Every Wednesday at five in the evening, I plop down on my living room couch, a ten-dollar bill neatly folded in my shirt pocket. Then I wait for the song that heralds the arrival of my local panadero, Geovani Marquez Escobar. He roams Oak Cliff, my Dallas neighborhood, driving a white Scion xB. The tune, “El panadero con el pan,” pops and sizzles through the roof-mounted speaker, as if it’s being spun on an old turntable with a worn needle. As the first bars reach my house, I bolt through the front door, leap off my porch, and sprint across my yard to my driveway. Once Marquez is in sight, I wave at him like a kid flagging down an ice cream truck.
I’m not the only person who scurries onto the street in anticipation of Marquez’s pan dulce. My neighbors Pancho and Rosemary Gomez, the block’s de facto patriarch and matriarch, are usually waiting with their great-grandchildren for a chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla concha. After parking the car, Marquez opens the hatchback to reveal a snugly fitting pastry case packed with sliding pans full of the requisite conchas as well as flaky, mustache-shaped bigotes; crumbly, rainbow-sprinkled grageas cookies; and spongy niños envueltos (Swiss rolls filled with strawberry jelly and dusted with shredded coconut).
Marquez works at Pan Casero La Esmeralda with a couple of his childhood friends. They cruise the city in their fleet of six Scion xBs to bring residents their daily bread. The pals are natives of León, Guanajuato, and immigrated to the U.S. as adults. Over the years they all ended up in North Texas and wanted to go into business together…