Treviño - Los Barrios Family Cookbook

In 1979, when my mother, Viola B. Barrios, invested $3,000 in an old garage to open her new restaurant, Los Barrios, she never imagined that it would someday be named one of the 100 Best New Restaurants in America by Esquire magazine. Nor could she have pictured it eventually growing into a 280-seat restaurant packed with customers each and every day.

It seems that some things are special right from the very start. While $3,000 registers very little financially, Mama Viola's ambition and perseverance rank among the greatest ever.

Los Barrios did not begin as a dream but rather as a last hope. After the death of my father, debts started piling up and my mother was forced to take financial matters into her own hands. With two failed business ventures behind her, she turned to what she knew best. My mother had always been an incredible cook, keeping our tummies filled with the wonderful dishes that had been handed down to her through the generations. This wonderful home cooking is the true essence of Los Barrios.

Our beginnings were humble. We started in a $500-a-month garage that had previously been home to an outboard motor repair shop. This was all that we could afford at the time. There was no parking lot and there were no windows. The chairs and tables didn't match. A small metal front door serviced everyone from the fifty customers per day to the two employees, as well as the purveyors. At night, we just closed the garage door to lock up.

Mama Viola set high standards for her cuisine, knowing that when your ambience is humble, the food had better be good! And that's exactly what it was. My brother Louie's role was to run the dining room, along with the help of one waiter, Juan. I was a junior in high school at the time and would visit during lunch whenever my girlfriends and I could sneak away from school.

Soon enough, everyone began to take notice of the little garage restaurant. First it was the downtown businesspeople, then the local food critics. One article referred to Francisco D. Rodrguez, who was my mother's original partner, affectionately known as Paco, as the Muhammad Ali of the restaurant industry because of his quick wit. Before you knew it, the lines were out the door. With the lines also came challenges. The long hours in the restaurant business never allowed us much opportunity to revel in our success. The more customers we had, the more problems arose, and we needed to handle them.

Everyone helped out where they could, but it was Mama Viola who shouldered most of the burden. Not speaking English fluently did not seem to affect her progress. Of course, great cooking carries with it a lot of forgiveness.