Photos by Nora Edinger Entrepreneur Jeramie Alvarado and staffer Leanora “Sissy” Wallace celebrate Tuesday’s launch of a buffet option at Carlito’s Soul Food Kitchen in North Wheeling’s Victorian Old Town. The pair, friends for 20 years, developed Carlito’s menu during off days at Rachel’s on 16th, an East Wheeling diner that Alvarado also owns and operates with wife Rachel (Williams) Alvarado.

By NORA EDINGER

For the Sunday News-Register

WHEELING — There are a lot of ways Jeramie Alvarado’s story could be told. There’s the cultural angle for one thing.

Alvarado and wife Rachel (Williams) Alvarado are business owners whose combined heritage includes Hispanic, Native American and European influences in addition to African American. Alvarado’s newest venture serves up cuisine that celebrates Black culture, bringing not only authentic soul food to the Ohio Valley but also a diverse flavor of American heritage to North Wheeling’s historic Victorian Old Town neighborhood.

The long-awaited opening of Carlito’s Soul Kitchen took place in October.

“I wanted to fill a void in this city,” he said of the entrepreneurial reality of Carlito’s Soul Food Kitchen. “It’s food where you can get your belly nice and warm … It all started because I was making really good fried chicken at home.”

Another similarly compelling story-telling option is the American ideal of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Alvarado has this, as well.

“I was born in San Diego and, when my parents divorced, we moved to Elkins, W.Va.,” said Alvarado, noting he began acting out around age 12. He spent much of his teen years in juvenile detention facilities or attending schools for juvenile offenders as a result.

The last facility, the now-defunct Glen Mills School of Pennsylvania, had sticking power, he said. Educators there helped Alvarado get the high school diploma that’s framed on his office wall at Carlito’s. The school also linked him to Wheeling through scholarships that, ultimately, brought him to what is now West Liberty University in the 1990s.

Two bachelor’s degrees, one master’s degree and a bit of an art teaching career later, Alvarado seems to have found a forever home in the Friendly City. He has three businesses, a wife, four children ranging in age from 7 to 13, and one Victorian sprawler in East Wheeling that he’s renovated as their home.

Each of these stories is, indeed, an interesting one. But, there’s another narrative that might intrigue readers – the newcomer angle.

Alvarado, who arrived in Wheeling only in early adulthood, has since formed a network of friends, fans and facilitators that would rival that of any multi-generational resident. There’s the full slate of food-service workers, the artists, the other entrepreneurs and the quiet experts with deep knowledge of the region’s historic-preservation incentives.

Wheeling’s celebrated-but-not-so- native son might serve as a model as to how a very old community can reboot by throwing open its most dilapidated doors.

OLD BUILDINGS, NEW BLOOD

“I just love Victorians,” Alvarado said of the structures that ignited his first entrepreneurial venture and a passion for Wheeling. “There’s nowhere else that has this kind of concentration of them. Other places have concentrations from other eras, but not so many Victorians.”

Alvarado said he and his wife were both working area food service — with him serving in every position from “dish guy” to general manager — while he finished his education. At some point, his mother’s experiences in home restoration in Elkins made him want to try the same thing here.

He and his mom, Brenda Alvarado, began buying low and then restoring and flipping homes and buildings, including another Main Street property that provided an initial home. “Rachel and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with all our kids on the first floor and we worked on the top two apartments.” The family now lives in a self-restored Victorian home in East Wheeling.

By 2019, Alvarado felt ready to pull these two pieces of his Wheeling life together. He made an offer on the property that is now the Rachel’s on 16th diner. “It was turn-key,” he said of the building’s condition. “Everything was there, ready to go. I invested like $7,000 and opened the doors.”

He hadn’t planned on his wife’s diagnosis with breast cancer, or COVID, or the three Victorian row houses where Carlito’s now operates coming on the market nearly simultaneously. But, Alvarado decided to go all in.

It somehow worked, he said. Rachel Alvarado was treated, recovered and now serves as manager of the diner. Alvarado said that restaurant was on solid ground soon after COVID restrictions were lifted.

And, the freshly acquired row houses were Victorians, the exact kind of challenge he loves.

“This building needed a ton of stuff,” Alvarado said of a property whose commercial side has been filled at various times by Uncle Pete’s restaurant, a coffee shop, a hair salon and a “wing joint.”

At first, he said he intended to renovate around Uncle Pete’s rather than open a second restaurant. But, he said lease negotiations with that restaurant broke down to the point that Uncle Pete’s eventually relocated to the Elm Grove neighborhood.

The emptied building was suddenly more than a challenging time and money vacuum – he noted some $500,000 has gone into the renovation, which also includes five rented apartments and two more in development. It was an opportunity.

“You could stand in the kitchen and look into the basement,” Alvarado recalled of a certain point at which the idea of Carlito’s was too far along to stop. “This was a big investment and was a big, big risk.”

FUTURE VISION

That risk is countered by the joy of being “king of my own jungle,” he noted. “It’s hard work,” Alvarado said. “I’ve got to constantly be on my toes – not only for my own kids but for my employees. They have families.”

That tip-toe spirit has him pursuing a liquor license he said has been slow in coming. It has him tweaking the menu with entrees such as a fried green tomato BLT. It also has him counting everything from mortgage payments to the inflation-mad cost of raw materials to a lunch draw he feels is too slow for nearly two months into operation.

The latter is what prompted this week’s buffet launch – think staples such as meat loaf, fried chicken and collard greens and daily specials such as popcorn shrimp. He noted the headcount was up on the first day.

Alvarado – who was nicknamed Carlito in college and chose that name for his son – is also counting years. At 43, he said he realizes his time is limited. “I’m only one person. I can’t run 10 businesses.”

But, he pretty much wants to – which means he imagines a day when he will sell both Carlito’s and Rachel’s on 16th at a profit. That might not be for a decade or so, Alvarado said, but he has other proverbial fish to fry in this city, his city.

“I feel like I could do anything, but it doesn’t have to be food,” he said of the ongoing opportunities opened by amazing buildings that need love. “I’ll just have to figure it out.”

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