ELK GROVE, CA (MPG) - Marie Mertz, also known as Maria, owns what she considers more than a restaurant. For emphasis, she uses the Spanish, calling her business a “restaurante con causa” or “restaurant with a cause.”

Todo Un Poco is her brainchild eatery, opened in 1999, off of Laguna Boulevard in Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento down Interstate 5. She said, in a recent interview, “I hope people take the time and attention to visit this side of Elk Grove, which is Laguna West.” Mertz considers Todo Un Poco to be a destination restaurant.

Mertz also calls her venture a “restaurant with social responsibility.” The evidence? The restaurant was the site of the initial planning meeting for the City of Elk Grove’s Multicultural Diversity Festival, a celebration with dancing, music and food. The festival takes place this year on Sept. 14 at The Center at District56.

Another cause of Mertz’s is eliminating food waste. She said, “My goal in the restaurant is to have cero (zero, in Spanish) organic waste. We have a partnership with a local garden.” It’s called Cliff’s Garden, which is in Elk Grove on Stone Lake Road and named after Cliff Wilcox. The food waste is fed to the chickens there. Mertz said, “We use food entirely as much as we can.”

She recommends respecting food because not everybody has food, and that there are a lot of people facing food insecurities.

Mertz said her philosophy is, “Buying less. Cooking less. Repurposing as much as we can.” She uses carrot shavings in salad dressing, for example, rather than throwing them out.

She gets much of her produce from the same Cliff’s Garden, making theirs a two-way relationship.

Mertz uses the produce in cuisine that she does not consider to be fusion, expressing that, “Sometimes fusion is confusion.” She considers her dishes to be “integration,” rather, between Italian and Mexican dishes, for example.

There is a chicken mole pizza. She said, “I use chocolate Abuelita. That’s how I learned from my grandmother. It takes us three days to make the mole sauce. … It’s Mexico on a plate.”

And what of Mexico and India? 

Manni Singh, Mertz’s husband, is from India’s Punjab region and runs the front of house. They even have a Punjabi pizza. (Singh speaks Punjabi.)

Mertz happens to speak Italian, as well, but majored in business and Spanish literature at Sacramento State University, specializing in magical realism or “realismo mágico,” which combines fantasy and reality.

She originally came to the area on scholarship to UC Davis, studying ESL for a year. Mertz expressed, “I didn’t speak English when I came here.”

She also expresses herself in the restaurant through the language of music. Her favorite genre is opera but she changes what music plays “according to the food,” she said.

Her education is not limited to only language, though: Mertz was one of 15 cooks to be selected to attend the James Beard Foundation’s Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change a few years ago, which, according to the foundation’s website, “educates established chefs about the effective advocacy skills that can be leveraged to create food-system change at the local, regional, and federal levels.”

Mertz’s food system benefits even wild animals.

In a way that might seem magical to some, she plays music for a squirrel that can hear the music outside the restaurant’s entrance. Certain music allegedly attracts the squirrel — named Mama — to the front doors, and other music repels the animal. Mertz feeds Mama almonds as a treat outside, giving her restaurant cause beyond being just a restaurant. 

“Restaurante con causa,” indeed.

Todo Un Poco is located at 9080 Laguna Main St., Suite 1A, Elk Grove. It is open for dinner from 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays to Sundays.