Over her 20-plus years on Shelter Island, Maria Serano has cooked for, babysat, and celebrated high school graduations with every local under the age of 35, the core of her most loyal customers at Maria’s Kitchen. “I have a lot of kids,” she says, while standing at the juicer, stuffing a beet the size of a softball, two apples and a piece of ginger root into the extractor. “They are grownups now, and they all come here because they love my food.”
It’s not just the kids. The warmth and care of her eponymous eatery have sustained and satiated pretty much the entire Island through seasons — spring and summertime with the picnic tables in the adjacent outdoor space filled with happy, munching patrons; winter and fall full of swift take-out. Even the seemingly ever-lasting pandemic, during which she fed many, comforting them with soft scrambled eggs mingling with refried beans in steaming morning baleadas or afternoon burritos stuffed with their protein of choice, kissed with creamy guacamole and generous gobs of other fixings.
It didn’t come easy, or quickly. But Maria believed in the power of good food. If she cooked it, they would all come.
Quesadilla Queen
Maria’s Kitchen is a cheerful Mexican-American restaurant with a big take-out business and a small flowery garden for outdoor dining where everything is homemade.
A lot of people love Serano’s food, which she displays on a menu that takes up an entire wall by the juicer. Mexican and vegetarian dishes are full of tender kale, mango and lots of avocado. She makes her invigorating juices from beets, kale, apples, ginger and citrus, and her smoothies with ripe fruit. A burrito bowl is a well-balanced meal with beans, rice, guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream and your choice of chicken, shrimp or beef. Her dishes are aromatic, with cilantro, parsley and the epazote she grows for the store. The most distinctive thing you’ll taste in her cooking: 25 years of figuring out what her customers love to eat.
Serano grew up near Puebla, a Mexican city about 65 miles southeast of Mexico City. She was one of 10 children, and her father died when she was seven. At 18, with her high school education completed, her older sister, who was living in Brooklyn, “brought me here so I could go to school, learn English and have a better life,” says Maria.
Serano did not take to living in a big city. After a few months, she befriended a woman who worked with her at a garment factory. Maria’s friend, who had brought her daughters up from Honduras, also wanted to get out of the city. They all moved to Southampton, where Serano lived for three years working for a dry cleaner.
While in Southampton, Maria met John Schultheis, a Shelter Islander whom she eventually married. They moved to the Island where her children, Daniel and Margaret, were born. The marriage didn’t last, but Serano’s affinity for Shelter Island did.
While her children were growing, Serano worked as a cook and house cleaner, and helped out as a server and cook at parties. She began cooking at the former West Neck Market on Shelter Island, owned at the time by Glenn and Gail Heinze. Maria credits Gail Heinze with teaching her to cook.
“I learned to do the grilled chicken and the sandwiches and everybody loved them,” she says. “I got inspired.”
She made the Italian heroes, turkey club sandwiches and Reubens, as well as Cuban sandwiches on grilled panini bread with ham, cheese and pickles. “I still remember how to make all of them.”
Her time working for Gail gave her something even more fundamental than kitchen knowledge, though. “She said ‘You have to have a dream,’” Serano recalls. “‘You have to think, what do you want? You can have your own business one day. And I’m going to teach you how to do it.’ And she really did teach me.”
Food, friends and mastering the tortilla
For a few years, Serano cooked at Greeny’s, a short-lived vegetarian restaurant on Shelter Island. When it closed in 2012, she opened Maria’s Kitchen in the same spot. It was a bold move for a fairly recent immigrant and sole bread-winner with two children.
She started with a menu of vegetarian food and sandwiches and over time evolved to incorporate more and more Mexican flavors and dishes. The first few years were difficult. “For three years, I worked straight seven days a week,” she says.
Serano started to feel a stronger connection to the community, facilitated by her food. “I was meeting a lot of people and people really liked my food,” she remembers. “I said, you know what, I love this.” She began to bring in her Mexican specialties and offer samples to customers, who tasted, suggested and helped her build a menu of salads, sandwiches, wraps and dinner combos that are made to order.
“People would say, ‘Okay, Maria, is it possible for me to choose my own ingredients, can you make my dish how I want it?’” she says. “And I said ‘Yes, tell me how you want it, and I’ll make it.’ That’s how I developed and adapted my recipes.”
She also taught customers, through an ever-growing menu of delicious dishes, about the flavors of Mexico. “A lot of people think all Mexican food is spicy, but it’s really not,” Serano says. “We put spicy sauces on the side.” She estimates that about a third of her customers are Spanish-speaking and most of those are from Central America, not just Mexico.
When Serano started cooking on Shelter Island, she didn’t even know how to make a tortilla —the staple of Mexican cooking. Now, not only has she taught herself to make tortillas, she makes homemade tortillas for most of the dishes on her menu. “A lot of people nowadays don’t want to eat flour and I understand because I cannot eat flour anymore. Everybody loves corn, because corn tastes better. And plus, we make it here. We make it all.”
It’s been 14 years since she took the plunge to own her restaurant. Her menu is extensive, and she’s proud to say she can serve anything on it. She tries not to work seven days a week anymore, finding the balance in life and work that she’s long craved. “When I can, I exercise. Just walk and ride a bike. And I have a beautiful garden in my house [with] cilantro, epazote; I’m trying to grow jicama.”
Serano’s even trying to take a little time off to enjoy herself a bit more. Earlier this year, she went away for a few months during the slow winter season, leaving the store operating in the capable hands of her long-time staffers.
“I don’t want to go to parties. I want to travel all over the world. I want to go see all over,” she says. “I want to try foods. I want to see what’s the new stuff, what are they eating, you know?”
Serano says her siblings in New York are proud of what their little sister has accomplished in the 26 years since she left Mexico, miles away from them and completely on her own. “They never thought that of me, that I would have something so nice,” she says, but the hard work it took to accomplish came naturally. “I did not learn it, I already had it inside.”
Her kids, too, appear to have inherited their mom’s fire to succeed. And when she speaks about her children, Serano’s smile broadens. Both graduated from Shelter Island High School and are currently in college, Margaret studying art and design and Daniel working toward his degree in mechanical engineering. But the joy and pride in the family goes both ways.
“They tell me that I am amazing, but I tell them, I work for you guys,” Serano says.
Maria’s Kitchen is located at 55 North Ferry Road, Shelter Island, 631-749-5450/5129.
