By Jack Pasi

Hampton Beachcomber, September 4, 2015

[The following article is courtesy of the Hampton Beachcomber and Seacoast Online.]

The owners and staff of Lupe's 55. [Max Sullivan photo]

HAMPTON BEACH -- Family owned and operated Lupe's 55 recently opened for business in early June, providing a fresh and authentic Mexican cuisine for all to enjoy.

Owners Nicole Janvrin, of Manchester, and David Garza, of Indio, Calif., are very excited about the future of Lupe's 55 on Hampton Beach.

"So far we've gotten a great response from all the people here at the beach, they love it," Garza said. "We're basically cooking the food we grew up with, that we love. We wanted to bring it here and see how it goes. It's been going great."

The restaurant was originally supposed to be opened in Manchester, according to Janvrin but it didn't go through. Janvrin and Garza capitalized on the Hampton Beach location one day when they were at the beach and saw that the space was available for rent.

"The 55 comes from Johnny Divine on South Willow (Manchester, N.H.) and that was the original address of where we were going to first start, we filed an LLC," Garza said. "We decided to just go with the name and bring it to Hampton Beach."

"Lupe is short for Guadalupe, my mother who we named it after," Janvrin said. "She comes every week and makes the salsa for us. It's all family; nephews, my brothers, you know, we're all together."

Lupe's 55 is truly an authentic Mexican experience. "We put our love and heart into all the food," Garza said. "We do it all ourselves from scratch, we don't buy frozen boxes of empanadas, we sit here and make them by scratch every day. We don't even have a freezer, everything comes fresh every day."

The Yelp rating for Lupe's 55 is five stars with all good reviews, attesting to the freshness and authenticity that the owners proclaim.

"Not only that but it's our customer service, we like to make the people feel welcomed and hope they have a good eating experience while they're at the beach," Garza said.

The most popular item, according to Garza is the fish tacos. They sell for $4.99 and come with marinated haddock that's "flash-fried" along with cabbage slaw, cilantro, onions, tomatoes, sour cream, garnish and a lime.

An original drink they sell is their homemade coconut juice, called Horchata. It's made with rice, coconut, water, and cinnamon. The ingredients ferment for two days in order for the flavor to be taken out of the rice before it can be served to the customers.

"We get a lot of the locals and the workers," Garza said. "We even get the cooks from different restaurants that come and eat here and they're pretty regular. It lets you know you're doing something good."

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