Goliad – Goliad is known for great history, from Presidio La Bahia to Mission Espiritu Santo, the story of this town goes back to 1749, but you can get hungry exploring all that history and you’re in luck!  We’ve got some delicious soup for you.

“Soup? Really? Why would you go somewhere for soup?” joked customer Zoe Davis.

And that’s exactly what we thought but then we stepped into the Blue Quail Deli and met Patti McCraney, Chief Bottle Washer and Master of None, according to Patti.  Patti is the General Manager and originally from a faraway land called Ohio, but she got to Goliad as quickly as she could and it wasn’t even for the wildly popular Cream of Jalapeño soup!

“People come from all over and they come here for the soup,” said customer Diana Harrington.

Spoiler alert, it’s amazing!

“There’s people that don’t like it or say ‘oh that’s too spicy for me’, but I like it,” explained Patti.

The recipe hails from one of the owners of the Blue Quail who happens to be a lawyer. That means this heavenly jalapeño soup is extremely guarded. Very hush hush!

“When we hire people, we have them sign a disclosure. You’re not allowed to give out the information on what’s going in it and what’s what,” Patti explained.

Well we’re not going get an inside look at how this hodgepodge is held together but we did get a workout while getting our soup and sandwich on. Patty took me back to the kitchen where the famous soup and sandwiches are prepared. We took a walk down a long hallway that led us to the refrigerator where the glorious soup was and put it on the stove.  While the soup simmered, we got to work on a sandwich while the phone rang off the hook! For the sandwich, Patty started off toasting the bread that’s baked in house, then prepares the ham and turkey. The toast is topped with mayo, and layered with lettuce, cheddar, swiss, tomatoes, and bacon.

The first taste of the soup is buttery, delicious, creamy, and everything you’d expect from a cream soup. Once you start kicking the soup around in your mouth a bit, the spice sure does kick you in the tongue.

“Even on a hot day like today, when it’s 105 degrees, you still want the soup,” joked customer Sharon Swize.

It got a little crazy with the club sandwich and found out that dipping it into the cream of jalapeño soup was an explosion for the taste buds.

“I’m happy you’re here, you made an excellent choice,” said Harrington.

Well if you are ever looking for a go-to soup in Goliad, the folks at the Blue Quail Deli have got you covered with the incredible Cream of Jalapeño soup. We asked Patty why every Texan needs to come and experience this amazing place. “Well to meet me for one, and to try our cream of jalapeño soup… And enjoy Goliad, it’s a neat place it really is,” said Patti.

The Blue Quail Deli has a soup that Texans are sure to love, which is why it was well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List.

Huntsville – Over the years on The Texas Bucket List, we have tried a variety of Mexican food all over the state.  From tacos at a car wash in El Paso, barbacoa in Brownsville, breakfast tacos in Bryan, to tamales on Galveston island, and now we can add Hunstville’s Taqueria Carmelita to the list.

Now I never expected to find a taqueria in the middle of the woods but Taqueria Carmelita is sure to impress. “This is the best one too, in this part of the woods for sure,” said customer Felix Magallanes.

High schooler Miguel Duran is the youngest of four children and since he’s the only one left at home, he spends his time helping his parents, Leticia and Miguel Sr., run the taqueria that took off in 2015. Miguel Sr. is very happy to have his son there to help him and his wife run the business along with maintaining their reputation for really good food.  With Miguel Sr.’s contagious smile and Leticia’s joyful singing, there is always happiness in Taqueria Carmelita. “The food is always good, and the people are always happy and jovial and (Leticia) is always singing so that just makes it a whole eating experience,” said Magallanes.

Miguel Sr. used to have a restaurant in town a few years ago, but when rent became too expensive, he did what every restaurant owner wouldn’t do and moved to the middle of nowhere. Thanks to his reputation for really good food, the people came. “I mean we weren’t really worried because he’s always been a good cook, so we think that wherever you are people are still going to follow you,” Miguel Jr. explains.

“We were really happy when they opened up here… we heard Miguel was moving over here and it’s been a godsend ever since,” said customer Michael Castell. “They’re living the American dream, and successfully doing it, in a good, positive way.” said said Magallanes.

Miguel expresses his happiness and enjoyment with working at the taqueria. While at the taqueria, both Miguel Jr. and Sr. took me to the tight kitchen, where I got to taste two of his signature dishes, a gordita and a torta. When it came to the torta, it was surprising to see the amount of mouthwatering meat that can go into it. When Miguel busted out the telera bread for the torta, I knew I was in for something big. “It’s like the biggest torta you’ll find in Walker county and you can’t eat the whole thing. Me and my wife usually split one,” warned Castell.

The torta was prepared with a layer of refried beans and beef, then topped with lettuce, cilantro, onions, tomatoes, fresh avocados and mayo. The gordita is stuffed with beef, lettuce, cheese and tomatoes, like a little meat pocket. So where do you start? An enormous sandwich or a little gordita. I started with the freshly made gordita that was hot to the touch, and it was excelente! The huge torta was also delicious and every little bit had something special. Every bite just makes you want to take another.

“It’s very authentic, being born and raised in Laredo, Texas we know Mexican food and this is the closest we get to home when I don’t want to cook,” joked customer Bertha Flores.

Well you gotta have a taqueria on The Texas Bucket List and if you happen to be going through Huntsville and you’re looking for some tortas and gorditas, Taqueria Carmelita is well worth the stop!

“It’s not just a onetime thing, it’s never a hit or miss, it’s always perfect every time,” said Castell.

WACO – When it comes to visiting Waco, most people have one thing on their minds.  Chip and Joanna ring any bells?  Well, seeking the sought-after silos has also brought business to town and that includes Vivia Charles and her son Aniceto who moved to Waco in 2018.

A native of the island of Jamaica, Vivia owned another Jamaican restaurant in northern Virginia when she felt compelled to come to Waco after seeing it on TV to bring her unique culinary creations. The family scoured the internet learning what they could about the heart of Texas and eventually found an abandoned restaurant, complete with murals from local art legend Ira Watkins. But this building was still a real fixer upper. “The internet is a wonderful tool. So we were on Google Earth continually and then we saw this place. There were three palm trees and it was up for sale. I mean, that was pretty much like, hello, this is where you guys should open your restaurant,” said Vivia.

Vivia was completely confident that her food would find its niche in the middle of the Lone Star State because over the years of cooking she’s come to realize one thing when it comes to good eating. “The tongue does not discriminate. It loves what it loves. And it loves to experience new tastes and flavors,” she said. “And it has memory. For years, you’ll be like, man, I had that food at such and such. “Oh, yeah.” That was amazing. Yeah.” And it’ll get you to drive hundreds of miles across the state to try it again. Trust me, I know.

“I don’t think I’ve ever lived anywhere where I knew about a Jamaican place. So I’m very excited that there’s a Jamaican place in Waco,” said customer Paige Phillips.

“In Waco we can stop and have chicken fried steak or something just regular Texas food. So this makes it really unique. It makes a really interesting trip out of it,” said diner Kyle McCain.

So what Jamaican dish will I be saying “yah man to,”?  We start with Curry shrimp. A simple mix of vegetable broth, salt and pepper, shrimp, curry, green onions, and garlic create the dish.

“We like to add a little bit of color,” said Vivia.  While shrimp simmer, Vivia gets a whole snapper cooked up.  A very simple dish consisting of allspice and onions but it has a kick that could flip a kilt thanks the Scotch bonnet, a pepper native to Jamaica that happens to be very close in heat to the habanero.

Vivia wouldn’t let us leave the kitchen without a little Jamaican jerk chicken, so we are now featuring three plates here on The Texas Bucket List. And we’ll start with the red snapper, a little light flavor.  The spice not overpowering, but boy, it does eventually kick in.

“I like spicy. And this was well within the range of really good spicy,” said Kyle.

“So it has a little heat, but not like so much that I need a whole gallon of milk,” said Paige.

As for the curry shrimp which is visually beautifully paired with orange carrots, green onions and the yellow curry.  The sweet shrimp and that spicy smoky curry just come together to make a unique taste.

“Really surprised because for the first time I tried Jamaican food. And it’s great. It’s great,” said visitor Ezequiel Mendoza.

“Places have their different version of curry.  I think Indian curry is totally different than Thai curry and Jamaican curry is also its own thing. And I think it always tastes good with whatever it’s with,” said Paige.

The food makes you feel like you should be staring at some big green mountains and a beautiful ocean, with a pint of Irish stout, since it is so popular in Jamaica. Instead, we got the silos.

“It’s really, really rich. And I feel like it’s something different that I needed to try,” said Mendoza.

Finally, I got do dig into the jerk chicken which was tender, delicious, and carried out with class the Jamaican jerk flavor that you can’t find anywhere else.

“We’re doing jerk because that’s something… You get off the plane in Jamaica, that’s something that’s just known to Jamaicans,” said Vivia. “With all those 16, 17 ingredients, you still have to let it marinate so that it really gets into the meat.”

“It’s totally different. It’s a little spicy on the lips,” said Paige.

When it comes to the flavors of the Caribbean, Tru Jamaica in Waco is an excellent stop. So excellent, your Jamaican making me think it’s well worth a stop on the Texas Bucket List.

“Texas is a multicultural society at this point. People come in from all over. Baylor is here, that brings people in from all over the world. So it’s like try something different,” said Kyle.

“Texas is big with smaller heart. And you know what? We just want to bring a little piece of our heart to each Texan through our food,” said Vivia.

 

 

 

 

 

Texarkana— The Northeastern corner of the Lone Star State is an interesting blend of states’ cultures coming together to make one major melting pot of town. The city of Texarkana sits right on the state line and is home to some unique food.

“I was born on the Arkansas side… As soon as we could get out of Arkansas, we were in Texas,” said Bill Scurlock. Bill may not have had the option to be born in Texas, because the hospital was on the Arkansas side, but he did have his choice of where to open his business, and he chose Texas. Still, his restaurant, Pecan Point, sits very close to the border. “Right down the alley is one block… then that’s Arkansas,” he said. Bill was a former magazine publisher, but got into the business of beer out of personal interest. “I was a homebrewer for several years and I wanted to brew my beer and sell it. I mean, that simple. I wanted to share it, but I also wanted to sell it. I thought it sounded like a cool thing,” he explained.

In order to get into the beer business, he had to jump through some hoops, and in a town like Texarkana, that can be tricky. “To sell beer on premises in this town you have to have a restaurant or a private club, but I didn’t want to do the private club thing. So, if we’re going to have a restaurant, I want to have a nice restaurant,” he said. Well we’re glad he opened Pecan Point Gastropub & Brewery, because it has some truly tasty offerings.“You can get the same old thing at a lot of places in Texarkana. There’s a lot of restaurants, but there’s very few places where you get truly unique food,” said Bill.

He wanted to make his restaurant different, which can be seen in his unique take on jambalaya. “It’s not your traditional jambalaya. It’s kind of our twist on it… We like to do food that’s familiar but different,” said Samantha Tompkins.  Samantha is the executive chef and she got things started by throwing onions, bell peppers and cherry tomatoes in a skillet with a bunch of butter.  Being so close to four different states, Samantha is used to getting all sorts of opinions when it comes to her cooking. “There’s a lot of different people that come in here with all kinds of different perspectives,” she said. “I’ve got a guy that grew up in Louisiana. His grandpa had a restaurant in New Orleans, and so a lot of the times when I’m cooking more Cajun leaning food, I’ll give it to them to try and like, ‘What do you think of it?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, well it’s not blah, blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘I’m not trying to do traditional. Just is it good?’ ‘Yeah. It’s good.’” Next up is some blackened catfish. The veggies get some white wine and seasoning before moving on to our other proteins, which includes shrimp with pork and alligator sausage.  “I like using this instead of the traditional Andouille sausage… Still has a great Cajun flavor cause the alligator and the spices that they use and then we poach it in our beer here. We use a Hefeweizen or a wheat if we’re out of the Hefeweizen… It gives it a really nice flavor,” she said. Add in some rice and our lunch starts taking shape. “People are going to look at you crazy if you tell them this is jambalaya but… it’s our version. It’s a secret version…I love using the fresh tomatoes instead of like a canned tomato for the sauce. It just, it’s a little nicer,” shared Samantha. Plate it, put some fish on it, finish it off with remoulade and we’re ready. “There you go. Jambalaya in Texas on the Arkansas state line,” she announced.

Pecan Point’s unique take on jambalaya is a combination of blackened catfish with some big tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Here’s to a crazy combo of cultures right here on the state line. “Food is really phenomenal,” said customer, Andrew Gutierrez. It’s a really different infusion of flavors with that pork and alligator sausage, along with the shrimp and blackened catfish. “The kitchen does a marvelous job,” commended Bill. The sauce definitely holds this dish together. A good buttery sauce with grilled onions and peppers. “It’s very unique and very good,” added Andrew.

Well, if you’re looking for a different take on jambalaya, a trip to Pecan Point in Texarkana, Texas is well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List. “I feel like if you’re not trying to make something your own, why bother? Right?” said Samantha.