Texas Bucket List

Texas Bucket List

Simmons Bank

The Texas Bucket List – Val Verde Winery in Del Rio

by

DEL RIO, Texas – In the fertile soil of Val Verde Country just a few miles from Mexico, Del Rio has the distinction of having undoubtedly the oldest winery in the Lone Star State.

Thomas Qualia is the third generation of wine makers at the Val Verde Winery, a vineyard whose roots got planted in 1883, making it the 9th oldest winery in the country.

“We’re proud of what we do because we started from the ground up. We grow it, we make it, we sell it,” said Qualia.

Thomas has spent his entire life cultivating, harvesting, and producing a fine spirit full of Texas soul.

This story starts with a young 18 year-old Italian named Thomas Qualia who immigrated to Mexico but found work on the Macorini line in Texas.  Soon after, he found himself in Del Rio seeking to satisfy his thirst.  He planted a 10-acre vineyard quenched by the San Felipe springs and not much has changed.

“I give all the credit, though, to my father and grandfather because they’re the ones who did it,” Qualia said. “I was just lucky enough to inherit it, and so, at times I wonder about that luck, but anyway.”

Thomas’ father Louis took over the winery in 1936 – three years after the end of prohibition, which the winery survived by making sacramental and medicinal wine.  As a young man, Thomas grew amongst the grapes and had a few learning curves along the way.

“I drove a pickup when I was probably seven years old and if my foot slipped off the clutch and threw somebody out the back of the truck, and I was running for my life,” said Qualia.

The fond memories don’t just include the memorable mishaps.  As the vineyard grew and new methods were put into places, Louis Qualia made the fruit flourish.

“These were all grafted by my father in the late ‘30s onto native mustang grapes, and I’ve had a large number of people request information about the Herbemont, and I have not been able to find it. There was a Count Herbemont back in the east that supposedly had something to do with it, and it was named after him. Either he bred the grape or he brought it over,” Qualia said.“It’s been a real mainstay for the winery. We’ve made a lot of cuttings from it to propagate other vines.”

The Qualias produce around 3,000 cases of wine of year, not exactly enough to get around the entire state but enough to keep the family business in operation.

“I’d rather make a good bottle of wine at a fair price and keep it that way,” said Qualia.

Today Thomas works with his son Michael and the next generation is already learning the vines.

My sister and I are working hard, and fifth generation is coming along, so we’re excited,” Michael Qualia said. “Like any family business, you know, there’s challenging times. But no, it’s good. It’s nice to see things grow and but still continue to be a small, family-run operation.”

Uncorking a bottle of this wine made from the Lenoir or Blanc Du Bois grapes grown in the generational ground gives you an opportunity to taste a part of Texas history that fittingly comes from a country that happens to be the shape of a boot.

“It’s a labor of love, because it’s a lot of work, but I enjoy doing it and people, some people say, ‘What are you doing out there in a vineyard? Don’t you ever take a break?’ I say what would I do, watch TV? Go to the movies? No, I’d rather be out in the vineyard and talking to my vines or talking to the people at the winery,” Qualia said. “It’s a tradition that there’s not another one in Texas that’s this old, and Italian proud.”

The Texas Bucket List – Allen’s Family Style Meals in Sweetwater

by

SWEETWATER, Texas – Heading out on I-20 just west of Abilene, you’ll find a town known for their annual rattlesnake roundup.

While you can sample snake here, there’s a much more satisfying snack to slither to in Sweetwater: Allen’s Family Style Meals.

Billy Allen keeps the legacy of this poultry palace clucking along with his sister Suzan. These siblings grew up with this business.

“This was our home place. My dad was born in a bedroom up here,” said Billy.

Back in 1952, their grandmother Lizzie Allen started cooking fried chicken for flocks of famished folks.

“I think it took a little time to get things going, maybe when she got this table where she filled it up every day, she knocked that wall out there and put another table in, and just did that ‘til she filled both of them up and then she took another wall out and put another table in, and eventually she had all the walls down. And that’s where we are today,” Billy said.

That included in the kitchen, where Suzan keeps the home fires burning by sticking to Grandma’s methods.

“I got my chicken here, my dip, and I flour it up right here,” said Suzan. “This is kind of a secret dip, we don’t tell nobody about this.”

But it’s not just chicken, grandma’s recipes for creamed corn, carrots, potatoes, mac n cheese, okra, beans and more are served hot and fresh every day. Once you pay to enter, it’s all you can eat for anything on the table.

Traditions are strong here at Allen’s and that’s exactly the case when it comes to seating.  With 6 tables each seating 10 people, you can bet you’ll be breaking bread with another weary traveler – and for some, that’s just too much!

“Very few, but there are some that say, ‘No, I’m not going to eat with them,’” Billy said. “You’ll have to go somewhere else. And when you’re sitting there talking to somebody, somewhere down the line you know somebody that they know and it’s interesting.”

Kirby Shadle my look like a colonel but he’s a big fan of the savory sweetwater chicken. Having this meal takes him back to a different time.

“Sunday meals, family reunions, Sunday potluck at church, old-timey food. It’s definitely raised, came out of the garden. Didn’t have to go to the store,” said Shadle.

Once you do get a chance to sit down, it’s just like being at home and you can’t be shy when it comes to what you want! But once you get all the fixins, you’ll see what all the fuss is about.

“Even if you don’t like chicken you’ll love this chicken,” Shadle said.

So if you’re looking for a down home meal with a Texas tradition that hasn’t changed since 1952, stop by Allen’s Family Style Meals in Sweetwater for an experience that’s stayed true to the vision of Lizzie Allen and is well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List.

“I would recommend it to everybody. It’s great. I’ve ate at a lot of places, lot of different cuisine foods, and it’s good. It don’t matter, I always want to come back here,” said Shadle. “It’s family. It’s family here, you know.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Texas Bucket List – Ruben’s Grocery in McAllen

by

MCALLEN, Texas –Going to the grocery store can be a mundane, ordinary experience. It’s part of our everyday lives, checking off lists with riveting purchases like milk, bread, and eggs.

But when it comes to filling your basket in the border town of McAllen, Ruben’s Grocery has a radical assortment of off the wall items. But it’s not just the fun food selection that brings in curious shoppers, it’s also the over-the-top owner.

We meet Ruben, the man himself, and he is just a colorful as his store.

“I enjoy what I do,” said Ruben. “You ready for a glass of wine?”

Before we get to the vino, we learned a bit more about the store that got started back in 1973, when Ruben’s father, Ruben Sr. who opened this local market in the middle of la Navarro neighborhood.

“At the beginning it was just a neighborhood store,” Ruben said. “Necessities, tortillas weren’t around yet. We sold flour and lard and beans. I remember when tortillas were first sold, people looked around, they were like – you’re selling tortillas? Like flour tortillas? Who’s going to buy these? Because, you know, people made their own. Back then, nobody even thought to buy. It was just, I don’t know, unheard of. Kind of like when we started frozen pizza.”

Ready-made tortillas were just the beginning and it wasn’t long after leaving home to pursue a career in the computer business out in Cali before Ruben’s parents called him home.

“The manager quit, and my mom and dad said, ‘You can’t go to California, you’ve got to stay just for two months and help us out, just help us manage the store until we get a new manager.’ That was 22 years ago,” said Ruben. “I never left.”

Still wanting to see the world, Ruben made a deal with his parents but promised to have the best interests of the store on his mind.

“I said I’ll work for you three weeks out of the month, and the last week of the month I get to travel. I get to go somewhere. And every time I went somewhere, I came back with something. And every time I went somewhere I came back with something else, and I’m a foodie and I love collecting things and I love discovering new stuff and I love sharing it with my friends and the local chefs, share with my customers, and little by little we started getting a reputation of bringing weird or unusual foods,” Ruben said.

Now, you’ll never know what you’ll find at this mint green market in McAllen, from fancy Italian cherries to pottery and more.

“This is where most of our imported products are and we start off with Brazil, lot of Brazilian products here,” Ruben said. “Argentina, they’re very specialty cookies, and then we’ve got Peruvian cookies, Peruvian chocolates, we’ve got more Peruvian chilies, Peruvian grains, more Peruvian chili paste, Columbian candies, Columbian drinks, Columbian figs, and then we’ve got eastern European, Middle Eastern, Spanish, a couple of British products, and then up here, this is yerba mate. Yerba mate is the number one tea in South America, and this is yerba mate, and all of the top shelf is yerba mate. And it’s the largest collection of yerba mate in the world outside of Argentina.”

Yes, Ruben has got just about everything edible under the sun in his store. Jesus Manjarrez, a customer at Ruben’s, can speak as to the variety you’ll get when you enter this store.

“They should come and experience it because there’s a lot of things that you don’t even know that are out there, eatable, and so many unique stuff, not just food, but like any items you can cook in or mix in or any type of stuff,” said Manjarrez.

Does Ruben offer online shopping?  Sort of.

“Our inventory changes so often that we don’t have it on books, so when people request the items, what we do is we take a picture of the items, live picture of the aisle, because they’re so seasonal and they’re always changing, and then we just email them the pictures and then they just shop by sight. Yeah, it’s very old-school,” Ruben said.

Of course you’ll still find Ruben’s dad working every day at the store using his old-school pencil and paper to take inventory.

“He’s 78 and so is my mom and they don’t skip a day of work unless they go, unless my mom’s in Vegas because she loves to, or my dad goes fishing or hunting, which is his passion,” said Ruben. “My dad opens the show at 8am every day. The doors don’t open until nine, because, you know, the big act needs an opening act. That’s my dad.”

And now they make their hunt for uncommon eats together, taking escapades to Alaska for their annual snow crab season sale.  Yes, you can by snow crabs flown in straight from Alaska in the Valley.

“I do it mostly for my parents, because this is their passion and now it’s become mine,” Ruben said. “I mean, as a child I took it for granted. But now, you know older, being a foodie, to me it’s the most amazing job in the world because I don’t work a single day. The way I look at it is, I open the doors to my house every day and I see what company’s going to come over and take care of the guests that come over, and at the end of the day I let them out and close the doors and open a bottle of wine and go to sleep and wait for the next day and it’s another party. It is my house, and it’s your house, too.”

Ruben isn’t all about bringing the best to the people; it’s about bringing the best out of people with infectious service and a passion for everything food.

“Not only do we have things from all over the world, but you’re going to be pleasantly surprised that you are surrounded by people that really love what they’re doing,” said Ruben. “Every single employee is going to greet you with a smile, they’re going to be really happy when you’re here. It’s like the Disneyland of grocery stores.”

So if your grocery list is as eccentric as your bucket list, stop by Ruben’s for an amazing display of delightful delicacies.

“We have a philosophy as a family. It’s, we want to be good with the family, we want to be good with our employees, we want to be good with our customers, and we want to be good with God. And that’s it,” Ruben said.

The Texas Bucket List – Rockn’ Rollerz in Abilene

by

ABILENE, Texas – In the middle of the key city, you’ll find a park that’s perfect for people looking for a particular plate of food. We’re in Abilene at a parking lot that’s packed with food trucks, and we’re making our stop at one place in particular.

Jessie Husbands and Mando Asencio comprise the dynamic duo that got things rocking and rolling on the only burger bus bistros based out of Buffalo Gap, Rockn Rollerz.

“The two of us together since we were kids, you know, it just always meshed well,” said Jesse. “Our ideas, and the way we worked together, and stuff like that, so. It’s just been better than anything I could imagine.”

Back in 2014, these two buddies pooled all their resources in the hopes of following a childhood dream.

“We are a scrappy insurgency is what I like to call it,” Jesse said. “We sold and pawned stuff and took the last of our paychecks and scrapped some metal just to get the funds together to get the food truck going.”

It didn’t take long for Jesse and Mando to start racking up the accolades. Now they’re one of the hottest stops in Abilene combining their love of music, food, and fun to come up with one crazy concoction.

“Our number one seller is the Poppin’ Johnny, and the best way to describe it is like a jalapeno popper on a burger,” said Jesse.

With heat in the meat and a sweltering sizzler, we got right to the burger.

Mando can take the heat so he never leaves his kitchen, and that’s a good thing as we get start with the Poppin Johnny’s main ingredient…meat.

“It’s a 80/20 black angus six ounce patty,” Mando said. “Not too big, I think it’s right about perfect, actually.”

After seasoning the meat and putting  down on the fryer, a broche bun in toasted. Mando uses a fancy tool to flip his burger – a paint scraper.

“I think it just works easier for me,” Mando said.

Then the savory smell started taking over the trailer, and then it was time to build the rest of the burger.

First up, some onions in the fryer and a cream to cool us off.

“This is just your basic cream cheese, nothing special about it either and stuff like that,” said Mando.

There’s always something special about cream cheese, whether it’s on a bagel or a burger! Next up was the beautiful bacon.

“We call it meat candy,” Mando said. “We top it off with the jalapeno ranch. And there you go. That is the Poppin’ Johnny.”

My name is Johnny and it might be sin but if you bet I wouldn’t regret this burger, you’re right.

The textures on the burger are amazing. You go from that soft bun to the outer crunchy edge, then the crunchy onion rings followed by that bacon, cream cheese, and jalapenos in-patty.

It’s like a trail of textures for your taste buds. Despite the fact that it’s only six ounces, this burger’s as big as a food truck! It definitely is like a jalapeno popper on a big ole’ burger – one tasty jalapeno popper.

Jesse wasn’t kidding – this burger is the boss. The Poppin’ Johnny at Rockn Rollerz rolling grill at the food park in Abilene, Texas – well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List.

The Texas Bucket List – Fossati’s Delicatessen

by

You can’t drive through Victoria without having to stop and take a look (and grab a bite!) at the oldest delicatessen in Texas! Fossati’s Delicatessen serves up a delectable display of deli delights that we were more than happy to get our hands on! With well over 100 years of making meatballs and other Italian fare, Fossati’s Delicatessen is well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List!

The Texas Bucket List – Jenschke Orchards

by

FREDERICKSBERG, Texas – It’s been said that April showers bring May flowers, but in our part of the world avoiding a late freeze means plenty of produce on the trees.  Summertime in central Texas is synonymous with the fruits of labor that Travis Jenschke’s family has been farming for generations in Fredericksburg.  His great grandfather emigrated from Germany to Frederiksberg in the 1860s, and his family has always been in the fields. Despite being at the ripe age of 73, Jenschke has never left the family farm and still works the fields.

“To me, I enjoy every minute of it and I like it,” said Jenschke.  It could be the fact he doesn’t really have to harvest his bountiful blessings. He’s got all sorts of Texans lining up to do a little peach picking.  “When I was a kid, I worked for my dad’s uncle and some neighbors picking peaches and they’d pay me 50 cents, 75 cents an hour to do that. And now, people come out here to pay me to pick peaches. That took me some time to get used to,” said Jenschke.

Making memories is what this experience is all about. First you have the thrill of seeking out the perfect peach.  “It’s work, it’s fun, but you’re out here and you know, being out in the country, it – oh, it’s wonderful,” said Mary Jane Taberes, visitor to the orchard.  But the best feeling is finally plucking a peach ripe for the picking.  “When you grab the one from the tree, it’s that freshness, that taste. You just can’t substitute anything else,” said Taberes.

While getting to taste fresh fruit is the juiciest juncture for visitors, for Jenschke it’s all about family – seven generations of them making this piece of Texas the center of their lives.
“My wife and I, we get a little money every month. Not no great sum, but hell, this is what I want to do,” Jenschke said. “I mean, I don’t want to sit in a rocking chair. I don’t want to do that, and I don’t want to sit down all day. I want to get up early and stay late. As long as I can, that’s what I’ll keep doing.”

The Texas Bucket List – Stanton’s City Bites

by

HOUSTON – When you first pull up to Stanton’s City Bites, a Houston hotspot just north of downtown, it looks more like a house that a hamburger joint. But once you step foot into the eatery, you’re floored with food and friendly faces.

That’s when we met the owner, Theresa Fong, who just happened to be one the most fun-loving burger flippers we’ve ever come across.

Theresa and her son Jonathan run Stanton City Bites, a burger joint with history.  Theresa’s in-laws opened the corner store as a grocery back in 1961, but when Theresa and her husband Arthur inherited the store in the ‘80s something had to change.

“Grocery business – so boring! You know, I’m from Hong Kong. Everything is the fast-paced,” said Theresa. “I told my husband, ‘I can’t do this. It’s so boring. I fall asleep.’ I said, that’s not good to show the customer. I’m boring here. ”

So Theresa started making meals, meals that smelled so sweet people would come off the street trying to buy a plate. It wasn’t long before people were lining up to buy anything and everything Theresa would cook – but then Arthur had an idea.

“I did that after a little while, and then my husband said, ‘This is America. You need to sell a burger, you know.’ But I said, ‘I don’t want burger!’ I don’t want any beef, or chopped beef – no, you don’t understand, because I wasn’t from here.”

Luckily, she made an exception and started selling beefy burgers one day a week.

“Every Monday we started serving a just bacon cheeseburger and fries. Just Monday. Then these guys said, ‘Hey, we come back for the burger.’ And I said, ‘But you have to come back Monday.’ They were so mad,” Theresa said.

That’s when the grocery store started to take another form. Customers wanted to hang around to chow down on their meal, another change that Theresa resisted. But once again, she made an exception and 15 years later Stanton’s is a staple.  But, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t their fair share of bumps and troubles along the way.

“The tears and heartache – many, many, many heartaches – but you know, I always tell myself, if you work hard, you’re willing to learn, you’re willing to listen, you get there,” said Theresa.

The hardest heartache hit Theresa in 2013 when her Arthur passed away.

“Kind of hard for me. I sort of kind of give up, you know,” said Theresa. “But, we’ve got all the friends and family and customers that say, ‘You need to stay on,’ that are, they want you to continue, you know, so. It’s a hard, long, hard three years for me.”

Theresa didn’t give up and with the help of her children, Stanton’s is staying strong.

“It’s hard for me and I think my children help me out. I say, ‘That’s why I put you through college!’ I mean, now I need your help, you know,” said Theresa.

Now she concentrates on what she does best – making burgers – and we’re here for a giant: the Cowboy Brunch Burger.

It starts with pre-seasoned beef, and then comes some tremendous toast dipped in butter, pickles are placed in the fryer while an egg gets fried up, onions are placed on the grill while Swiss cheese crowns the burger and American covers the egg. The fried pickles and bacon finish up the bulk of the burger and that’s placed on the Texas toast with mustard, lettuce, and tomatoes.

“People come in, ‘Oh my God, your burgers are so fresh,’ because we don’t make a lot in the morning. We make it in lump through lunch, then after 2 to 3 o’clock we make it again,” said Theresa.

You can tell Teresa really takes pride in everything she does in that burger, because it’s big, juicy, and beautiful.

“Why the hair so big, the food so much, people just – this is Texas.  Everything has to be huge. That’s what I learned when I first moved here,” Theresa said.

Any time you get a burger with bacon and eggs on it, it does kind of taste like breakfast. But then when you throw a little of the fried pickles and mustard and the mayo, you get an entirely different sensation. There’s just so much going on in this big ‘ole burger!

“We’re the best burger,” said Theresa. “ We put a lot of love and passion in our food, and you can actually tell, okay?”

Stanton’s City Bites – a burger as big as Houston, and well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List.

The Texas Bucket List – House of Pies

by

You can’t have your finger in too many pies here at the House of Pies in Houston! This place will put a pie-eating grin on your face and make you hungry for more. With so many pies to choose from, the only thing you’ll want when you leave is a new notch in your belt loop. Well worth a stop on The Texas Bucket List!