Boat quest beached at Tex-Mex diner
Ed's note: Journal Publisher Hudson Old is pinch hitting for Café Critic Earl Don Sweeney. Mr.Sweeney suffered a pulled groin in the Chickfest Barbecue Competition.
PART I -- AMBUSH
By HUDSON OLD
Journal Publisher
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From the pages of culinary magazines to a Smithsonian Institute Tex-Mex seminar, Matt Martinez is recognized as a global authority. Lured to Jefferson by the majesty of the outdoors he loves, he opened a fourth restaurant and began shaping plans for his next book. |
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| Rori Daniels takes more than pride in her work at Matt's Jefferson location. She takes initiative, like decorating in keeping with the season. When it comes to staff that understands the mission, Joaquin Martinez's dad wrote the book. |
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JEFFERSON - Excused from Sunday morning church to assist with the search for a research vessel, my driver pulled to the curb, as directed, in front of the town's old Club Café, a last main street diner kind of hold out against the on-going yuppization of this antebellum once upon a river boat town.
In days of yore, Big Cypress river rats, contractors and a collection of not-yet-worn-out old farmers made up the breakfast crowd.
Canoes lashed to pickups, Fast River Eddy and I once raised brows when we came in. Sundays like this, church-crowd adults would admonish small children not to look at us. Dark skinned and dapper in his river hat, Ed Ramos didn't look like everybody else and I wore love beads back then.
Might get me some more.
We might have been different, but the boats and the hound in back of the pickup made us kind of the same, and that's how we were treated, like kinsmen.
The food was fine, but it was the place, the characters we liked. Plus, we were chronic over tippers, even when it hurt. Wanna get treated like a king? Spring an extra buck on a car hop, or a girl in a greasy spoon, somebody not expecting it.
Seating ourselves at the downtown diner, I whiffed trouble.
"Dad!" said Big Ol Strong, Good Lookin' J. Gus Old, and I could tell by his tone the young carnivore had spotted the steak and eggs.
I'd had earlier warning, the new neon sign bolted on out front, "Matt's." I'd noticed it, but figured that could be a good thing since the café had changed hands in recent years and it wasn't the same. Seemed like a good gamble, giving somebody named Matt a shot at frying bacon right.
But, a gamble's a gamble, and as it turned out, Matt wanted $8.95 to feed my boy.
"Can I get the steak?" he asked.
"Buddy, the minute I saw it, I knew you were destined to get it," I said, not adding that if I'd known about it, we'd have experimented at one of the numerous greasy spoons we passed on the way down, skirting the southeast shore of Lake of the Pines.
PART II
CHILI RELLENO
or
How dare you put raisins in my Mexican food
I'm not making that up. Matt's dinner relleno, made beginning with the same big mild Anaheim pepper into which my breakfast was stuffed, arrives sprinkled with raisins and pecans, as if the sour cream isn't pretentious enough.
Once I'd mentally adjusted to that $10 steak (who could eat a steak at breakfast without a breakfast Dr. Pepper?), I swung right into the financial spirit of things, springing $7.95 for something I'd never eaten.
I got exactly what I paid for, suspiciously eyeing its arrival. Camouflaged with Monterey jack cheese, it shined like they'd poured motor oil on it, and whatever it was contouring to the shape of the pepper beneath was likewise contaminating my potatoes.
Affecting a gracious air of sophistication, I called to the staff's attention that I didn't see the green hot sauce I'd ordered -- having an option of red or green, I'd been avant-garde.
"It's . . . that's it," the lady said, indicating the motor oil, which in fact did have a slight green caste.
It was about 20 minutes later, when I bummed a piece of toast to mop up the rest of what turns out to be a "tamatillo" sauce, Matt came in the door. Big guy, tall, heavy through the shoulders, his ownership announced by a good-natured swagger as he pulled up at the first table.
"You're behaving beautifully today," he commended his patrons. "We're proud of you."
Liking people who cut up, I looked across the place, locking grins with him while he jollied up the local folk, then came ambling our way, wiping his hands on a well-used apron, the gesture of a mechanic in his shop, about to shake a man's hand.
"Welcome," he said, "and congratulations. Our wait staff scored you well on the customer evaluation form." He asked what brought us to town.
As capable of being off the wall as anybody, I answered, "Looking for a boat," a sentence with the added advantage of being true.
"I'm here to help," he said, "but first I want to make certain there was more food attached to that pepper stem you didn't eat."
"And plenty good," I reported, genuinely pleased with my purchase.
"Wonderful," he said. "Now tell me about this boat you're looking for."
PART III
THE EAST TEXAS JOURNAL WHITE OAK BOTTOM YACHT CLUB
A few days later, as Providence would have it, Journal Café Critic Earl Don Sweeney was eager to ride down to Marion County to test drive and most likely pick up a flat-bottom boat in case leaks, blowouts, expired registration or lack of trailer brake and turn signals launched some traveling adventure. (As it turns out, everything worked, but we had a good time anyway, if not an adventure.)
As we drove, having regaled The Earl of Livin' with the boat's merits, I moved on to description of its owner's café.
"I was ready to leave the minute I saw the menu, and would have left, and would have missed meeting the man with the boat if I hadn't caved in to a kid wanting a steak at breakfast," I said, continuing by describing what I ate. Earl Don interrupted as we pulled in at the café, his expression shifting, reflecting amusement as he looked at Matt's neon sign.
"You ate what?" he said.
"This," I said, pointing to it on the menu once we got inside.
Taking the menu, Earl Don's grin grew.
"Hudson," he said. "You don't know who this is, do you?"
"Should I?"
The Journal café critic laughed. For those only knowing Earl Don through his generally monthly updates on barbecue, roofing and Nadine's wardrobe and double-wide decorative initiatives, there's another side. Several.
Among other things, Earl Don's the country soul of everybody wise enough to understand, it's all about half funny, is what it is.
That said, I see no particular life requirement that says I should have to know that The Denver Post, Dallas Morning News, Texas Highways, Southern Living and various outdoor writer's stories about Matt Martinez - and that's just the list for the current year - have dealt with subjects as divergent as his not-so-secret "No Place" café on a Dallas side street and his impact on the September Smithsonian Institute culinary seminar on Tex-Mex.
I've been busy, thinking about a research vessel it seemed fitting to buy on the occasion of Susan's birthday.
Susan's the lucky bride, a full partner in the firm.
PART IV
TEX-MEX UPDATE
Ya'll know where Linden is? Twelve miles from Wal Mart, is how rural the Cass County capital is.
That's where Rori Daniels ran the Chuck Wagon Café for ten years before walking in Matt's Jefferson location, after she'd sold out.
"I've read his books. I've cooked what he cooks. The Lord gave us all certain skills. I like people who share that," is what the lady said.
Matt's Culinary Frontier, his first book, is out of print, but, if you're really interested, it's out there on line for $100 a shot.
Rori says the business of raisins and nuts isn't out of line in Tex-Mex, when you throw in California's influence on Mexican food.
The Martinez family history in the Tex-Mex food business goes back 50 years, to Austin, Matt said. The cornerstone of Tex-Mex goes back another 90 or so years, to a cultural stew that bubbled and brewed into chili, a distinctly Texas creation, he maintains.
"The cultures that came together on the Texas frontier made do with what they had," he said. Gathering with European and American frontiersmen likewise evolving into Texans, Mexicans began a tradition in which mild chili ancho peppers were dried in attempt to replicate the pungent bite of unsweetened chocolate, trying to make the distinctively Mexican mole sauce from what they could find in Texas.
Maybe Germans added the thick meat stock. I didn't make good notes, but I got the part where Matt told about cowboys, trying to duplicate the attempted duplication of the mole dish. Lacking chili ancho peppers out on the range in the Hill Country, cowboys found plenty of chili pequin, a round pepper maybe not as big as the tip of a little finger, blazing with fire.
Meanwhile, back in California, they were doing that raisin thing, which Matt's mother added to the family's Austin café fare back in the 50's, and next thing you know, there's Tampiqueno Catfish, $9.95 on the menu at the Jefferson version of Matt's.
Eat some.
By the time I did I'd discovered that Matt commutes between restaurants -- one in Austin, two in Dallas and this one in Jefferson, that D Magazine says his is the best Tex-Mex in Dallas, Wine Spectator Magazine determined his place to be the "Critics Choice" and - get this - Gourmet Magazine says Matt's has the best chicken fried steak in Dallas. It's about time a gourmet said something nice about a chicken fried steak.
There's more, but you get the idea. Among the enchiladas, sirloins and ribeyes on the dinner menu, you'll find (break out the dictionary) Abuja and grilled shrimp or baby shrimp over rice served with red or green sauce.
Part V
TAKE ME TO THE RIVER
There's a story behind the evolution of Matt's, the journey from Austin to Dallas to Jefferson. Dallas was Matt doing his second generation thing and when that café got too busy to be exactly what he wanted, he opened "No Place," with no advertising budget and no listed phone.
He says hotel concierges made No Place hip.
"I really was envisioning a neighborhood diner, just the locals," he said, but it got trendy fast for visitors wanting an inside tip to be directed to a diner so exclusive as to have, well, no name.
He laughs about the lines visiting patrons related being told, things like, "Well, they don't really like people from out of town, but they'll serve you if you'll mention being sent by a friend from (fill in swanky hotel name here.")
And, darn the luck, next thing you know, the neighborhood diner is being infiltrated.
As a neighborhood diner, Matt's in Jefferson is a work in progress.
As he began assembling staff, Rori the retired Linden Chuck Wagon commander arrived like destiny.
"Besides the fact that she can cook, the great thing about Rori is that she acts like she owns the place," Matt said.
Then there's an equity position, the years his son Joaquin has invested in learning. Like father, like son, Joaquin took his family craft on the road, cooking in Dallas' Boston market, then working as an assistant souse chef for Culinaire International before coming to the start up in Jefferson.
"I couldn't miss this," he said. Practicing the right of elders, Joaquin's presence gave the opportunity for Matt to twist work into his seasonal avocation of 20-odd years, directing kitchens in game camps of outdoor equipment manufacturers, their clients and a tag-along assemblage of outdoor writers and photographers.
Occupying the oldest established restaurant location in town, Matt didn't scrap the traditional fare that's slowly disappearing from the menu. Though their listing has been supplanted by Huevos Rancheros, Migas and the like, you can still order He Man Scrambled & Fried Staples.
"Just because it's not on the menu doesn't mean you can't have it," Matt said. "When you cook for friends, you cook what they want."
What Matt wanted when he came here was a business to support an outdoor habit independent of the outdoor manufacturing, client and writer crowd.
"If those guys just saw my dreams, they'd be jealous," he said.. "What got me here was two acres and a home in the country where I can step out the back door and count the deer coming out to graze in the evening, and thousands of acres of government hunting preserve in the neighborhood."
Having published what he's got to say about cooking - for now - East Texas provides the setting in which he intends to launch his outdoor writing career.
"That's the plan," he said. "That's the dream."
(Rori says his first book has better recipes - his second, Matt Makes a Run For the Border, she said, has better stories.)
He's been here a year - his first six months he turned in 16-hour café days, taking occasional breaks to fish farm ponds or dig worms to catch perch to use for bait to run lines and catch big fish on the river.
"I like the logic of the process," he said. "Everything's like fishing - you dig worms before you catch fish."
It was during that sixth month of his Jefferson dream that The Big One interrupted.
By then, a retired English chef who'd worked a Dallas career drifted into Jefferson, found his way to Matt's café.
With Joaquin, Rori and an Englishmen quickly adapting to Tex-Mex, it wasn't like the café was adrift as Matt began recovering from surgery. Briefly benched, he's still not back up to full speed, but he's steady coming up a side track.
That's why his boat was for sale. He wanted something lighter, something easier to slide out of the back of a pickup for an afternoon of farm pond therapy during his convalescence.
PART VI
THE NEED FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
In the editorial offices of the East Texas Journal, it has come to our attention that there is a notable lack of reporting from local creeks, thus necessitating acquisition of a research vessel.
The rest you've figured out - it was sitting in Matt's front yard.
The day Earl Don went with me to make our deal, Matt came pulling up in front of the old Club Café, now the fourth version of "Matt's." There was a dog in back of his pickup, his fishing associate.
By then, Earl Don and I had already gone to his house, picked up the boat, launched and gave it a flat out test run down Big Cypress. The hand tiller outboard ran as good as the Tampiqueno Catfish at the diner tastes.
We haggled amicably - when I offered to split the difference in my first offer and his counter offer, he nudged me up $25 final dollars. (My wife's worth it. It's a business expense.)
Matt's married, too. His wife's Estella. Matt's cell phone rang as we headed back to his house to search for a title. His phone worked well - I could hear every word Mrs. Martinez said.
Matt said he'd sold his fishing boat.
"How much did you get?" she asked.
"Fifty thousand dollars," Matt said. I liked that.
PART VII
IN HONOR OF EARL DON, A CAFÉ REVIEW
All I can tell you is, I never heard of either of the things I ate at Matt's and they were both good. Listed with traditional steaks you'll find the Abuja thing plus Steak Tampiqueno, prices from $8.95 to $19.95.
Fajitas are made with beef, chicken or shrimp, $9.95 to $15.95 for a half pound of meat.
More recognizable Mexican dinners (with the notable exception of shrimp served with an enchilada) are $7.95 to $10.95 and seafood dishes go from $9.95 to $14.95.
Matt's is located at 109 North Polk, south end of the main drag through the Jefferson business district, across from the fire station.
They're open Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Fridays 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The phone's 903-665-9237.