If you go
La Familia Mexican Restaurant is at 516 Chickamauga Ave. Call 706-956-3210 to learn more. To utilize the Dinner Delivered option, call 423-634-8899 or visit DinnerDelivered.com.
La Familia Mexican Restaurant is new to downtown Rossville.
Starting in February, the restaurant will be the first to serve beer and wine in the city limits. The restaurant is also unique in that it offers "Dinner Delivered," a third party that picks up the food and transports it anywhere requested in the Tennessee Valley.
The restaurant's official grand-opening festivities will be in early February. However, it began operating around the holidays.
"My mom [Carmen Guzman] is the chef here, that's why we call it La Familia," said co-owner/manager Paulina Martinez. "Two of my brothers work here too. We all quit our day jobs to do this. The American dream is to own your own business. We fell in love with Rossville, but we did not know what we were getting ourselves into. We did not have investors."
She said her family - Manuel Martinez and his wife Fatima, Moses Guzman and Josue Guzman - spent seven months working until 2 or 3 in the morning renovating the building.
"The whole family did it ourselves," she said, adding that her parents worked night and day on it too. "We did the painting. My dad did the Sheetrock."
They also lifted the ceiling, she said, for ambiance and better air circulation.
La Familia Mexican Restaurant plans to begin hosting live music and karaoke soon. This summer, Martinez said they will put in garage doors and have a patio out front.
The building used to house Sherrill's TV Repair Shop on the left hand side and Sherrill's Flowers and Catering on the right.
"It was the big old dinosaur TVs all over the place at first," Martinez said. "The restrooms did not exist then. Down the stairs was Sherrill's Catering. Mr. Sherrill was here for 55 years. At one time he was the mayor of Rossville. When you wanted to have a luxurious wedding, you would come here in the past."
Now the spacious restaurant has two dining wings. The new bar features drop lighting and a flat-screen TV. The owners plan to install more flat-screen TVs throughout for customers dining elsewhere in the restaurant.
Carmen Guzman said she and her husband migrated to the United States in the mid-1990s with only a backpack with three changes of clothes each. Neither of them knew how to speak English.
"We came with nothing in March of 1994 to America from Mexico City," she said. "We worked very hard from 1994 to 2015. My husband washed dishes in a Mexican restaurant in Savannah and I ran the cash register. We saved up money for six months and then I went back to Mexico City to get Manuel and Paulina. We all four moved to Dalton and lived there eight years and then moved to Ringgold. My husband started working in construction in 1995."
Paulina works at the restaurant seven days a week managing it and waiting on customers.
"We worked really hard for this place and I don't regret it at all," she said.
She said her family wants to use the restaurant to serve the community more than just food; they really want to serve the community. They would like to begin hosting charity nights once a month at the restaurant and give a portion of the dinner profits to a local charity, specifically the Family Crisis Center that serves Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties.
"We would like to reach out and help a local women's shelter, since domestic abuse is common in the United States," Martinez said. "I was in a domestic violence situation once before in Las Vegas. I would like to have someone come out and speak about local charities. We would like to have fundraising events for worthy causes."