When they opened the first Sergio’s Cuban restaurant in Westchester in 1975, Blanca Cabrera and her mother Elsa Rodriguez Rocha made a deal: They were not allowed to cry at the same time.
Breakdowns were inevitable, because the hard work of operating one’s first restaurant cannot be overstated. But someone had to keep things moving at the restaurant, which had joined Miami favorites Arbetter’s Hot Dogs and Frankie’s Pizza on Bird Road. So only one overwhelmed person at a time was allowed to weep when daily frustrations piled up, like barely being able to keep up with a busy lunch crowd or when the aluminum on the bottom of the pan burned and ruined the custard, forcing them to throw it away and waste dozens of eggs.
“I’d say, ‘One of us has to stay strong and just let the other one be,’ ” remembers Cabrera, who was then 26 and admits she gets emotional thinking about those early days. “There was so much trial and error. There have been a lot of ups and downs. I thought it was going to be an easy business, but it was intense. I learned so much during these years that it’s like I went to Harvard and graduated without being in college.”…