Texas Monthly
I was born in 1944 in Little Mexico, which was located just north of downtown Dallas. At that time, the forties and earlier, Mexican restaurants often had a lot of Anglo customers. They would serve chicken-fried steaks, fried chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, mashed potatoes, green beans, dinner rolls.
Of course they would also offer basic Mexican food like enchiladas with chili gravy and tamales, but you couldn’t charge very much – it was expected to be cheap. And it wasn’t called Tex-Mex then, just Mexican food. Actually, some Anglos thought the term “Mexican” was offensive, so they would say, “Oh, we just love Spanish food.”
Dallas’s Mexican population was small, but it produced two influential chains, El Fenix (founded in 1918) and El Chico (in 1940). The two still exist. Martinez also learned about food from both sides of his family.
“I have fond memories of going to El Fenix and seeing the tortilla ladies making flour tortillas by hand. They wore colorful costumes, and if you were a kid, you could go up and watch and they’d give you a small ball of uncooked masa. You could eat it or take it back to the table and play with it – roll it into a little snowman or something. That was educational for the Anglo kids. The tortilla ladies were sharing a handmade product that was part of their culture.
I grew up with my grandmother’s cooking. She was from Kaufman, in East Texas, and my great-grandmother made tamales at the Kaufman County Fair. My father, who worked as a restaurant manager, was from San Antonio. He was a good cook and a good taster. He knew those San Antonio flavors, and his chili con carne was once sold at the State Fair of Texas. I use that recipe to this day. I guess my food is a combination of East Texas style and San Antonio style. Mexican food wasn’t as popular back then as it is now. In the sixties and seventies, a lot of Anglos ate Mexican food once a month. Then it got to be twice a month.
Dallas’s Mexican population was small, but it produced two influential chains, El Fenix (founded in 1918) and El Chico (in 1940). The two still exist. Martinez also learned about food from both sides of his family.
“I have fond memories of going to El Fenix and seeing the tortilla ladies making flour tortillas by hand. They wore colorful costumes, and if you were a kid, you could go up and watch and they’d give you a small ball of uncooked masa. You could eat it or take it back to the table and play with it – roll it into a little snowman or something. That was educational for the Anglo kids. The tortilla ladies were sharing a handmade product that was part of their culture.
I grew up with my grandmother’s cooking. She was from Kaufman, in East Texas, and my great-grandmother made tamales at the Kaufman County Fair. My father, who worked as a restaurant manager, was from San Antonio. He was a good cook and a good taster. He knew those San Antonio flavors, and his chili con carne was once sold at the State Fair of Texas. I use that recipe to this day. I guess my food is a combination of East Texas style and San Antonio style. Mexican food wasn’t as popular back then as it is now. In the sixties and seventies, a lot of Anglos ate Mexican food once a month. Then it got to be twice a month.
I was turned down by eleven banks before I finally got a loan. Every loan officer I talked to told me the same thing: “Oh, we did a restaurant loan back in 1952 and we lost our ass. We’re never doing that again.”
Finally the president of one bank did it because he liked me. He liked the ideas and thought it would be good for the bank– they had a lot of minority depositors but hadn’t made any minority loans. So I got an SBA loan for $100,000, plus I had $500 from selling all my musical instruments and equipment from the band I had been in. I leased a space in Old Town in the Village, which was a new shopping center at the time. There were a lot of high-earning singles that lived there.
When I was in the band, I had learned a lot about lighting and makeup and atmosphere at nightclubs and country clubs and parties. I made Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine the total package. When you walked in, it looked like an outdoor patio in Mexico with mountains in the background. I used blue lighting for the moonlight. There was a tree trunk inside that cast shadows to help with the realism. And there was piped-in music.
I didn’t have a lot of money so we were inventive. I found a carpet place selling shag carpet pieces in different colors and we put those in the cantina. (When tortilla chips fell on the carpet, we used garden rakes to get them out.)
I didn’t have a lot of money so we were inventive. I found a carpet place selling shag carpet pieces in different colors and we put those in the cantina. (When tortilla chips fell on the carpet, we used garden rakes to get them out.)
Then we took the cardboard tubes from the carpet rolls, cut them in half lengthwise, and painted them to look like weathered Mexican roof tiles.
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2 comments:
We need more of this kind of stories this is a great story Juanito GRACIAS...
Mariano's in Arlington was the jewel. The late night lizard crowds loved Cuquita's on Harry Hines in Dallas. Fort Worth, of course, had the fabled Joe T. Garcia's on the North Side.
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