Casita Linda in Ocean Pines offers and immersive Mexican cafe experience
Written by Ruth Corradi Beach
Photography by Marci Ryan
The welcome, easygoing feeling that customers enjoy at Casita Linda is absolutely intentional. The food, the coffee, and the décor in this Ocean Pines Mexican café (whose name translates to “Linda’s guest house”) are all modeled on the owner’s experiences growing up in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. “Our concept is ‘a day in a Mexican household,’” explains owner Linda Barragán. “You go into the house, there’s fruit, tortillas, coffee, sweetbreads—you’re going to see all these items on the table. It’s very much centered around the kitchen. Everything is homemade,” just as it is at Casita Linda.
“I grew up in what we call a paleteria, [a shop that sells] fruit pops, fermented yogurt, horchata, very dairy-based,” she continues. “My dad opened one up. I always wanted to do it here.” Casita Linda has a coffee shop feel, with walls that were both textured and painted in bright, cheerful colors by Linda’s father, Javier.
“We’re food oriented and family oriented, and that’s the experience we want to create,” Linda says.
Authentic Fare
Casita Linda serves breakfast, lunch, and a variety of coffee and cacao drinks. The breakfast tortas are an excellent showcase for the handmade bread, which is toasted and topped with an heirloom pinto bean spread, queso chihuahua, avocado, the egg style of your choice, and served with salsa on the side. Don’t miss Rosa’s salsa, which is Linda’s mother Rosa’s recipe. Rosa helped create the menu, and she and Javier help their daughter and son-in-law, Stephen Kolarik, in the café.
A great number of the breakfast and lunch options at Casita Linda are corn tortilla-based, which Linda notes is a hallmark of Mexican home cooking. The blue corn that comprises these tortillas is nixtamalized, a traditional method involving soaking the corn to enhance its health benefits. The lunch chilaquiles verdes feature these blue corn tortillas, chopped, flash fried, and drizzled with salsa verde. Order it with nopales (cactus), chorizo, carnitas, or another protein option. (This dish is also served with avocado-topped pinto beans, avocado slices, and queso fresco.)
Don’t leave Casita Linda before you try the horchata, a sweet Mexican drink. That recipe, like Rosa’s salsa, is a Barragán classic. “It’s a family recipe, a central Mexican version, that’s been in my life since I was little. It’s an item you’d find in Mexico in the paleteria. My dad, grandma, and uncle—they’re the ones who taught me to make horchata,” Linda explains.
Family Affair
Linda and her husband have lived in Worcester County, where Stephen was born and raised, for 20 years. Before that, they lived in Mexico for a time. Stephen is “100 percent always ready to step in and help,” says Linda, who notes that her husband’s experience managing a family member’s boardwalk restaurant, as well as his skill at fixing machinery, has been priceless.
“We’re food oriented and family oriented, and that’s the experience we want to create,” Linda says. “We always wanted our interior to represent a home, as intimate as you can get. Every action, every conversation—we try to make it meaningful. Because it means a lot to us.” CS
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