Patty Crocker, 334-366-4432

24-HOUR CHALLENGE

The Perry Mountain 24-Hour Challenge is an annual motorcycle race held at Perry Mountain Motorcycle Club on the first weekend in June. The event pits riders from all across the country against each other, against the 10-mile course and against the clock.

The concept is simple: Go as hard as you can as long as you can. The team/ rider with the most laps completed after 24 hours wins the event. Riders tackle all kinds of terrain and elevation changes, along with mechanical issues. There are more than 14 classes of riders, with most entries coming from teams. Riders in the Ironman class, however, choose to take the challenge by themselves.

The event brings in dozens of vendors and hundreds of motorcycle enthusiasts from all across the country into Chilton County, as it is only one of two events like it in the nation.

MAPLESVILLE RAILROAD DEPOT

First built in the 1850s, Maplesville’s train depot marked the end of the age of the stagecoach in the town, as businesses moved to create the current downtown around the railroad.

But as the automobile became the preferred means of transportation, the depot fell into disuse.

The Maplesville Historical Society has worked to transform the depot into a museum.

The society was founded in 2007 in an effort to prepare the town for its bicentennial celebration as part of former Gov. Bob Riley’s Great Alabama Homecoming initiative.

One of the group’s first projects was to build a pictorial museum in the town’s historic depot, and several other projects are in the works.

EBENEZER BAPTIST CHURCH

Ebenezer Baptist Church in Stanton was the site of a Civil War battle on April 1, 1865.

According to the marker in front of the church, Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led 1,500 Confederate cavalrymen into Union Army General James H. Wilson’s force of 7,500 near Ebenezer, hoping to stall Wilson on his march toward an arsenal at Selma.

Ebenezer’s pastor, Bro. Danny Rasberry, said people still visit the church hoping to find a rumored bullet hole on the exterior, but that was likely located at a previous building that burned in 1916. One clue to the past is the cedar trees that tower over a cemetery up the hill behind the church. On a tombstone is written that the federal government asked the church not to cut down the trees because Union soldiers are buried there and the trees would serve as a memorial to the dead. The church is celebrated its 200th anniversary in July.

HEARDS BBQ AND SOUL FOOD

This small eatery has become a local favorite since it was opened in 2017 by Roman and Shakira Heard. They have been a finalist or semifinalist in several food contests statewide. Roman is always changing the menu to find new favorites. Hours and specials can be found on the Heards BBQ and Soul Food Facebook page.

VALLE GRANDE MEXICAN GRILL

Authentic Mexican cuisine and margaritas. Limited-time menu items offered on an occasional basis and announced on the Valle Grande Mexican Grill of Maplesville Facebook page.