Ernie’s Al Fresco: A Caltech Favorite
By Michael L. Wong
In 2014 then-graduate student Michael L. Wong (PhD ‘18) wrote this tribute to Ernie Mercado, long-time owner of the popular campus food truck Ernie’s Al Fresco, who retired in October 2020 after serving the Caltech community for more than 30 years. This article first appeared in The California Tech, Caltech’s student newspaper.
It’s a sweltering 104 degrees outside, but loyalty is its own shade.
The line for Ernie’s Al Fresco stretches down the block outside of the Student Services building on Holliston, dozens queuing up in anticipation of a daily dose of savory Mexican goodness. Fingers point to the north as the first people spot the white food truck barreling down the road. As the truck rolls to a halt in front of the line, customers help raise the starboard overhang into place, revealing a host of canned drinks stuffed in a bath of shaved ice, four signs made of manila folders with today’s specials scribbled in Sharpie, two service windows effusing the smells of a well-worn kitchen, and one man in a black button-down shirt with an irresistible smile on his face.
“What can I get for you?”
The line moves quicker than expected. Ernie plays a masterful juggling act, taking three orders from the front window, communicating them in Spanish to the two women helping him in the truck, then jumping to the back window to serve the three previous orders, all while preparing call-in orders from the Bluetooth headset in his ear. Adding artistry to industry, Ernie takes the time to listen to personal requests. When he sees a familiar face, he remembers every food and flavor preference.
“He knows all of my special orders,” said April White Castañeda, [former] executive director of Human Resources at Caltech and an Ernie faithful for 15 years. “I go probably a couple times a week. He’s always messing with me, because he knows I have a real serious issue with cilantro and avocado, and so when I walk up to the truck, he’ll say, ‘Extra cilantro, extra avocado!’”
Ernie holds a special place in the heart of the Caltech community. Those who work with White Castañeda in Human Resources have been talking about giving him a service award for years, despite the fact that he is not a Caltech employee.
The feeling is mutual. For Ernie, Caltech is a special place. He loves the academic environment—the staff, the faculty, and, most of all, the students.
“In every kid,” Ernie said, “I see my daughter.”
Finding Caltech
Ernesto Almeyda Mercado was born on December 4, 1949 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He immigrated to the United States 45 years ago and started running his food truck in the 1980s. He began by catering to the Beverly Hills community, but just a few years after his truck began rolling, he found Caltech.
Caltech graduates Peter Gao (Phd ’17) and Henry Ngo (PhD '17) pose with Ernie after receiving their degrees. As per tradition, they wore their regalia to his truck and got free lunch. Photo/Michael L. Wong
Ernie was first called to campus by a Caltech building superintendent to temporarily cater a construction project for one of the facilities along Wilson Avenue. As expected, groundskeepers filed up to the truck for breakfast and lunch—but so did some curious graduate students. They say that gossip and food reviews are the only things known to travel faster than the speed of light. Have you been to the food truck?! Before long, it was the graduate students who comprised the bulk of Ernie’s patronage.
“[It was] destiny or something. You guys just started coming to the truck, and I started getting busy with you guys. I started cancelling other accounts, and I decided to stay for the grad students.”
Were it not for the graduate students, Ernie would still be serving another part of LA. On top of that, were it not for Caltech, Ernie would be known by a completely different name. “Ernie’s Al Fresco, it was a name that was created by you guys. It used to be Hosting Your Affair, and then the kids started saying, ‘Let’s go eat al fresco with Ernie. Let’s go eat Ernie’s Al Fresco.’”
Growing up poor, Ernie didn’t have time for education. But he knows that education—from preschool to college—is the key to success. When he was asked to cater an event for the Caltech Childcare Center, he discounted his rates and donated half his proceeds to put back into the center. Through his food truck business, he was able to support his only child, his daughter, through college and graduate school at two prestigious universities.
“I have a daughter who went to Stanford, and she got her PhD from the University of Michigan,” he mentioned with obvious pride. “And I’m surrounded by all these people with higher education. That, to me, is a satisfaction that you cannot believe. To be able to cater, to be surrounded by all this—you guys.”
“I guess one of the reasons why I’ve been catering to Caltech for so long is because of the honor system that kids have. I feel very close with you guys, to the point that when I see a sad face, I always come out with a joke or something.”
But it always goes back to one image.
“When I see a stressed face on Caltech kids, I see my daughter’s stress.”
A campus institution
Ernie wakes up at five o’clock every morning, one hour after his chef rises to start working on the food. Everything that comes out of Ernie’s truck is prepared the day of.
“The most difficult thing? You can’t take time off, can’t get sick, you cannot die.”
He commutes from his home in the South Bay area to Downtown LA, where the legendary food truck is parked. Once inside the motorized kitchen, he stampedes through morning traffic to Pasadena, where mouths loiter on specific sidewalks with hungry intent.
At 11:30, Ernie pulls up by the side of the Caltech Student Services building to serve lunch. A young lady hands Ernie a five-dollar bill for her tacos. Nearly everything at Ernie’s costs five dollars, so it’s not surprising that some students have taken to calling bills of that denomination “Ernie’s coupons.” Those who arrive voucherless, however, are rarely turned away.
“Ernie’s really good about, if people go, ‘I don’t have my cash today,’ he’ll let them run a tab,” White Castañeda said. “I think, particularly for students, that can be really helpful, because we know it’s always a tight budget.”
Another female customer approaches the truck. “Hey, mija, what’ll it be today?”
“Ernie calls everyone mija, which is a term of endearment in Spanish,” said Julia McCallin, the associate VP of Human Resources. “And it’s so funny because one of the women who used to work here was with me one day ordering food, and she heard him calling me mija, and she said, ‘I’m so sad, I thought I was the only one he called mija!’ But I was kind of sad, too, because I thought I was the only one he called mija.”
Aaron Wolf, who graduated in 2013 with a PhD in planetary science, frequented Ernie’s throughout his seven years at Caltech. Wolf counts himself among the environmentally active. “When I started to bring Tupperware for him to fill, rather than using paper plates, he took immediate notice,” Wolf recalled. “On the occasions that I forgot the Tupperware, he’d jokingly harass me about it, refusing to serve me, saying that the guilt for him was too high.” When Wolf received his doctorate in May 2013, he also received a free meal from Ernie’s.
“My favorite moment,” said Ernie wistfully, “is when they graduate, and the students come with their parents. And they make it a point to come and present their parents to me. And most of them take a picture with me, with their full gown.”
“You have to do it with your heart”
Running a food truck is no easy task. “The most difficult thing? You can’t take time off, can’t get sick, you cannot die.”
There is a large amount of stress in any food service occupation, and Ernie knows that hundreds rely on him each day. “That’s why you have to like it, you have to do it with your heart. Otherwise it won’t be good. If you do it for money, you’re out of luck. You have to do it because you like it.”
There’s no doubt that Ernie comes to Caltech because here he can connect with a missing part of himself—his own education—and a very prominent part of his heart—the education of his daughter.
“I run the business with my feelings. And so far it’s been working.”
Why has it worked? Because the feelings go both ways.
Wolf called Ernie “a quintessential part of the Caltech experience.”
McCallin noted, “We all miss him when he takes vacation.”
White Castañeda marveled, “Everybody seems to know him. Everybody has a different relationship.”
When you’re a student at Caltech, sometimes one simple smile is worth a thousand taquitos. Sometimes the thing you need most is to be reminded that someone cares about you as a person. Sometimes all it takes is a little encouragement from a man who’s seen that same look of disaster before, on his daughter’s face.
“You want a shot of tequila with that?” is Ernie’s most famous quip.
“I try to get you guys to forget a little bit of the stress that you’re going through,” he said of his mission to cater to Caltech. “Your experiment is failing, okay, so what the hell? Have a burrito.”