A Saturday Morning Memory: Nick's Taste of Texas

I don’t always look back with sadness when I think about restaurants that are no longer here. There is always another one just like it, or fairly close, opening up someplace but Nick’s Taste of Texas is the exception. They closed their doors about four or five years ago. I kid you not, it broke my heart.

I’m listening to some good Tex-Mex music right now, looking out the back window at all the rain coming down and enjoying my second cup of coffee. The music brought to mind, the Taste of Texas.

The Taste of Texas was a Tex-Mex restaurant in Covina, California. It became one of our favorite places to eat for years. The restaurant was originally in Azusa, California. It was there that we had our first meal and when I say it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship I am dead serious.

My wife Jeri is from San Antonio, Texas, and she would often tell me about her childhood memories growing up in San Antonio with her family. One of her favorite memory was of the barbacoa cart on the weekends, with the man passing through the neighborhood yelling out, “Barbacoa, barbacoa!” It is a popular and much loved breakfast dish. Her father and all her sisters and brother would run out to get the barbacoa for breakfast.

I knew nothing about it. Whenever we were at a Mexican restaurant, we would order barbacoa but it was a whole different dish, according to her, I had no way of knowing.

One day, back in 1991 or so, my mother told us about a restaurant she had eaten at - Nick’s Taste of Texas - with Dave Gibson (they were married a few years later). We went to dinner with them one night and that was all it took. On our next visit I saw Barbacoa on the menu. We ordered it and “Surprise, surprise” it was the dish of her childhood.

Over the years, I tried just about everything on the menu but my favorites were the aforementioned barbacoa,along with guisado, BBQ brisket and ribs. The tortillas were incredible. There was only one salsa and it was all the salsa you needed. This was typical Tex-Mex fare, including Tacos, enchiladas and menudo (very popular there on the weekends) but if you were looking for more traditional Mexican food this was not your place.

The restaurant itself was a large industrial type building with rows and rows of tables. It was informal, noisy and comfortable, just like home. It was so much like home that on some days the breakfast potatoes were served sliced and fried, on other days more traditional home fries and on another day, who knows? But it was all good. Everyone that worked there was friendly and it was the people that gave this restaurant its real charm.

As great as the food was, the best part about eating here was seeing my wife happy and filled with good memories and eating her barbacoa. She was always at the heart of our visit to Nick’s Taste of Texas.