Juan-Elias “Juany” Riesco watched his city explode and his family’s empanada restaurant collapse during the summer of 2020, when riots broke out across the nation in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. But unlike many of his fellow Chicago small business owners, Riesco, who was 29 at the time, never bent the knee to Black Lives Matter, and never wavered in his faith.
The second son of immigrant parents, Riesco had helped transform his family’s tiny grocery store on the city’s west side into a popular restaurant. Players for the Chicago Bulls were known to frequent Nini’s Deli for its Cuban-Mexican fusion dishes, inspired by Mexico, where Riesco’s mother, Julie, was born, and his father’s homeland of Cuba.
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