Ada Terrero, center, with daughter Alejandra, left, and her son two-month-old Xavier; behind her is Ada’s son Leonel, and at right is daughter Alicia and her daughter Ariana. Terrero has three businesses, including Ada’s Creations and El Macuto restaurant.

Broad Street is a colorful roadway with plenty of murals appearing on the sides of its buildings as it stretches from Providence to Cranston. It also has an amazing number of thriving food enterprises run by friendly, hard-working people who came from places far and wide.

There’s a strong female presence here, with women running their own businesses. Asking for the days they serve, many of them say six days and then quickly explained why with the same answer: “So we can go to church.” They might all head to different houses of worship, but they share in common a day for their faith.

Faith in the American dream also lives on Broad Street, and it’s nothing new. It’s been there before and is renewed every time a new business opens. Indeed Broad Street offers the old and the new, and all are entrepreneurial.

Because the street is so packed with food, today’s look is at just a few businesses including two markets and two restaurants. We’ll also meet a woman who runs three businesses under one roof. Next week we’ll look at other Broad Street destinations that create the fabric of this diversified neighborhood.

Along Broad Street, none is older than Tony’s Market at No. 771 which dates back to 1929. It’s run by Richard Harootunian, the third generation of Harootunian men.

His grandfather Donabed came to America to escape the genocide in Turkey, said Richard. He opened an outdoor fruit market in Providence where everyone called him Tony, a name more familiar to customers than Donabed, he added.

Eventually, he joined with Richard’s father and uncle and opened the family market. It was the Depression and his grandfather put business second to helping the neighborhood, recalled Richard.

“A family market helping families, that’s what we’ve been and what we are,” Richard said. A cashier piped in that no one would ever know how much Tony’s does to help in the neighborhood.

Once the market was established, meat became their specialty. But sandwiches emerged as a surprise specialty product.

It started innocently enough back in 1966 when a customer, actually a neighbor, Richard corrected, asked if they could make a sandwich with all their deli meat. Richard said they tore open a bag of rolls from the rack and made up a sandwich, and the businesses grew from there. Even today, they’ll get orders for 150 sandwiches for parties.

Richard began working at the market when he was 13. His mother would go to the hairdresser and he’d go to work with his father. His dad, Vasken, just retired in January at age 85. They don’t forget those who’ve passed on at Tony’s, though. Behind the cash register they have a remembrance wall with the death notices of customers who died in the past few years.

They get visitors too, said Richard. Displaced Rhode Islanders returning for a visit will come in to get their favorite sandwich or a Saugy package or two.

A portrait of his grandfather hangs over the deli, a painting done by a customer in the early ’60s perhaps best portraying the closeness customers feel with this family business.

One would never imagine what sits beyond the doors announcing Mekong Seafood at No. 314. At this market, there’s an entire aisle of teas, and an equally long one stocked with noodles from a variety of Asian countries. Bags of fusilli are found among them.

But it’s the long counter with ice that keeps chilled a world of crab, clams, squid, lobsters, shrimp in a variety of sizes, snails, tilapia, barracuda, catfish and the enormous red snapper. The prices are far below those of grocery store chains.

Van Doan came to Providence 27 years ago from Vietnam and, with her husband Chan Truong, opened Mekong and started small. They have expanded it to a large market specializing in fish, but stocking plenty of Asian and Spanish foodstuffs.

It’s a lot of work to stock and run the market, she admits. They pick up the fresh fish every day and do all the cleaning and filleting, but they have built up a solid business.

It is an ethnic market as well as a fish market, with many spices and treats from all over the world. There are shelves with casual china, pots and bamboo steamers and a wall of candy treats among products from Thailand, Japan, Korea and beyond.

New to the street is Lucy Carrasco, who came from the Dominican Republic was she was eight years old. She opened her El Meson Restaurant at No. 549 just five months ago. It’s her first restaurant. She does all the cooking and learned from her grandmother Maria Peralta. Her specialties are offered daily for lunch and dinner and she has a wine and beer license.

A dinner might include a steak with plantain and salad, shrimp mofongo with mashed plantains and garlic butter or Cubano sandwiches with roasted pork and ham paired with a side of fried potatoes. On Friday and Saturday she makes her signature paella, which is loaded with crab, lobster and shrimp all mixed with rice, tinged a lovely yellow from a pepper and tomato sauce. Plate prices start at $5 and increase by size of the dish.

Already Carrasco, who is helped by family members including her sister Giselle Carrasco and son Alex Hernandez, has found catering to be a solid part of her business with offices calling early in the day to order for lunch and other events. Her desserts are also home made and include rice pudding, bread pudding, flan and some three milk custards.

Elea Beaie wears the flowing colorful dress of her native Liberia as she cooks at her Elea’s Restaurant at No. 711. She’s been there for 12 years, serving a menu that varies by the day. She also offers certain weekly specialties (oxtail stew on Monday) and typical dishes like lentils with meat.

She starts cooking what she calls her “international food” at 7:30 a.m. “It has to be international because we serve Spanish people and Liberian people,” Beaie said. “Black, white, all people come here.”

She also has customers who come from all over the state, including Newport. She caters as well.

When Ada Terrero bought the building at No. 1137 six years ago, it was the realization of a dream that started in her home in 1983. Back then, surrounded by her children, daughters Alejandra and Alicia and son Leonel, she would do baking and cooking at home. Each child had a chance to stir or mix what ever she was cooking, so they were all involved, said Alejandra.

Ada’s Creations is her goodie shop. There are loads of desserts including cakes, cupcakes and a rotating stand with a daily menu of treats. There are also nice booths to sit there and enjoy sandwiches and meat pies sold at lunch.

But that tiny space is only one of her three businesses. She also has a large catering business and a function space on the second floor of the large building, where she can host showers, receptions, political events or any other kind of gathering.

It is on the first floor, next to her pastry shop, where her Dominican heritage is honored at El Macuto, a new, lovely restaurant that opens daily at 3 p.m.

Wall murals reflect life in the Dominican Republic. People take a basket to do all their shopping there, Terrero said. They stop at markets and fill their baskets. How they cook on an open fire is also reflected in another mural.

The full bar is called La Timaja, which refers to the large jugs of water which are stored in homes.

“I want people to feel like they are in the country when they come in here,” she said.

But that rural life seems very far away indeed from the busy business she sees thriving on Broad Street.

gciampa@projo.com