Fourteen years ago, after the death of his wife, Jerry Marette, a chef from Arizona who dreamed of owning a restaurant, packed his bags and moved to Mexico City with his young daughter.

"Chloe won't have her mom again, but I'm going to do everything I can to help her grow up as if her mother were still alive," Jerry told East Valley, a local newspaper that was interested in learning about the experiences of single parents in Arizona. 

Jerry and Chloe traveled through Mexican towns and learned their first Spanish words. He was fascinated by the markets. He talked to vendors, asking questions about fish sourced from rivers and the sea, freshly fileted meat, fruits and chiles set out to dry like a multicolored mural over the stalls. "What I learned at his side was incredible," Chloe said.

Jerry spent most of his time with his 5-year-old daughter. Ten years after putting down roots in Mexico, he found the Tinder profile of Andrea Martinez, a Mexican film director, daughter of a Hidalgo photographer and a Canadian nurse.

She didn’t like social networking, so a friend helped her arrange a get-together with Jerry, a blue-eyed with blond disheveled hair. Cheerful and playful, he made jokes and faces all the time. She struggled to overcome her sense of isolation. For both it was like being hit by a wave. After that night in March 2016, they went out every day. Together they rediscovered love, shared longings and accompanied one another in each other's projects.

Jerry told her he had fallen in love when he saw her skating in the Metrobus lane one spring night on Insurgentes Avenue. That encounter changed both their lives. Soon after, the bristly-haired güero regained his old dream and opened his first restaurant.

Ilyana Martinez, Andrea’s sister, a designer from Toronto, drew the illustration that gave the restaurant its name: Gallo Güero. Jerry opened it on Colima Street in Colonia Roma, a tiny space where he served coffee, turkey and bacon sandwiches, fruit bars and the house specialty: delicious cinnamon rolls and a macha sauce with blueberries and sesame.

A short time later, as she was passing through Actopan Street on her way to Mixcoac, Andrea saw an ad for a rental space. She convinced the owner to remove the sign. Jerry loved it. It was spacious and was one street away from where the two of them lived.

The space was neglected and not attractive, but Jerry took a hammer, knocked down a wall, renovated the rooms and designed a wooden panel for the ceiling. He opened the restaurant in October 2018, with the music, decor, style and food he had envisioned for years. Andrea helped him with the shopping, paying the workers and bringing the flour for the cinnamon rolls.

Eleven days later, at 7 a.m., Jerry died of a heart attack at Andrea's side. He was 56 years old.

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Andrea’s memories after Jerry's death are fuzzy. Her daughter, her sisters and her friends propper her up with love, and his daughter and parents traveled from Arizona. Andrea organized a party to say goodbye. Together with Chloe, they decided to keep the restaurant, the dream of the Arizona chef.

Three deaths have marked the life of the filmmaker. Her father's, three days before the release of “Cycles,” her film narrating the 1956 cycling journey made by her father and uncle across the United States to Toronto. After living with Alzheimer's for 15 years, her mother died during the filming of “Watching the Birds,” in which Andrea recounted the fading of a woman's memory, which was inspired by her mother's illness and Andrea's fear of losing her memory at the age of 43. She reluctantly convinced Jerry to play the role of the husband, a smiling and patient man.

Jerry's death led her to her next film, "Tare," a road movie about two injured characters, which takes place over the course of one night. "Tare" is the button that returns a scale to zero, without erasing what was weighed before. "In other words, it's like starting over, without forgetting what we've been through," Andrea said. "It's a story of pain that has a lot in common with the pandemic because it weaves together human connections and the will to live with the pain of life.”

Jerry's playful spirit is present in the plans: "Tare" will be filmed during the pandemic and financed through collective contributions that will be rewarded with screen credits, appearances in the film and dinners at Gallo Güero. Its two protagonists, the film director and Tenoch Huerta, one of the most prominent Mexican actors, will direct, write, act and produce a film for the first time.

A scene from the film will be shot at Gallo Güero, on whose walls hang photographs of the chef with the eternal smile. The restaurant is full of Jerry: so much love, so many sensations, so much passion. On one wall is the blackboard where family and friends said goodbye to him. "See you, Captain," it read at one end, and in the center: "To our good American friend, for the memory of a free soul."