Ninfa's
[4] Dai Huynh of the Houston Chronicle said "Word quickly spread about the East End restaurant with good, cheap food and an outgoing Mexican Mama who greeted diners with open arms.
Throughout the restaurant's history, many celebrities, including Aerosmith, George H. W. Bush, George Benson, Dyan Cannon, Michael Douglas, Crystal Gayle, Rock Hudson, Reba McEntire, John Travolta, Ben Vereen, and ZZ Top ate at Ninfa's.
Roland Laurenzo, the head of Ninfa's parent company, decided to expand the number of locations.
McFaddin was required to pay a quarterly fee to Ninfa's based on the restaurant chain's sales.
[15] In a one-year period ending on October 16, 1996, Ninfa's embarked on an expansion program, opening six new restaurants, with new locations in four Texas cities: El Paso, Killeen, Tyler, and Waco, Shreveport, Louisiana, and Leipzig, Germany.
The new locations required large amounts of capital, and RioStar bought equipment, paper goods, and supplies from the company Sysco.
[4] One individual, a Houston businessperson named Eckart Wieske, opened a 250-seat licensed Ninfa's restaurant in Leipzig, Germany.
Due to higher than expected costs, Wieske was unable to cover his debts, and on October 16, 1996, the bank that lent him money took control of the restaurant.
[17] In 1998 Serrano's Cafe, an Austin, Texas-based company, acquired RioStar as part of the bankruptcy protection settlement.
[1] Ninfa Laurenzo, the restaurant's founder, died of bone cancer at the age of 77, on Sunday June 17, 2001.
[19] In 2006,[20] Niel Morgan, the owner of the Antone's po boy chain,[21] started the new firm Legacy Restaurants,[20] then proceeded to make a deal with Serrano's.
After Morgan took control of the original restaurants, he proceeded to begin renovations, which added potted plants and a colonial Spanish-style bench.
Legacy has made a number of improvements including a lighted parking lot and covered outdoor seating.
[citation needed] There are still "Ninfa's Mexican Restaurants" in Houston and elsewhere operated by independent owners who previously received licenses to use the name from the Laurenzo family.
[20] In 2012, several licensed Ninfa's locations were converted into "Maggie Rita's Tex-Mex Grill & Bar," a restaurant chain co-owned by Carlos Mencia.
"[22] Shilcutt further added that the takeover caused an "uproar" in Houston and that "but to many longtime Houstonians (me included), the deal with interloper Maggie Rita's may as well have been a pact with the devil.
[24] In 2017, the original Ninfa's was featured on a Houston-based episode of the Travel Channel show Man v. Food, hosted by Casey Webb.
[25] The owners of the original Ninfa's plan to open another branch at BLVD Place in Uptown Houston in 2019.
The Ninfa's fajitas included chopped, char-grilled beef fillets placed in handmade flour tortillas.
When a customer had asked for "salsa verde," Ninfa Laurenzo created the "Green Sauce" at the spur of the moment.
[1] Ninfa Laurenzo's son Roland later offered a modified version of this dish at his own restaurant, using pureed avocados, tomatillos, cilantro, garlic, and jalapeños.
Patricia Sharpe of Texas Monthly said that Roland's version was a "creamier, more luxurious potion" than his mother's original recipe.
[19] In 2004 Sharpe said that, at the original Ninfa's, the beef fajitas "still have their old magic" and that the flour tortillas, still made to order in-house, "are truly carb-addictive.
Padilla also said that the restaurant would grind its own beef brisket for its crispy tacos and use fresh tomatillo in the green sauce.
