Jorge Barralas never made it past the third grade. He didn’t know how to read or write. In his mid-teens, he started working in the fields, just like his father and grandfather before him. Wielding a machete to chop sugar cane, he also worked in a factory that distilled the crop into alcohol.
Barralas grew up in Cuautla, Mexico, about two hours south of Mexico City. Today, Papi, as he is known, owns not one, but two eponymous restaurants in Greenville. His small but authentic menu celebrates his heritage, which is stuffed, like one of his mouthwatering tortas, with homages to food and family. “We wanted to make a restaurant for ourselves,” Papi reminisces in Spanish as he sits outside on the recently added patio of his second restaurant, which he opened in 2020.
Joining his dad at Papi’s Augusta and Papi’s Terraza, Jorge Jr. adds: “From what I remember being with my grandma, we always got together on Sunday. I just felt like my parents, that’s what they had in the back of their mind, just food and bringing people together.”
Papi’s journey from the fields and factories of south-central Mexico to Greenville’s savory food scene began in the 1990s when he moved to California for construction work. In 1995, he relocated to Greenville because family members lived here.
Papi’s Journey
By 1997, he was working full-time at a local construction company and, at night, washing dishes at a then-brand-new restaurant, Soby’s New South Cuisine. That was the year Carl Sobocinski launched what would later be the Main Street birthplace of his Table 301 dining empire. Within a few weeks, Papi moved to kitchen prep—and now his legacy is baked in with his creation of Soby’s signature Garlic Cheddar Biscuits.
Jorge Jr. says his father would bring in dishes his abuela used to make: “People would try it, and once it got to Carl, Carl was like, ‘You’ve got a good thing here, you ever thought about opening your own restaurant?’ And we were like, ‘Now that you ask, yes, we have.’”
In 2013, Table 301 opened Papi’s Tacos, with Papi in the kitchen. Ultimately, Papi bought out his patron, who remains an investor.
Both Barralas men credit Sobocinski with being more than just a business partner—he and his company are part of the family. “Even now, after we bought him out, we still continue to have that relationship with Carl and the family,” the son says, while Papi says Sobocinski has told him, “Don’t worry, I got your back, I’m behind you all the time.”
As Greenville’s leading restaurateur says of his protégé, “The first time Papi walked into Soby’s, I was, like, I know this guy’s got what it takes. I mean, he worked the fields in Mexico as a teen and now look at him. We can talk about the American Dream all we want, but to be a part of that dream for one guy and his family—to have a hand in them achieving it and living it—that’s pretty profound.”
Papi’s Tacos
Located on the Riverwalk, under the Lazy Goat (another Table 301 property)
300 River St., No. 123, Greenville, eatpapistacos.com
Papi’s Augusta and Papi’s Terraza
21 Augusta St., Greenville, eatpapistacos.com
