BROWNSVILLE — Long before she was the “Enchilada Queen” of Houston, Sylvia Casares was a young girl growing up in Southmost and cooking for her family.
Today she’s a nationally known restaurateur celebrating the release of “The Enchilada Queen Cookbook,” her first, on St. Martin’s Press. On Thursday, Casares was in Brownsville for a book release party at the mayor’s house, an evening event featuring dishes such as cabrito asado, enchiladas calabacitas, enchiladas verdes, corn and crab meat soup, and chocolate tres leches cake.
“I enjoy cooking. I enjoy feeding people,” she said. “It’s always been one of my joys. I started when I was 11 or 12. Mom worked. Dad worked. I just took it upon myself. Heaven only knows what it tasted like, but I tried.”
After graduating from Brownsville High School in 1971 and with a teaching career in mind, Casares left home to study for a bachelor’s of science degree in home economics at the University of Texas. Her career path took an abrupt turn upon graduation when Houston-based Uncle Ben’s offered her a job as a research home economist.
She was put to work as a “sensory evaluator” — basically a taster — and then helped with recipe development and testing before being promoted to new product development as a food scientist.
“Probably about the eighth year I started thinking that was not a fit for me,” Casares said. “I felt like I was a round peg in a square hole.”
She went into food service sales, selling to restaurants, and took a job with Kraft. As a regional manager over three states, she traveled a lot, and that eventually got old, too.
“I got sick of it,” Casares said. “I had kids at home. I just was burned out. I said I’ve got to do something else.”
That was when she got the idea for a restaurant.
“What I learned from calling on zillions of restaurants for eight years was that the majority of restaurants in my estimation served good food, not necessarily great, and made a good living,” Casares said.
She thought she could do better. Casares and her then-husband sank their life savings into a Mexican eatery in Rosenberg, a Houston suburb. She knew food and had a passion for cooking, if no experience running a restaurant, though he was an accountant and had a grasp of the business end.
Apprenticing under one of the couples that had owned the restaurant, Casares’ strategy was to observe — figure out what worked and what didn’t.
“We didn’t lose employees and we didn’t lose customers, but then after three years my partnership blew up,” she said.
Casares went out on her own with a “hole in the wall” in Houston, 1,900 square feet and 18 tables. That was in 1998.
“I did OK but not so good,” she said. “After a little over a year I decided I was tired of working literally almost for free.”
Casares talked to a broker, who told her what price she could get for the restaurant. Casares decided to sleep on it one more night.
“The next day I woke up and I said, no, I’m going to circle the wagons. I’m going to fight,” she said.
She executed a colorful revamp of the interior and dispensed with the restaurant’s forgettable name — Camino Real.
“By this time I knew my enchiladas were a big favorite with my customers, so I renamed it ‘Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen,’” she said.
Casares split the menu, which already offered a vast offering of enchilada dishes, into “north of the border” and “south of the border.” She took another chance and leased a billboard across the street, which gave her instant visibility on Westheimer Road, a major Houston thoroughfare.
Her brother the author Oscar Casares, an ad man at the time, came up with the logo: “The best enchiladas are also the hardest to find.” The billboard featured a giant arrow pointing to the restaurant. Soon customers were lining up.
When her lease expired, she moved to a different Westheimer location more than double the size of the original. That was in 2001. The restaurant proved very successful and got Casares noticed by the media, with a feature story on her chili gravy coming out in 2004, Casares said.
“That put me on the map, and it became a destination point in Houston,” she said. “People started coming from all over the city.”
Next came a story on her enchiladas verdes by Houston Chronicle food critic Alison Cook. Rachel Ray visited the restaurant in 2008 and featured it in her magazine. Tyler Florence came about three years ago. Jennifer Lopez, in town for a concert, made a $500 takeout order.
Last year, Casares appeared on “Beat Bobby Flay” but was knocked out in the preliminary round and didn’t get a chance to actually compete against Iron Chef Flay. The “surprise ingredient” was lump crab meat. A producer told Casares she couldn’t make enchiladas — her specialty. Casares made a flauta instead (the judges loved the sauce, she said) but she still lost out to a Dallas chef’s Thai dish.
“I didn’t win, but it was great,” Casares said.
Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen has two other locations, on Eldridge Parkway and Woodway Drive, in tonier neighborhoods of Houston. USA Today included it among its national list of “Top 10 Great Mexican Restaurants.”
The cookbook, which features 80 recipes for enchiladas, fajitas and classic side dishes passed down for generations in South Texas, was among Amazon.com’s “Best Books of the Month” for November. It was lauded in a Publisher’s Weekly “Starred Review” as the “only Tex-Mex cookbook you’ll ever need.”
Casares said she created “The Enchilada Queen Cookbook” (with assistance from former Dallas Morning News food editor and restaurant critic Dotty Griffith) in hopes of winning an award. Indeed, it has been nominated, and Casares said her fingers and toes are crossed.
She said her parents, particularly her father, taught her that if she was going to do something, do it well.
“That was always my goal,” Casares said. “If I’m going to make a flour tortilla it had to be tops. I continued that practice through my restaurant career. If I’m going to serve something, I always shoot for amazing. I work at it. It’s got to be packed with flavor.”
Casares said her experience selling to restaurants taught her that most source ingredients are based only on price, something she refuses to do. Only the best, most expensive skirt steak will do for fajitas, for instance, while she insists on Pioneer White Wings Flour for her flour tortillas, mixing the ingredients by hand rather than using a blend.
“It’s double the price, but I don’t care,” Casares said. “That gives my flour tortillas the flavor of South Texas, because that’s what my grandmother used. If I know how to do something better, then that’s what they’re going to get. I’m going to feed my customers like I feed my family. My brother Oscar calls me a purist.”
She said her goal is to do the best job possible representing the food she grew up with. Casares said she wants to elevate Tex-Mex to a respected national cuisine as has been done with Asian, Italian, Southern and Southwestern cuisines, for instance. Casares said the term “Tex-Mex” itself has been a drag on the food’s reputation, since so many “marginal restaurants” claim to serve it.
Meanwhile, “gatekeepers” like the Food Network and food magazines don’t really get it, she said.
“This is an attempt to kind of bring some attention in a very positive way to our food, and get people to understand, hey, this is us. This is America’s oldest regional cuisine. Food historians say it’s been around since the mid-1800s. The flavors of South Texas are just different, and they do not understand it in New York.”
