The owner of a popular clothing boutique in the Pearl District is branching out with a new concept down the road at Mother Road Market.
Carolina Gonzalez Hammock transformed an 11-foot-by-14-foot booth near the front of the food hall into a shop that honors her Mexican culture. Bodega offers several cuisine options along with everyday essentials.
“It really is more of a reflection of how I grew up in my childhood, ‘cause my family immigrated from Mexico, moved here and they opened up a couple of Mexican food restaurants,” Gonzalez Hammock said. “So, I very much grew up in the kitchen of a Mexican food restaurant. So I knew I wanted food, and I knew I wanted a really heavy emphasis on culture.”
Bodegas are historically run by immigrant families with a mix of items. It felt relevant to Mother Road Market and her upbringing, she said. The shop is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday at 1124 S. Lewis Ave.
Inside Bodega you can find café de olla (Mexican coffee), Asian noodles, Italian pasta, Hot Girl Pickles and more. She says the coffee reminds her of when her grandma used to babysit while her parents were working at the restaurant.
“Every time I see it I think of her, and she’s no longer with us,” she said. “It’s just keeping the memory and the culture present and also being able to share it and be like, ‘Wow, there’s so many people out there drinking Mexican coffee, because it’s here, it’s available and there’s a history or a story tied to it.’”
Gonzalez Hammock works full time in the oil and gas industry, but during the pandemic she knew she wanted more connection and community in her life. That is how Umber, a curated women’s clothing boutique at 1416 E. 11th St., came to life.
Late last year, Gonzalez Hammock learned about an opportunity in Mother Road Market’s “Limited Time Only” space, which is a corner-front space that features a new business every 30 days.
“I thought, oh my gosh, that would be so great to have a little bit more visibility in a different market. And so I reached out to Mother Road Market, and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’d love to have you,’” she said.
She knew Umber’s fashion boutique concept wouldn’t do as well inside Mother Road Market.
“Most people are here for under an hour on their lunch breaks. There’s no room for a dressing room, that kind of thing,” she said. “So I started to think, what would do well here? Like what could I do that is still an extension of Umber, but also feels true to who I am and what I want my story to say.”
Gonzalez Hammock hosted her first Bodega pop-up in March before relocating it to her current space earlier this month. Her experiences across different industries have informed her ambitions for the store.
“I do think that working in oil and gas as, like, a female Mexican-American kind of also gave me that little push of like ‘I can do hard things,’ even though I’m the minority in certain markets,” she said.
She said her story is similar to people with Mexican parents who moved to the U.S. and raised children here.
“I felt like I really have to work a little bit harder to maintain that connection to my story and my parents’ story and who I am and what that means and that’s so important to me as I get older,” she said.
One of her top sellers is a cookbook by Karla Zazueta titled “Norteña: Authentic Family Recipes from the North of Mexico,” which Gonzalez Hammock loves because her family is from north of Mexico.
“Even though I am in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I’m still very much Mexican,” she said.
This article was produced as part of a partnership between the Tulsa Flyer and La Semana, a Tulsa-based bilingual Spanish-English newspaper serving Latino communities in Oklahoma.
News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
