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In January, when many still thought the coronavirus was a remote problem, Jesus Roman Melendez took his family to his hometown of Mexico City for the first time in seven years.
They spent a morning in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of canals where they rented a colorful boat, hired a mariachi band to float alongside them for a while, and bought micheladas from passing barges. They visited his parents’ graves in the town of La Magdalena Tlatlauquitepec three hours southeast of Mexico City, where, at the age of 17, after seven years of work street vending and two years after he started dating the woman who would become his wife, he bought his mother a piece of land to build a house on.
“Every time he told me that story, we’d get very emotional,” says his son, Jesus, 19. “I was just so inspired by him.”
At 23, Melendez crossed the border into the U.S., and for the past 20 years, before his death on April 1 at age 49 from complications of COVID-19, he worked as a cook at Nougatine, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s casual fine-dining restaurant on the ground floor of the Trump International Hotel and Tower. New York magazine’s food publication Grub Street called Melendez the “backbone” of the storied restaurant. His children remember him as a man who worked hard, but never lost sight of the reason he woke up at 4 a.m. on working mornings to make the long commute from Queens to 1 Central Park West.
“ “When I was little, he was my idol. He was the definition of a good father figure.” ”
“He would always make time for us,” said his daughter, Yustin Roman, 21, who worked with him at Nougatine part-time for the past four years, until the restaurant closed on March 15 because of the pandemic. “He would always find the energy to take us to karate, and my sister to ballet. He’d always go to our school events, every parent-teacher conference.”
One of her fondest memories was of the family gatherings he’d organize in nearby Forest Park, cooking for aunt and uncles, cousins and in-laws on the public grills. Tacos were his park specialty, though he’d always make sushi for Yustin on her birthday, and was famous in family circles for his birria beef stew.
“When I was little, he was my idol,” said his daughter Alison Roman, 15. “He was the definition of a good father figure. Everybody in my family would say that when I was a baby I would wait for him to get home so he would feed me.”
Though pay as a cook, even at an upscale spot like Nougatine is not great—the family had to set up a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses— he was keenly aware of how far he had come, and how much further he wanted his kids to go.
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“We would always talk about his life,” Alison said. “We would chill on the bed and talk and talk, and conversate about anything. He’d tell me stories about his past, like how hard it was for him as a child because he didn’t have a lot of money.”
Melendez had grown up poor, sometimes homeless. His first house, according to his son, was made of cardboard. Today, Yustin is enrolled at John Jay School of Criminology and hopes to make detective someday. Jesus is studying to be a paramedic, and Alison is enrolled in the pre-med stream of her high school.
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“He’s somebody that made it out of the mud,” his son said. “He not only built a house for his own mother, but came over here and got us a house, put a roof over our heads.”
“He never complained about having to go to work,” Yustin added. “He actually liked it when he was busy. He liked the culinary world, and he was really passionate about the dishes that he made. Everybody at his job has been texting me about how much he helped them to grow. My dad was a very bright soul, he wanted to help everybody.”
Melendez was predeceased by his parents, Gaudencio Melendez and Innocencia Roman. In addition to his three children, he is survived by three sisters, one brother, and his wife of 31 years, Miriam Reyes, who also tested positive for COVID-19 and is now recovering.
