{"id":243839,"date":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/moreno-familys-love-for-food-sustains-crest-cafe-for-their-25-years-in-hillcrest\/"},"modified":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T07:00:00","slug":"moreno-familys-love-for-food-sustains-crest-cafe-for-their-25-years-in-hillcrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/moreno-familys-love-for-food-sustains-crest-cafe-for-their-25-years-in-hillcrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Moreno family\u2019s love for food sustains Crest Caf\u00e9 for their 25 years in Hillcrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Erin Goss
\nReportero SDUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Moreno<\/a>
Crest Caf\u00e9 is open 7 a.m. to midnight 364 days a year, offering American food\u2014and all-day breakfast Friday through Tuesday. Parking at the nearby lot is validated. (Courtesy Cecelia Moreno)<\/figcaption><\/figure>Many families like hosting people for meals, but for the Moreno family it runs in their blood. Well before they opened the popular Hillcrest eatery Crest Caf\u00e9, the Morenos were cooking up memories in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Cecelia Moreno, the longtime co-owner of Crest Caf\u00e9, can trace her culinary roots back to her kindergarten days when she would watch her father, Luis Moreno, who also helps run Crest Caf\u00e9, cook at a drive-in diner in the \u201960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a real diner with carhops waiting on people eating in their cars and indoor dining as well. My favorite item was the patty melt, which is on our menu today,\u201d Cecelia Moreno said.<\/p>\n

The gourmet genes can also be traced to her grandmothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy paternal grandmother, Julie, made homemade flour tortillas and refried beans and I would place those tortillas on the griddle and cover them with butter, fold up the ends so the butter wouldn’t drip on the floor. They melted in your mouth. We now get our tortillas from La Popular in National City, which are the next best tortillas from grandma Julie, and we make our beans homemade at the Crest Caf\u00e9,\u201d Moreno said.<\/p>\n

Luis and Cecelia Moreno bought the three-year-old Crest Caf\u00e9 in 1985 and eventually recruited family members to create a dining establishment to serve \u201chearty, healthy comfort food,\u201d as Cecelia calls it. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are definitely not trendy. We just serve what I love to eat and I hope people enjoy it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Today the Crest Caf\u00e9 team consists of dad Luis, daughter Cecilia and cousin Ruben Medina, who all work together to host diners at the restaurant. However, Cecelia wasn\u2019t always so eager to follow in the family footsteps. In fact, for some time she fought her gastro-infused DNA, planning at one point to go into politics or law.<\/p>\n

But she reconsidered. In addition to co-owning Crest Caf\u00e9, she has also been chairperson of the Hillcrest Business Association and a longtime board member of the San Diego Restaurant Association. <\/p>\n

The San Diego native is just as passionate about Hillcrest as her food and family. <\/p>\n

\u201cHillcrest is the best neighborhood in San Diego, no doubt. Where else can you go and see dignified elderly folks strolling next to a young couple with their baby carriage next to a retro clad girl with a red bouffant next to a buff, tight-jeaned young guy in a baseball cap and maybe they\u2019re gay or maybe they\u2019re straight and it doesn’t matter?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

With her passion for family, it makes sense that Moreno\u2019s aspirations for improving the quality of life in her community extend beyond the dining table.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dreams for a better than ever Hillcrest include more ambient sidewalk lighting, recycle trash cans, a streetcar, a pocket park or two, a boutique hotel or two and, of course, a nice-looking parking garage and a redeveloped Pernicanos,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

While Cecelia may have big hopes for Hillcrest, right now she said she has her hands full feeding hungry locals at Crest Caf\u00e9, caring for her two dogs and spending time with husband Kit, whom she met when applying for a food server position at a restaurant he managed. <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s no surprise\u2014it would be hard to imagine a Moreno marrying anyone who strayed too far from a kitchen.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Erin Goss SDUN Reporter Many families like hosting people for meals, but for the Moreno family it runs in their blood. Well before they opened the popular Hillcrest eatery Crest Caf\u00e9, the Morenos were cooking up memories in the kitchen. Cecelia Moreno, the longtime co-owner of Crest Caf\u00e9, can trace her culinary roots back […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1320,"featured_media":243840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Moreno family\u2019s love for food sustains Crest Caf\u00e9 for their 25 years in Hillcrest","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}