José Francisco Ortega can still remember the smell of the tomato sauce he made at the Italian restaurant where he first worked as a dishwasher and later as a chef.

Nowadays, Ortega, a Mexican immigrant who arrived in New York in the eighties, makes his own sauces—and dishes—at Real Azteca, an often-teeming restaurant on East 163rd Street in Hunts Point that he started nearly decade ago with his brothers, Carlos and Javier.

“I don’t like the food of other restaurants,” said Ortega. “I make the Mexican meal, the same as my mom.”

Real Azteca Restaurant serves sumptuous Mexican dishes to a diverse clientele.

Ortega’s story is common in this South Bronx neighborhood. Mexican immigrants, once a rare sight in Puerto Rican-dominated Hunts Point, are on the rise in the area. As more Mexicans moved into the community in the past decade, they’ve demanded their own food, and entrepreneurs like Ortega responded by opening traditional Mexican restaurants. Today, eateries like Real Azteca and Pedro Food provide a rallying point for the Mexican community and its culture. But the restaurants also serve up an effective way to help improve relations with other ethnic groups in the neighborhood.

Real Azteca has become so popular that earlier this year it expanded into the building next door, opening a large dining room. The restaurant’s Mexican staples such as traditional, stacked plates of non-folded tacos and massive, bulging, sauced-covered burritos appeal to residents.

“It ain’t Taco Bell, but it’s damned good,” said James Small, an African-American on his way out of the restaurant, steaming gordita in hand.

Ortega’s guiding principle is that his food should be simple and real. It’s also cheap—a concern for his customers, as the area is one of the city’s poorest. Many items on the menu are under $3, and customers can get an incredibly filling lunch for $5.

Ortega, a bearded man clad in a simple white t-shirt and a stained apron, runs a family business. He cooks meals with his sister, Inasia, and most of his employees are relatives. Even his teenage niece, Deshika, works as a waitress.

“Everybody comes here,” she said. “Mexicans. Puerto Ricans, Americans. Everybody.”

She frequently brings friends of all backgrounds to eat, where they often shout energetically above the loud Mexican pop pouring out of a large jukebox that sits against the wall.

Not far away, Teodora Aguilar, another Mexican immigrant who came here decades before Ortega, runs her own family business, San Marcos Distributors on Westchester Avenue. A combined Mexican food store and restaurant opened in 2001, it gives the Mexican community a taste of home.

“A lot of Mexican people look for authentic Mexican products,” said Aguilar, translated by her daughter. Joanna. “They couldn’t find them anywhere else, so they came here.” Three generations of this immigrant family often meet in San Marcos. Aguilar, who came to this county 29 years ago, frequently works with her daughter. Joanna Aguilar’s toddler daughter, Shayna, frequently climbs up on the counter, eager to do her part.

But it’s not just a special place for one family. San Marcos has become something of an unofficial Mexican community center. “People come here. They meet each other and make a community,” said Aguilar. “A lot of people look out for each other now.”

Over 10 years ago, the Mexican community here was smaller and less cohesive, Aguilar recalled. Mexican residents were frequently robbery victims, due to the perception among non-Mexicans that they were mostly illegal immigrants, and wouldn’t report crimes to police, she said.

She said that robberies are down, but since she opened her store, two break-ins have occurred late at night—when the newly built community isn’t around to protect it. While crime statistics confirm that robberies are down in the neighborhood’s 41st Precinct, the area around San Marcos does have a higher proportion of incidents, police said.

However, these tense relations between Mexicans and non-Mexicans are dissolving, and as they do, so do barriers between foods. Celino Linares, a Mexican cook who moved to the neighborhood twenty years ago, opened up Celeste Diner in the neighborhood’s industrial area south shortly after arriving.

With both an American and a Mexican menu, workers and truckers from the nearby Hunts Point Cooperative Market loved Celeste, and some even adventurously tried some of Linares’ traditional cooking.

However, after controversially letting the Teamsters advertise at his restaurant during their attempt to unionize workers at Baldor Specialty Food earlier this year, Linares, who simply thought he was selling ad space and didn’t choose a side in the conflict, lost most of his business when Baldor discouraged employees from eating at Celeste. As a result, he couldn’t renew his lease and was forced to sell the building.

He was offered at job at nearby Pedro Food, where he spiced up owner Lydia Lasuell’s Dominican-heavy menu with his own American and Mexican fare. With his creative mixing of culinary traditions, Linares has helped bring in a more diverse crowd.

“We try to make it better together,” said Linares. “People are happy. They can eat what they like.”

“Pedro de Best Food In The World,” as the restaurant’s sign declares and as locals know it, has become a hit with Spanish-speakers and English-speakers alike. Open from 4 a.m. until 5 p.m., the restaurant is frequently crowded with both workers and residents of all backgrounds enjoying hearty Mexican goat stews and sizzling Dominican bean soups, in a fusion of food that has shattered the traditional ethnic divisions in the neighborhood. Traditionalists can still even order a cheeseburger, though it lacks the march of spices of the Linares’ unusual union of Hispanic cultural dishes.

Well-liked Mexican culinary staples aren’t just for the Mexican community anymore, as a mosaic of lunch-goers at Pedro attested to while chewing pieces of tender roast goat.

Later, at Real Azteca, Ortega was putting on a fresh apron and getting ready for the lunch rush. He pointed a thick finger at a family by the window feasting on quesadillas that oozed with cheese and homemade salsa.

“Those are Puerto Ricans eating here,” he said. “See? Everybody likes Mexican food.”