Por Erin Goss
Reportero SDUN

Many families like hosting people for meals, but for the Moreno family it runs in their blood. Well before they opened the popular Hillcrest eatery Crest Café, the Morenos were cooking up memories in the kitchen.

Cecelia Moreno, the longtime co-owner of Crest Café, can trace her culinary roots back to her kindergarten days when she would watch her father, Luis Moreno, who also helps run Crest Café, cook at a drive-in diner in the ’60s.

“It was a real diner with carhops waiting on people eating in their cars and indoor dining as well. My favorite item was the patty melt, which is on our menu today,” Cecelia Moreno said.

The gourmet genes can also be traced to her grandmothers.

“My paternal grandmother, Julie, made homemade flour tortillas and refried beans and I would place those tortillas on the griddle and cover them with butter, fold up the ends so the butter wouldn’t drip on the floor. They melted in your mouth. We now get our tortillas from La Popular in National City, which are the next best tortillas from grandma Julie, and we make our beans homemade at the Crest Café,” Moreno said.

Luis and Cecelia Moreno bought the three-year-old Crest Café in 1985 and eventually recruited family members to create a dining establishment to serve “hearty, healthy comfort food,” as Cecelia calls it.

“We are definitely not trendy. We just serve what I love to eat and I hope people enjoy it,” she said.

Today the Crest Café team consists of dad Luis, daughter Cecilia and cousin Ruben Medina, who all work together to host diners at the restaurant. However, Cecelia wasn’t always so eager to follow in the family footsteps. In fact, for some time she fought her gastro-infused DNA, planning at one point to go into politics or law.

But she reconsidered. In addition to co-owning Crest Café, she has also been chairperson of the Hillcrest Business Association and a longtime board member of the San Diego Restaurant Association.

The San Diego native is just as passionate about Hillcrest as her food and family.

“Hillcrest is the best neighborhood in San Diego, no doubt. Where else can you go and see dignified elderly folks strolling next to a young couple with their baby carriage next to a retro clad girl with a red bouffant next to a buff, tight-jeaned young guy in a baseball cap and maybe they’re gay or maybe they’re straight and it doesn’t matter?” she said.

With her passion for family, it makes sense that Moreno’s aspirations for improving the quality of life in her community extend beyond the dining table.

“My dreams for a better than ever Hillcrest include more ambient sidewalk lighting, recycle trash cans, a streetcar, a pocket park or two, a boutique hotel or two and, of course, a nice-looking parking garage and a redeveloped Pernicanos,” she said.

While Cecelia may have big hopes for Hillcrest, right now she said she has her hands full feeding hungry locals at Crest Café, caring for her two dogs and spending time with husband Kit, whom she met when applying for a food server position at a restaurant he managed.

And that’s no surprise—it would be hard to imagine a Moreno marrying anyone who strayed too far from a kitchen.