Little Rico: A Bustling Hudson Hub With Healthful Good Food And Juices

Over the past year, Angelica Hernandez has quietly turned Little Rico, her small juice café and wellness bodega in the center of Hudson's Warren Street, into a bustling neighborhood hub. What's inside: healthful, quickly prepared meals, fresh cold-pressed juices, baked goods, pantry items, and an overwhelming sense of welcome. 

Hernandez says she’s trying to provide a menu and atmosphere that nourishes everyone inside. The offerings here, including the homemade pastry, are entirely gluten free and primarily vegetarian — but healthfulness doesn’t hinder Little Rico’s flavor. Accompanied by Hernandez’s line of cold-pressed juices, the dishes here manage to capture the nostalgic warmth of Latin American bodega staples with high-quality, as-local-as-possible ingredients. There are also coolers filled with juices (of course), grab-and-go cups of fruit or vegetables, and grains and items from local farms and food makers.

“My juice business was inspired by my tia Sonia passing away in 2008. It made me realize we have to take care of our bodies,” says Hernandez, sitting at a pastel table in her bright, fragrant shop – patrons bustling in and out nonstop on a gray Tuesday morning. “I’m not here to push things on people. I don’t need people to come in here and fit some ‘wellness’ mold. Come in and do what makes you happy.”

La Sonia with a plantain hashbrown

While its look is tranquil and stylish, Little Rico truly operates like a bodega, thanks primarily to Hernandez's intense work ethic. She and her small team open the doors at 7 a.m. daily, cold pressing juice, and baking and cooking up some unusual breakfasts at a reasonable price. Little Rico’s hours are unheard of for a new business in Hudson, where many eateries and shops are open only on and around the weekend. The bodega is open every day until 4 p.m., but to 7 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 5 p.m. on Sundays. It’s a lot, but Hernandez says she has a stream of breakfast regulars coming in the door at 7:05 and she wants to be there for them.

“I wake up excited to be here every day,” Hernandez says. “I didn’t get to play a lot as as a child. Now I get to play in this world I created. To do this I had to learn how to cook and bake, and now that kitchen is a place of freedom where I can express myself.”

Hernandez named her elevated morning sandwiches after her aunts. La Carmen is a classic bacon egg and cheese… except it’s Jacuterie bacon, organic pasture-raised eggs, sharp cheddar, avocado crema and chili flakes on an Our Daily Bread GF bun ($13). In La Sonia she replaces the bacon with sofrito black beans ($12). La Norma is the breakfast burrito version, filling a cassava wrap with the beans, egg and crema ($12). Customizing with add-ons is welcomed and encouraged. The big, slightly sweet, crunchy plantain hash brown is just $1 and great on the side but even better inside your sandwich or wrap.

There’s also lighter fair like coconut yogurt parfaits ($7) and overnight sunrise oats with coconut milk, sunflower butter and fresh fruit ($7). But if you are having a morning that requires filling up without regret there’s the Little Rico Breakfast Bowl with rice, beans, plantains, two eggs, roasted sazón  potatoes, avocado crema and hot sauce ($14).

For lunch, try Soup for the Soul, a blend of butternut squash with carrots, aromatics, and herbs with coconut milk and a Cocojune yogurt dollop ($10). There’s also smashed avocado and hummus toast with rainbow radish and pea shoots ($12), a big colorful daily salad with seasonal vegetables ($12), a sweet and savory wrap, a harvest bowl and chickpea guisado —  stewed spiced chickpeas and sweet potatoes over rice with plantains and sprouts ($14).

“We don’t make anything here we don’t want to eat,” Hernandez says. “The food here is influenced by my culture and really fun experimentation with my crew and our customers who come in and tell us what they want. It’s a really beautiful open conversation.”

With everything on offer from the kitchen, the baker's case (currently featuring GF apple spice doughnuts and banana bread), plus the fridges and shelves, it’s not surprising Hernandez is thinking of expanding, though she can't imagine giving up the great location in the center of the Hudson. 

Hernandez grew up in Queens. She has a big blended family and says her approach to cooking was instilled in her by her Puerto Rican mother and grandmother. Her parents and other relatives ran bodegas and restaurants in the city.

As a young adult, she was feeling burned out on life in the city, hustling multiple jobs in journalism, photography, modeling and bartending. She applied for an opening at Governor's Tavern in Hudson on a whim and was hired so she moved upstate and continued to hustle. Until COVID closed everything down she was working at Suarez Brewing, Lawrence Park, and Thyme and Co., where she also used the kitchen to cold press her line of Little Rico Juices, which she sold at farmers markets. When Thyme and Co. closed its doors, Hernandez decided she was going to go for it, take over the space and finally give her own concept a try.

“It was a huge risk for me to go for this but I remembered from my family, a little can go a long way,” she said. “I came into the space and I didn’t have much, but I thought I could do it.”

This was all during the height of COVID, of course. She planned and hunkerd down at home in the Livingston countryside and started a 120 square-foot garden. Those vegetables are now on the plates and in the glass at Little Rico.

“Growing my own food got me back to my roots, it reminds me of why I’m doing this,” says Hernandez, whose grandmother often took her back to the Puerto Rican farmland where she grew up. Now her grandmother and mother visit her at her little farm house and the bodega their history inspired.

The shop works because Hernandez works — all day every day —to create an atmosphere that customers and staff enjoy and feel a part of. Her other secrets to success, she says, is going to any and every Hudson dance party she can find and dancing as hard as she possibly can. It's her personal key to wellness.

Little Rico
437 Warren St, Hudson
(518) 965-8898
Open Monday to Thursday 7 a.m.- 4p.m., Friday 7 a.m.- 7 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m.-7 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m.-5p.m.