Tex-Mex cuisine is a regional American cuisine that originates from the culinary creations of Tejano people. It has spread from border states such as Texas and others in the Southwestern United States to the rest of the country. It is a subtype of Southwestern cuisine found in the American Southwest.
The Original Ninfa's on Navigation is a popular Mexican restaurant located at 2704 Navigation Boulevard in Houston, Texas. The restaurant serves both Tex-Mex and Mexican cuisine. The Original Ninfa's was started by Ninfa Rodríguez Laurenzo, a Mexican-American woman, in a tortilla factory. Ninfa Laurenzo became a full-time restaurateur and the tortilla factory closed. Mama Ninfa is widely credited with popularizing the fajita among Houstonians.
Taco Management LLC, doing business as Taco Bueno, is a U.S.-based, quick service restaurant chain specializing in Tex-Mex-style cuisine. The company is headquartered in Farmers Branch, Texas, in the Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan area. Its first location opened in Abilene, Texas in 1967. The food chain has locations in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Don Pablo's was an American chain of Tex-Mex restaurants founded in Lubbock, Texas, in 1985. The menu featured Tex-Mex items, made-from-scratch salsa, tortillas and sauces, and a range of other Mexican specialties. At one time, this chain had as many as 120 locations throughout the United States and was the second largest full-service Mexican restaurant chain within the United States during the late 1990s, second only to Chi-Chi's. The chain had 34 restaurants in 14 states when it was acquired in 2014 by Food Management Partners. By October 2016, the chain was reduced to 12 restaurants in 9 states, 6 restaurants in 4 states by July 2018, 5 restaurants in 3 states by September 2018, and later 3 restaurants in 3 states by November 2018. The remaining restaurants in the struggling chain gradually and quietly closed over the next seven months until the last restaurant in Deptford Township, New Jersey, finally closed on June 23, 2019.
El Chico is a restaurant chain in the Southern United States. The first restaurant opened in 1940 in Oak Lawn, in Dallas, Texas. There are 16 locations. The restaurant serves a variety of Tex-Mex dishes.
Pancho's Mexican Buffet is a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants in the United States. In 2017, the owners began closing stores due to poor performance, and developed a small store concept named "Cuban Cafe". There are currently 2 locations in the Houston area and three locations in the DFW area.
On The Border Mexican Grill & Cantina is a chain of Tex-Mex food casual dining restaurants located in the United States and South Korea. The chain and brand name is owned by Argonne Capital Group.
Dallas is a city in Texas, United States.
El Charrito is a brand of Tex-Mex frozen foods. The brand formerly produced TV dinners. The word is Spanish for "little cowboy". The brand was introduced in 1980 by the Campbell Taggart company, who owned the El Chico restaurant chain.
Maria Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo, born with the family name Rodriguez, was an American restaurateur from Houston, Texas, who founded the restaurant Ninfa's. Laurenzo started out running a single taco stand in Houston, Texas.
Little Mexico is a former neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, encompassing the area bordered by Maple Avenue, McKinney Avenue and the MKT Railroad. Formerly a Polish Jewish neighborhood, it was settled by a wave of Mexican immigrants beginning about 1910, and was recognized as Little Mexico by 1919, becoming a center of a Mexican-American community life in the city that lasted into the early 1980s, with a peak of population in the 1960s. Pike Park and a few structures are the remnants of the historic neighborhood, redeveloped as Uptown, including the Arts and West End Districts.
Downtown Dallas is the central business district (CBD) of Dallas, Texas, United States, located in the geographic center of the city. It is the second-largest business district in the state of Texas. The area termed "Downtown" has traditionally been defined as bounded by the downtown freeway loop, bounded on the east by I-345 (although known and signed as the northern terminus of I-45 and the southern terminus of US 75, on the west by I-35E, on the south by I-30, and on the north by Woodall Rodgers Freeway.
Texan cuisine is the food associated with the Southern U.S. state of Texas, including its native Southwestern cuisine influenced Tex-Mex foods. Texas is a large state, and its cuisine has been influenced by a wide range of cultures, including Tejano/Mexican, Native American, Creole/Cajun, African-American, German, Czech, Southern and other European American groups.
Maggie Rita's Tex-Mex Grill & Bar is a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston. For several years, Maggie Rita's was a restaurant chain with a license co-owned by Carlos Mencia and Santiago Moreno of Suave Restaurant. In January 2013, Moreno closed the last two locations they owned. Tony Shannard owns the only remaining Maggie Rita's restaurant, which is situated in Houston's JPMorgan Chase Tower.
Molina's Cantina is a Tex-Mex restaurant chain in Houston, Texas. As of 2022, Molina's is the oldest still-operating Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston.
Mariano Martinez is an American inventor, entrepreneur, restaurateur, and creative artist. In Dallas, Texas, in 1971, he adapted a slurpee machine to making margaritas and dubbed it "The World’s First Frozen Margarita Machine". That machine is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution.
Esparza's Tex Mex Cafe, or simply Esparza's, was a Tex-Mex restaurant in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Opened by Martha and Joe Esparza in 1990, the restaurant operated for more than 24 years before closing in January 2014. Its unusual menu included buffalo tostadas, ground ostrich and nopalitos, several varieties of tongue, beef brisket, and more traditional options such as enchiladas, quesadillas, tacos and tamales. Esparza's was one of Portland's most popular restaurants during the 1990s and was named "Restaurant of the Year" by The Oregonian in 1992.
There is a rapidly growing Mexican-American population in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
La Salsa is a chain of fast-casual Tex Mex restaurants founded in Los Angeles, California in 1979, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and is owned by Canadian franchisor MTY Food Group. The chain emphasizes fresh ingredients, and each restaurant features a self-serve salsa bar.
Toddie Lee Wynne Sr. (1896-1982) was a Dallas-based real estate developer and oil investor who was best known for his funding the first private rocket to space, in being a co-developer of Six Flags Over Texas, and in helping to bring Tex-Mex food to the United States. Wynne grew up in Dallas, where he graduated from the Terrill School for Boys, which later became St. Mark's School of Texas. Much of Wynne's business involvements involved partnerships, generally with family members and with Clint Murchison Jr.
