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Taco truck owners open restaurant in Goodyear

BY LAUREN SERRATO

West Valley View Staff Writer

Isai and Karina Martinez started their taco truck, Tacos Barbon, before the pandemic to supplement their income.

When COVID-19 caused Isai to lose his job in 2020, the Buckeye couple turned their hobby into a full-time job.

Now, after fi nding success in the food truck industry, the Martinez family offi cially opened their fi rst Tacos Barbon restaurant on Dec. 3. The business is inside of the Holiday Inn in Goodyear.

“We’ve been looking for a while, and we were hitting a lot of different challenges,” Isai said. “We really didn’t know if it was going to happen this year, but when this opportunity came up, we were just really excited about being able to do this so soon. The ability to expand and be able to do a lot more is really exciting.”

The restaurant features the same menu as the food truck, with a few new items to offer their guests every day from 5 to 10 p.m.

“We’re really happy that we’re able to take this step now, a year and a half later, to be able to partner with the Holiday Inn and really expand our business,” Isai said. “It’s a full restaurant, we’re going to have a full menu. Our menu from our food truck will be the same one here, and then we’re adding some appetizers to that as well.”

Taco...continued on page 18 Isai and Karina Martinez o cially opened their fi rst Tacos Barbon restaurant on Dec. 3. The business is located inside of the Holiday Inn hotel in Goodyear. (Photo courtesy of Isai Martinez)

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17 Steve Perry recalls his childhood in ‘The Season’

BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI

West Valley View Executive Editor

Last year, at the height of the pandemic, legendary singer Steve Perry couldn’t listen to Christmas music. He was unable to visit with family or partake in traditional celebrations.

There’s a glimmer of hope this month for holiday get-togethers. To help families get in the mood, the former Journey singer released the Christmas collection “The Season.”

“It was really, really an emotional experience, to be perfectly honest with you,” Perry said about the making of “The Season.”

“Last Christmas, I could not emotionally access any childhood memories of parents and grandparents, of us all being together for the holidays. I was in that same mode that everyone was in, which was trying to just cope with the anxiety of what’s going to happen with this pandemic, where are we going.”

Slowly, the pandemic crept closer to him as friends and family came down with COVID-19. He forced Perry even further in isolation.

“Last Christmas, I don’t remember having a Christmas holiday,” he said. “It was kind of sad.”

In June, he realized there was a chance of having a Christmas this year. He and producer Dallas Kruse collaborated on “The Season.”

“The next thing I knew, I started to feel the importance of these songs,” Perry said. “I started to enjoy singing them. I had never done a Christmas album until now. They were special to me, and then singing them was very personally special to me and helped me get in the spirit of what’s going on now.”

The process brought back vivid memories of his family, which had a twofold effect.

“I was singing ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ and I recalled all of my Christmases spent next door at grandma and grandpa’s house,” he said.

For the album, he recorded “The Christmas Song,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Winter Wonderland,” “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” “Silver Bells” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

“Auld Lang Syne,” he said, was the most challenging song to sing and, perhaps, intimidating because of its meaning. Those who sing it are optimistic about the upcoming year.

“People can’t wait to celebrate and sing that song,” he said. “Let’s move forward with joy and optimism. It’s a powerful song. I did some research, and it was written as a poem in 1788 and the melody was attached in 1799. It goes that far back. I had some reverence to make sure I stayed within the musical emotion of all these songs.”

He admitted it was a challenge. Melodically, Perry wanted to ensure the tone in his voice was in the original singers’ “relaxed mode.”

“I started to envision sitting in front of the campfire, which is why the cover is the way it is,” he said about the album cover.

“I’m in front of a fireplace, having some eggnog and listening to music. I never really want to hear too much rock at that point. I want to reflect on my youth, my childhood and my memories of my departed loved ones. The voice that does that is iconic people like Nat Cole, Bing Crosby and even Perry Como.

“Those guys had some amazing talent in their voices. I pulled back on my voice a bit.”

Other notable releases

This winter, the likes of Billy Idol, Train, Tim McGraw and She & Him have offered their renditions of holiday tunes to spice up the season.

• Paul Anka, “Songs of December” (Anniversary Edition) • Timmy Brown, “A Very Timmy Brown Christmas” • Craig Campbell & Family, “White Christmas” • Kat Edmonson, “Holiday Swingin’: A Kat Edmonson Christmas Vol. 1” • Debbie Gibson, “Christmas Star” • Paul Gilbert, “‘Twas” • Caylee Hammack, “Hard Candy

Perry...continued on page 18

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The couple’s families are from Sonora. Isai said the food refl ects their heritage, as they stick to tradition while throwing in ribeye tacos.

“We stay close to our roots with Sonoran-style food,” he said. “We use quality meats, such as skirt steak for our carne asada. It’s something that you’re not going to fi nd everywhere. It’s just higher-quality meats. It’s going to be a better taco than your somewhat average restaurant or taco spot would have. We are going to give you the type of food that we would serve our family and our friends in our own home, something very simple and fl avorful.”

While thrilled about the expansion of his business, Isai admitted he never pictured his small taco cart would transform into a food truck, nevertheless a restaurant.

“My wife and I, we’ve always liked cooking, we’ve always liked entertaining, so at fi rst it was just something to do as a hobby, something to have fun with,” he said. “Then, in May, I ended up losing my job, and that’s what really started the whole process. That’s when we decided that we were really going to give it a go. Since the start we’ve been fortunate enough to just keep growing at a very healthy level.”

One of his favorite parts of owning Tacos Barbon is the freedom that comes with it — knowing his family business can thrive in the West Valley.

“We love the whole freedom part of it, the fact that we’re all doing what we like,” he said, noting that his wife, brother-in-law, sister and daughter are all part of the Tacos Barbon team. “We love people. We love interacting with our customers. That’s probably one of the things that we enjoy most about it, and just overall being able to serve our community.”

As Isai and his team celebrate their restaurant’s grand opening, Isai said he hopes to continue expanding.

“We hope that we can grow even further. My vision for it would be to have a few locations across the Valley and as well as our catering aspect of it, which is growing a lot as well. And, of course, you still have our food truck going out to various areas of the Valley,” he said.

Tacos Barbon

Holiday Inn 1188 N. Dysart Road, Goodyear facebook.com/Tacosbahrbohn/ Christmas,” Spotify Singles: Holiday Edition 2021 • Billy Idol, “Happy Holidays” • José James, “Merry Christmas from José James” • Vance Joy, “Fairytale of New York” • Lyn Lapid, “XMAS 01” • Kiana Ledé, “This Christmas” • Johnny Lee, “Santa Claus is Lookin’ for Love” • G. Love and Special Sauce, “Coming Back Home for Christmas” • The Imaginaries, “Christmas Town” • Monica Martin, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” • Tim McGraw, “Christmas All Over the World”/“It Wasn’t His Child” • Lori McKenna, “Christmas is Right Here” • Ingrid Michaelson, “Songs for the Season” (Deluxe Edition) • New Found Glory, “December’s Here” • Sara Noelle, “Like Snow (Slowly Falling)” • Palomas, “Missing Mistletoe” • Makenzie Phipps, “Christmas Snow” • Raffi and Lindsay Munroe, “Silver Bells” • Sabaton, “Christmas Truce” • Mary Sarah, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (holiday rendition) • She & Him, “A Very She & Him Christmas’ 10th Anniversary Edition” • Sia, “Every Day is Christmas” (Snowman Deluxe Edition) • Spoon, “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” for Spotify Singles: Holiday Edition 2021 • Daniel Tashian, “It’s a Snow Globe World” • Train, “Mittens” • Meghan Trainor, “A Very Trainor Christmas” (Deluxe Edition) • Randy Travis, “An Old Time Christmas” (Deluxe Edition) • Various artists, “Almost Christmas — Christmas Mistletunes” • Various artists, “Bach to Christmas: Hymns and Chorales to Listen and Sing to,” featuring compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and Martin Luther performed by organist Dr. James Smith • Various artists, “Christmas with Motown” • Various artists, “Christmas Rocks” • Wrabel, “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to You” • Ye Banished Privateers, “A Pirate Stole My Christmas” • Brett Young & Friends, “Brett Young & Friends Sing the Christmas Classics”

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ANSWERS ON PAGE 21

King Crossword

ACROSS

1 PC port 4 Roast VIPs 7 -- cheese dressing 8 Some tides 10 Coffee-break hr. 11 Mistakes in print 13 Mitch Hedberg and Margaret Cho, for two 16 Standard 17 Cybercommerce 18 To and -19 Greet 20 “Roots” author Haley 21 Racing shell 23 Red-tag events 25 Poker variety 26 $ dispensers 27 1040 org. 28 Mideast peninsula 30 Mimic 33 “Don’t slouch!” 36 Spud 37 Thin nails 38 Brick worker 39 Used car sites 40 Med. plan option 41 Away from WSW

DOWN

1 Of an arm bone 2 Writer O’Casey 3 Unfair treatment 4 “Thank you, Henri” 5 Yule tune 6 Pesky email 7 Alpha follower 8 Himalayan land 9 Repress 10 Recipe abbr. 12 Farm units 14 Gas co., for one 15 Boston team, for short 19 Paul Newman film 20 Gore and Franken 21 Vegas area 22 Convention 23 Luminary 24 Good-natured 25 Venus, to Serena 26 Playwright Chekhov 28 Tic 29 “Life -- short ...” 30 Marble type 31 Profs’ degrees 32 UFO crew 34 Hexagonal state 35 Press agent?

by Linda Thistle

The idea of Go Figure is to arrive at the figures given at the bottom and right-hand columns of the diagram by following the arithmetic signs in the order they are given (that is, from left to right and top to bottom). Use only the numbers below the diagram to complete its blank squares and use each of the nine numbers only once.

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK H

H Moderate HH Challenging HHH HOO BOY!

Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each small 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine.

DIFFICULTY THIS WEEK H H H

H Moderate HH Challenging HHH HOO BOY!

EVEN EXCHANGE

by Donna Pettman

Each numbered row contains two clues and two answers. The two answers differ from each other by only one letter, which has already been inserted. For example, if you exchange the A from MASTER for an I, you get MISTER. Do not change the order of the letters.

SCRAMBLERS

Unscramble the letters within each rectangle to form four ordinary words. Then rearrange the boxed letters to form the mystery word, which will complete the gag!