It’s no secret that women make up more than half the hospitality workforce. However, you’re more likely to find a male senior manager or executive chef. That’s not the case at Jackson House, which moved from Dover to Middletown in November 2024. Hope Lopez co-owns the restaurant with business partner Heidy Cantoran. Lopez’s daughter, Selena Alvarez, handles the bar, and Chamaigne Stone is the queen of the kitchen.
Those who know Lopez aren’t surprised. The CEO of Blue Mezcal Group and the Delaware Restaurant Association board member is accustomed to breaking barriers. She owns four El Azteca Mexican Restaurants, from Middletown to Rehoboth Beach, but passionately pursues new concepts.
For instance, Jackson House offers an elevated take on comfort food. Stone has created a menu featuring passion-fruit-glazed salmon; a rack of lamb with polenta, garlic chips, and lamb jus; and grilled cheese on garlicky Texas toast. The menu is the same at lunch and dinner, and there’s also a brunch menu.
Meanwhile, Alvarez’s craft cocktail menu includes Honey UR Nuts, made with Nelson Bros. Bourbon, honey, and orange bitters, and Pour Decisions, which includes hibiscus-sweetened water, lime, serrano pepper, simple syrup, and Bad Hombre Silver Tequila (the brand that Lopez and Cantoran started).
This team has no shortage of ideas.
Creating outside the cantina
It helps that Lopez grew up in the industry. The youngest of 11 children, she was born in California but raised in Roanoke, Virginia, where her father opened a Mexican restaurant in 1986. The concept was a novelty in that area. “We were the only Hispanic kids in school,” she recalls. The restaurant, El Rodeo, is still in business, with multiple locations.
When Lopez’s father wouldn’t let her run a restaurant, she moved to Delaware, where two brothers had opened the first La Tolteca in the state. She became a server and manager, but “the idea was always to have my own restaurant,” she says.
She and Cantoran opened El Azteca Dover in 2011. (It was a La Tolteca before the partners established the El Azteca brand.) A Camden location followed in 2014, one in Rehoboth in 2016, and another in Middletown in February 2020. The partners work well together, Lopez says. “I am the creative mind, and he handles the dayto-day operations.”
But she had an itch to do something new. “I was bored [with Mexican restaurants] and wanted a challenge. When this location opened, everything fell into place.”
Lopez was familiar with the Governor’s Café on Kings Highway in Dover, a coffeehouse in a 19th-century building on the National Register of Historic Places. But one day, she drove up for lunch, and the building was closed. The Victorian was just what she needed.
The perfect pivot
The downtown Dover restaurant was initially named 1857 Jackson House for the building’s construction date. Stone joined the project as the executive chef. The Culinary Institute of America graduate had worked in her native New Jersey, New York, and Maryland before moving to Delaware, where her sister lives.
Stone realized there was an untapped niche for her style in central Delaware. “I showcase ingredients that some people overlook…and we put our spin on them,” she explains. Take, for instance, beet baba ghanoush, which inspired one Dover reporter’s headline: “Beet-ing the Odds.” It’s currently part of the dip trio, which includes whipped feta topped with zhug, a Yemenite hot sauce with coriander, and roasted garlic hummus with sun-dried tomato oil.
Alvarez, who also worked in the Dover location, takes an equally artisan approach to the drink menu. She grew up in the business, and when she moved to New York to pursue fashion design, she wound up behind a bar with an exceptional craft cocktail program. “They taught me everything I know about mixology,” she says. “When 1857 Jackson House opened, I said, ‘Please, let me help you with the cocktails.’ They let me have total creative freedom, which was awesome.”
Like Stone, Alvarez wants customers to go outside their comfort zone with scratch preparations. She makes the hibiscus tea and the serrano pepper syrup for the Pour Decisions. And, of course, she uses Bad Hombre Tequila, which boasts a stylized version of Cantoran’s face on the label; his signature bushy beard is an agave plant.
The Dover restaurant sat 66 customers, which presented a problem when people wanted to book an event; the restaurant had to close to the public or turn down the gig. Lopez’s real estate agent turned her on to the former Metro location in Middletown, which has 160 seats, outdoor seating, and a banquet area.
Staples, seasonal dishes, and social hours
The larger kitchen let Stone expand her menu. Certain items, such as chicken roulade and the rack of lamb, are staples. Others, including scallops, have seasonal sides. For instance, Stone’s Solstice Scallops feature jumbo lump crab, roasted butternut squash, and risotto. Jackson House also has a lengthy list of sandwiches and wraps, as well as a gyro—a hit in Dover that made the move north. The extensive happy hour menu includes chicken pot stickers; burger sliders; wings with 10 sauce options; and, interestingly, cheese curds.
The space only required new paint and wallpaper to create a look that Lopez calls “Instagramable.” There are jewel-toned fabrics; exposed brick walls; brick glass; and greenery on the floor, on the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. Opening the restaurant in both towns has been a learning experience. “Jackson House really taught us a lot, and we’ve learned about aesthetics, trends, and plating,” she says.
Consequently, she wants to rebrand El Azteca locations to the more elevated Blue Mezcal. Why mess with success? The El Azteca locations have the same menu—a copy-and-paste approach that Lopez learned from her father. But too many Mexican restaurants share the same menu items, she notes. “It’s a very delicate move,” she acknowledges of the change. “To do it right is going to take time.” The Middletown El Azteca may be the first to switch over.
But her team is ready. As Jackson House proves, no one is putting Lopez, Alvarez, or Stone in a culinary corner, and as a female CEO and “Delaware Today” Delaware Women in Business honoree, Lopez is an ideal role model for female entrepreneurs.
In 2022, she received an award from Spur Impact, which noted her motto: “Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.”
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