Latino businesses serve up tasteful tamales with roots from all over Latin America in annual Tamalada tamale contest

Latinos En Spokane celebrated its anniversary Saturday in typical fashion – taking hundreds of people’s taste buds around Latin America with a variety of styles and flavors of tamales.

Five local businesses served their twist on tamales at the West Central Community Center to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the Spokane Latinos organization. The “Tamalada,” the organization’s annual tamale festival, started a couple years after Latinos En Spokane formed, according to Executive Director Jennyfer Mesa.

“We just have a lot of fun together, and this is our way of celebrating with everyone,” Mesa said.

Families dug into tamales with flavorful roots that represent countries like Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia. Some tamales contained pork or chicken and were wrapped in plantain leaves or corn husks.

“Different regions, different styles, different flavors to really showcase the diversity of Latin America,” Mesa said.

Paul Knowles and his family, who live in the West Central Neighborhood, came to the tamale festival for the second straight year. Knowles said a chicken mole tamale from Romy’s Cocina was his favorite tamale of the few he tried.

“This is such a unique event,” Knowles said. “It feels like a fun community event that also has really amazing food, and it’s an opportunity to try tamales that are kind of unique to different regions in Latin America.”

A couple booths over from Romy’s Cocina, Sabor Latino dished Guatemalan tamales.

“Ours is made with love,” Marjorie DeLeon-Estrada, of Sabor Latino, said.

She said her family has been making the tamales for generations.

They served other foods, too, like their El Salvador pupusas, a stuffed cheese tortilla that DeLeon-Estrada said not many Americans know about.

“We’re all from Guatemala, but we like to express other cultures, too,” she said.

Tamale lovers gathered at long tables in the center of the community center to enjoy their food, conversation with others and Latino music in the background.

They could then vote for the business with the best tamale by sticking the ticket they received at the door into that business’s plastic container near the community tables. The five local businesses that competed were Wana Wilo, Que Sabroso, Romy’s Cocina, Raspados Coco Leche and Sabor Latino. The business with the most votes received $200.

Though the Tamalada was packed with attendees trying the different cultural tamales, it was again Adriana Recendez from the food truck Raspados Coco Leche that took the victory for the third year in a row.

“I’m happy because I won three years,” Recendez said of her victory.

Recendez’s tamales were the traditional Mexican style: meat enveloped in corn-based masa dough wrapped in a corn husk.

Second place went to Wana Wilo, who served Venezuelan-style hallacas, similar to tamales. They’re wrapped in plantain leaves and the filling includes olives, capers and raisins mixed with meat.

Mesa said the businesses agreed to cap the tamale prices at $5, so attendees could afford to enjoy them from several businesses.

The community center was packed with people from different racial backgrounds, but Mesa said some from the Latino community did not attend given President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

“For our community right now, they’re very worried about going to big events, so I know that we’re missing more people from the Latino and immigrant community that are just in fear of going out or in fear that an event like this can be a target for ICE,” Mesa said. “But, we’re going to stand strong. We’re gonna continue being resilient.”

Latinos En Spokane offered cards Saturday that explained people’s constitutional rights to help them for when confronted by immigration agents. Members from the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane wandered the room to ensure safety.

“We don’t want to be living in fear and seeing this, and seeing that the larger Spokane community is showing up to support really warms our heart,” Mesa said. “So, it’s beautiful to see the turnout, but we know that there’s a lot of people from our community that are not here.”

If you missed out on Saturday’s festivities, there’s still ample time to get your hands on tamales this holiday season. Latinos En Spokane is selling tamales for $60/dozen at their offices at 1502 N. Monroe St. all throughout Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Proceeds will fund the nonprofit.

“All of it goes towards feeding justice,” Mesa said.