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(cont. from GCC Newsletter September, Issue VI ‘Title’ by Sylvia Casares
When she found a restaurant for sale, she bought it. She cashed in part of her 401k plan, pooled her life savings, and became chef and owner almost overnight. She rolled up the sleeves on her chef’s coat and starting improving the food. She took one dish at a time, broke down the recipes, improved the quality and freshness of the ingredients, and reformulated the entire cooking process. Her kitchen started cooking from scratch in smaller batches to improve quality, using the freshest and best ingredients she could find. She implemented the rule in her kitchen that ‘there are no shortcuts when it comes to flavor’.
Knowing she had to set herself apart from the other 16,000 restaurants in Houston, she renamed her restaurant Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen, after her most famous menu items. Each enchilada she made reflected the different cooking traditions found north and south of the Rio Grande. This attention to detail gained respect, admiration and legitimacy for the oldest regional cuisine in the United States, and the nation’s first fusion food - Tex-Mex. Accolades from her customers and the media poured in.
Texas Monthly reported that she serves the “Best Beef Enchiladas, Best Flalutas, and Best Tres Leches” in Houston. Television Chef Rachael Ray said her food “was out of this world!” and when H Texas magazine anointed Casares “The Queen of Tex- Mex Cuisine”, she was positioned as the cuisine’s official spokesperson.
True to her roots, and fitting within her twenty year plan, Casares now owns two restaurants where she proudly serves the food she grew up eating. This proud heritage has set Casares apart in her recipe development where she serves the precise flavors of home - Tex Mex and interior Mexico recipes that have gained widespread recognition amongst food writers, foodies and people of Mexican heritage. She is bi-cultural, both in the culinary and the cultural realm of the Texas-Mexico border, and she is proud to represent her people and its past in the tasiest way possible - a plate of food.
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