JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to celebrate culture, food and community and one Jacksonville restaurant is doing all three at once.<\/p>\n
Chancho King is bringing a taste of Ecuador to Murray Hill, and the story behind it is just as rich as the food on the plate.<\/p>\n
Co-owners Maria LaMota, Chason Spencer and Francois Castro didn\u2019t start with a restaurant. <\/p>\n
They started with a folding table, a pork sandwich and a dream.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and my husband Chason started as a pop-up business just selling like a pork sandwich, chips and frescos, which is our juice,\u201d LaMota said.<\/p>\n
They later partnered with a local brewery during COVID and say that unexpected moment changed everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like COVID was a catalyst that we did not know we needed,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were doing whatever it takes. We were also unemployed. In a situation like that, you have to adapt and overcome,\u201d LaMota said.<\/p>\n
Rooted in Ecuador<\/p>\n
But the real roots of this place go back to Ecuador, to family kitchens and grandmothers who cooked with love.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing an immigrant, your parents are always working,\u201d Castro said. \u201cBut that man always cooked every single day. He cooked for us. And I felt like when I was younger at least, that was the only way that I could get an interaction with my father. So that would be a connection that I would have with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
For LaMota, the connection to food runs just as deep.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my grandmas had a whole little catering business in Ecuador. And she was quite successful. And then my older grandma — she just passed away during COVID as well — she was an amazing cook. Like, a majority of these recipes are hers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It was that craving for home that sparked the idea for the restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI crave Ecuadorian food more than I crave anything else at all times. So I was slowly bringing that. And there is a specific sandwich that we started with. My husband, Chason, whenever we went to Ecuador, he tried it for the first time. He\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, shoot!\u2019\u201d LaMota said.<\/p>\n
The pork sandwich that started it all<\/p>\n
That item was the pork sandwich, and it remains the restaurant\u2019s most popular dish to this day.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s braised pork, marinated for like 36 hours, cooked for about 12. You just pull it off of the bone. We put pickled onions, which is very traditional, almost every day in Ecuador,\u201d LaMota said.<\/p>\n
The response from the community has been overwhelming.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome to have Americans loving it and craving this now, which I don\u2019t think they had before. There are certain customers of ours that like budget Chancho King into their financials because they\u2019re like, I need this pork sandwich,\u201d LaMota added.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s on the menu?<\/p>\n
The menu goes far beyond the sandwich. During a visit to the restaurant, News4JAX tried the fish soup, yuca bread and the pulled pork sandwich paired with plantain chips.<\/p>\n
Everything on the menu is made with intention, and nothing is rushed.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost things are actually a labor of love. It\u2019s not just a flip-and-turn type of place. I think maybe the quickest thing that we do is maybe the aioli, but even then, that\u2019s a two-day process,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
The hard work has paid off. The team received a James Beard Award finalist nomination. One that they never saw coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t even nominate ourselves. We had no idea until we received an email, and it was kind of like, \u2018Oh man, I guess we\u2019re doing this,\u2019\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n
Soon the owners plan to add an outdoor kitchen to pair with their weekly specials and nights featuring a DJ on the back patio. <\/p>\n
As for their menu? They say their staple items aren\u2019t going anywhere.<\/p>\n
For Castro, the mission has always been clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you arrive here, you can either blend yourself in or you stick yourself out. Me being the man that I am, I decided the opposite way. And I kind of embraced our Ecuadorian heritage,\u201d Castro said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to celebrate culture, food and community and one Jacksonville…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403973,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13337,97724,502,6919,575,116,118,117,7908],"class_list":["post-403972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-4-your-neighborhood","tag-chancho-king","tag-community","tag-features","tag-food","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-murray-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}