For a brief time in the 1960s, Sammy Patrenella owned a burger joint called Sammy's Burgers A Go-Go, but the restaurant was short-lived. In 1991, his son suggested he give the burger business another try, so he turned the family homestead into a burger and meatball sub shop.
"My wife started making the marinara sauce for the meatball sandwiches," he recalls. "And then she made pasta, then lasagna, and the next thing you know...I can't remember the last time we served a hamburger."
Even fairly recently, though, Patrenella says, the area where Patrenella's sits off Washington Avenue was a bad neighborhood. He recalls that ABC came to town in 1991 to film a segment about the improvements in Houston inner-city neighborhoods, and the mayor suggested the crew speak with Sammy.
"The interviewer said, 'What made you come in this barrio?'" Patrenella remembers. "And I said I didn't have enough money to open in the Galleria. And the mayor yelled 'Cut!' So we changed it to 'It's my roots and I wanted to give something back to where I grew up.'"
Today Patrenella is still just as spunky, and he's still in the restaurant every day. His son is in charge of private parties and relieves his father at night, and one of his daughters does the payroll and insurance and keeps the books.
"I guess you'd call it a family affair," Patrenella says. "And here's the best part: When I wake up in the morning, it's 48 steps to the cash register."
The Cordúas
Patriarch Michael Cordúa didn't intend to be a restaurateur. He was born in Managua, Nicaragua, and initially came to Houston to study economics and finance at Texas A&M University, graduating in 1980. By that time, the revolution in Nicaragua had made it a dangerous place to return to, so Cordúa started working for the International Gulf Chartering company at the Port of Houston. He was a port captain and shipping agent, which he enjoyed, but when the oil boom went bust in the mid-'80s, the shipping company was liquidated. Cordúa found himself with a wife and young family, a lot of free time, and no solid career path.
"The owner of the company closed down," Cordúa explains. "I didn't see myself out of a job. I saw myself out of a career. I knew cooking was what I loved to do. I had a hard time believing that, but it's true."
Cordúa had taught himself to cook shortly after moving to Houston because he missed the food of his home country. Suddenly without a job, he decided to take a gamble and open a small restaurant to showcase the food of his homeland.
On August 8, 1988, Cordúa opened his first restaurant, Churrascos, even though he had no formal training in the industry or in a kitchen. In spite of the fact that the food won high praise from critics, the restaurant lost money initially, because people were more accustomed to Tex-Mex cuisine than Latin American food. In 1989, however, Churrascos made Esquire magazine's "Best New Restaurants in America" list, and people began to take notice of the 130-seat Latin American joint.
"When we opened using the Spanish word churrascos, people assumed it was Mexican," Cordúa says. "There was no genre of Latin American. When we were opening, Houston had very good steak, very good barbecue, good Tex-Mex and some Italian, but very little beyond that."
Thanks to the popularity of the first restaurant, Cordúa opened a second, larger Churrascos in 1990, emphasizing the namesake churrasco meat that he is credited with introducing to the United States. In 1994, Cordúa was named a best new chef by Food & Wine magazine, and he was later inducted into the Food & Wine Hall of Fame.
Following the success of Churrascos, Cordúa decided to go a bit more upscale with Américas, which was named restaurant of the year by Esquire in 1993. Later came Amazón Grill in 1999, Artista in 2002 and another Churrascos.
In 2007, Cordúa's son, David, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Paris, decided to join the family business, though, as with his father, cooking wasn't his ultimate goal, either.
"For David, it was seen as a punishment," Cordúa says. "If he missed curfew, he'd have to go peel plantains. He thought he was going to be a rock-and-roll man, not a chef."
It wasn't until college, when David found himself working in a soup kitchen, his father says, that he "discovered the power of food."
Together, the father-and-son team has expanded the business into eight Houston restaurants and a hugely successful catering company. The fourth Churrascos opened in Gateway Memorial City in late fall 2013.