When the program started, there wasn't any Mexican food in Muleshoe. Irma saw an opportunity. "I told Jesse, 'Let's buy a tortilla machine.'" They spent their savings bringing a tortilla machine up from the Valley and setting it up in a tin-roofed building on the east side of Muleshoe. When sales were slow, Jesse would peddle tortillas door to door. Before long, they were selling barbacoa on weekends to go with the tortillas. Then they added a few tables and the tortilla factory was renamed Leal's Mexican Restaurant.
The Muleshoe Leal's relocated to its current location on American Boulevard in 1968. There are now six Leal's Mexican Restaurants, all owned by members of the Leal family. Along with the one in Muleshoe, there are two in Clovis, New Mexico, one in Plainview, one in Henrietta and one in Amarillo. All six locations serve tortillas and tortilla chips manufactured by Leal's Tortilla Factory in Muleshoe.
When I finished mopping up the red chile with tortillas, the tiny, soft-spoken Irma passed me a manila envelope. Inside I found a stack of handwritten letters from Leal's customers.
The one written by Heriberto Mendoza, a former bracero, told the story of a day in 1960 when Mendoza's boss, a local farmer, dropped him off at Leal's on his day off. With no way to get back to the fields, Mendoza had to hitch a ride with Irma's husband Jesse, who loaded him up with enough barbacoa and tortillas to last all week. Forty-eight years later, Mendoza, who is now a grandfather, still remembered that kindness.
"I got married and made Muleshoe my home..." the former farmworker wrote in his letter. "Now I take my children's children to Leal's."
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"Puffy tacos," which are all the rage in San Antonio and Austin lately, have been served at Caro's in Rio Grande City since 1937, when Modesta Caro opened the place. I visited Caro's a few years ago. It serves the best-preserved example of old-fashioned Tex-Mex I have ever encountered. Unfortunately, Rio Grande City, which is situated on an isolated bend in the river across from Camargo, Tamaulipas, is a long way to drive for a taco.
But Modesta Caro's daughter Maria and her husband John Whitten opened another Caro's on Blue Bonnet Circle in Fort Worth in 1954. And today their son, John Jr., still runs it. The Fort Worth Caro's has preserved the same family tradition for fine Tex-Mex. "No steam tables, microwaves, or can openers," is the restaurant's slogan.
The fresh-fried puffed taco shells at Caro's in Fort Worth are just as good as the original. (Get the chicken tacos — the beef filling is bland.) The restaurant also serves the only decent version of spaghetti with chili con carne I have ever eaten in Texas. The restaurant, which is decorated with deer heads and old calendars, has a time capsule appeal that serves to make their modernized entrées, like grilled salmon with crab and Caribbean pork chops, look incongruous.
The signature item at both Caro's locations is the basket of puffy tostadas placed on every table when you walk in. They are made by cutting a fresh-pressed tortilla into pie-shaped eighths and frying them fresh. The basket of puffed-up "chips" tastes incredible with salsa and chunky guacamole. And these chewy hot masa wedges make the best nachos in the state.
Caro's is a newcomer in Fort Worth compared to the Original Mexican Eats Café, which was opened by the Pineda family of Waco in 1926. The murals on the walls, the tin ceiling and some of the decorations at the Camp Bowie restaurant go back more than 50 years — and so do some of the employees.
The restaurant used the "Original" formula — it targeted an Anglo audience. The Original of Fort Worth became a favorite haunt of Fort Worth bluebloods including Amon Carter and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's son Elliott. President Roosevelt raised the profile of Tex-Mex when he ate at the Original with his son Elliott during a visit to Fort Worth in 1937. If you want to sample real old-fashioned Tex-Mex, order what FDR ordered, now known as the "Roosevelt Special." It's a fried-to-order chalupa shell topped with beans and cheese, a crispy beef taco and a cheese enchilada in chili con carne topped with a fried egg.
Cheese enchiladas served in chili con carne — not thin, meatless chili gravy, or authentic enchilada sauce — are the hallmark of real Tex-Mex, according to 78-year-old Fort Worth sportswriter and Tex-Mex expert Dan Jenkins. What else does he look for in a great Tex-Mex restaurant? "There isn't a goddamned fajita within ten miles of it," he told me.
