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Editor’s note: Quotes from Edith Huamani and Alberto Pastor have been translated from Spanish to English by Tania Navarro.
Edith “Sara” Huamani immigrated to the Bay Area in 2007 on asylum. She had faced abuse in her hometown of Lima, Peru, leaving for a better life.
“I came alone, without relatives, without knowing anyone here,” she said.
In 2015, Huamani met Alberto Pastor, who had also immigrated by himself to the Bay Area, hoping for more opportunities than those in Tijuana, Mexico. Four years later, they married. The couple, who each have worked in restaurants since their teenage years, took a leap of faith and opened their own business, Sara’s Kitchen, in May.
Located in the CloudKitchen San Mateo Food Mall, Sara’s Kitchen offers a mix of Peruvian favorites, American diner classics and Italian pasta dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All orders come with a complimentary chocolate chip cookie. The business has no connection to American diner Sara’s Kitchen in Santa Clara, Pastor said.
Find a variety of loaded smashburgers ($13.99-$18.99), including bestselling The Hungry Beast topped with cheese, ham, an over-hard egg, crispy string potatoes, lettuce, tomato, onion and five housemade sauces – garlic mayo, kalamata olive mayo, golf sauce (a creamy and tangy sauce from Latin America), rocoto sauce (Peruvian hot sauce) and huacatay sauce (Peruvian black mint sauce) – on a toasted brioche bun, served with a side of fries. Huamani said the burger is inspired by the enormous burgers sold by Peruvian street food vendors. Recently, she’s seen these burgers becoming popular among travel TikTok influencers.
Pastor, whose experience is primarily in Italian restaurants, developed the pasta recipes, including their bestseller fettuccine alfredo, which is served with garlic bread ($13.50).
“It has herbs and a touch of lime flavor, so when you try it, (it tastes) not only creamy and salty, you taste a little acid,” he said, calling the dish “one of a kind.”
Hamani’s Peruvian specialties ($12.99-$24.99) include lomo saltado (steak sauteed with onions, tomatoes and cilantro in a Peruvian sauce and served with fries and steamed rice), tallarin saltado (Peruvian-style chow mein), a lomo saltado burrito, broaster chicken (Peruvian-style chicken with fries, salad and a variety of homemade sauces), salchipapas (sliced beef franks and fries served on a bed of lettuce with homemade sauces) and chaufa (Peruvian-style fried rice).
“The things that we make here are made with love,” Huamani said. “On one occasion, we received a call back from a Peruvian food customer…just to say that the food was delicious.”
The two-person, takeout-only operation is the result of the couple’s 18 years of restaurant experience.
Huamani started working in the kitchen at 15, cooking traditional Peruvian dishes and seafood at her parents’ restaurant in Peru. Since immigrating to the United States, she’s worked at fast-food restaurants like Jack in the Box, sit-down restaurants like El Torito and The Cheesecake Factory and local spots like Pinestripes at Hillsdale Shopping Center. She met Pastor through the restaurant industry, when he was helping a company open a restaurant in Daly City, where she was working.
“After we met, I used to come two times a week driving from Santa Rosa to Daly City, an almost two-hour drive,” he said. “We started living together, and we are our own team — we had nobody else.”
Pastor started working in the food and beverage industry at 16 out of necessity. He said his family didn’t have money for him to buy lunch, so he took a job at McDonald’s, going to work at 6 a.m. and then staying in class until 9 p.m.
“We have struggled a little bit,” he said. “We have worked a lot, so this is like a dream that hasn’t been finalized.”
The Belmont couple had been saving up money for years, hoping to eventually open their own restaurant. They started selling street tacos around the corner from San Mateo Food Mall, but a nearby business called the cops on them, ending that business venture.
While Sara’s Kitchen has been open for nearly two months, the couple said the restaurant isn’t receiving enough business to be sustainable.
“Our savings are running low at a fast pace,” Pastor said. “We have been patient, looking for catering events. Now we are in all the apps, and we have delivered flyers to the houses around.”
The catering menu for Sara’s Kitchen is very extensive, Huamani said, and people can reach out for catering requests via phone, text or WhatsApp at 707-623-2152 or by filling out the contact form on their website.
For Huamani and Pastor, Sara’s Kitchen isn’t about making money for themselves – they want to be profitable so they can give jobs to others in need of work and give back to low-income communities.
“When we talk about having a business and going forward, we never talk about luxury; we always talk about how I would like to go to Tijuana, go to a low-income neighborhood and be able to take toys, food…to give away, to do our part,” Pastor said. “And she feels the same but in Peru.”
The couple hopes they can one day expand out of the ghost kitchen and open their own brick-and-mortar restaurant.
“We want to give away all that we have inside, in our hearts,” Huamani said. “We want, we wish and we are putting all our efforts into our business to grow, so that one day, we will have people working and helping us. We want to give what we feel, to make them feel good and comfortable so that they don’t feel fear.”
Sara’s Kitchen, 66 21st Ave., San Mateo; 707-623-2152, Instagram: @saraskitchen2025. Open Monday to Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
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