In Spanish, manitas is diminutive for hands, but also a slang and affectionate term for little sisters. Las Manitas is co-owned by Cynthia and Lidia Pérez, siblings closest in age from a family of nine children. Operating in the downtown area, just blocks down the street from the State Capitol and right smack in the middle of the financial district of Austin, Las Manitas has been in existence on the 200 block of Congress Avenue since 1981.

The idea of opening a restaurant came to Lidia and Cynthia out of necessity. In the mid 70’s, while in college, they and their friends and two roommates would complain about the lack of decent places that served good Mexican food, the kind they were used to eating back home. They always threatened that one day they were going to open a restaurant so they could serve exactly the Mexican food they kept looking for.

They were already getting basic training as waitresses at the Back Door Café on the East Side of Austin when, one day, after a softball game, a team member and friend told them to stop so much talk and just start making tacos. She dared them to get up early next morning to go deliver breakfast tacos at her office building. And so, thereafter, the orders poured in. Dave Resendez, owner of the Back Door, lent them the commercial kitchen required by the Health Department. All four friends would get up at 5:30 a.m., cook up a batch of tacos, and run out the door, two to their “real” jobs as teacher and nurse, and Lidia to her business administration classes at UT. Cynthia, who had already graduated with a degree in sociology from UT would do the delivery route to the office buildings from her Volkswagen. When Lidia got out of her early morning classes at UT, she would set up her taco cart on the “drag” strip in front of the university. Soon after that they were going back into the kitchen by midmorning, after selling out the breakfast tacos, to cook up batches of lunch tacos to deliver or sell on the drag.

After two years of selling tacos on the streets, Lidia found the space they presently occupy for a rent of $250 a month. Mostly patronized by winos and derelicts and coffee drinkers from the Salvation Army that was located around the corner, the downtown was quite different back then. Between the four partners they managed to pull together the $10, 000 needed to buy the equipment inside the old and defunct Avenue Café. After weeks of strenuous work at cleaning the place, they were finally ready to open in October, 1981. By the end of the first year the two business partners opted out of the business. Neither one of them ever envisioned that running a restaurant would be so hard and backbreaking.

Cynthia and Lidia continued on their own, making Las Manitas a space where artists, activists, and politicians meet and strategize, while grabbing a quick breakfast or lunch. As the years passed, and the downtown underwent a boom in construction in the mid and late 80’s, high rise buildings went up around them, bringing more employees to the downtown area and more customers who were seeking Las Manitas’ good, cheap and quick service. Mostly, they seek the ambiance of activism and networking, which is what the sisters know how to do best.