Splashy cocktails at the award-winning Las Ramblas in Brownsville; gorditas at The Tortilleria Factory in McAllen.
By Ryan Cantu
Photographs by Daniela Loera
The Moment
For years, the Rio Grande Valley has been Texas’ greatest culinary secret. but it won’t be for long.
Just a short walk from the Rio Grande, the afternoon sun warms the cracked pastel pink-and-white facade on the 1884 Manuel Guerra building in Roma.
Inside, the thick brick walls cool the interior, but the retired Canadian and Midwestern snowbirds around me are alight with the warmth of smoky, mezcal-like spirits. Attired in safari outfits and dangling cameras, these Winter Texans have arrived fresh from a March birding excursion to sip the hard-earned results of the state’s premier agave distillery.
Opened in 2021 by Leonardo Sanchez and his business partner, Eduardo Ocampo, Ancestral Craft Spirits was initially met with reactions ranging from surprise to outrage from friends in Mexico. An agave distillery in Texas? The very notion was considered sacrilege to their southern neighbors. Sanchez’s critics in the industry were quick to exclaim, “There’s nothing more Mexican than mezcal!”
And it’s true. As Sanchez explains, Ancestral Craft Spirits can’t call its product either mezcal or its most popular variant tequila because of strict denominationof-origin rules in Mexico. Inspired by the public outcry over their bold gambit, the duo fittingly named its bottled spirit Blasfemus, which they now sell direct from the distillery to places as far away as Florida and California. The Valley is proving to be the perfect spot to pull off this agave-growing operation, not only because of its arid weather and sun-baked terrain, but also because of its history in Ocampo’s family. Dating to 1742, before the Republic of Texas or claims from Mexico, the property was bestowed by New Spain to the Ocampos (then the Ramirez family) to settle. In the eyes of its founders, the distillery has long defied any arbitrary borders.
The current production comes from plants that were grown in Oaxaca before being distilled and bottled in Roma. But the company owns 30 acres of Espadín agave that are halfway through their seven-year maturation process. When the plants are ready, they will earn the distinction as the only Texas-grown agave plants that have been transformed into a local spirit.
“There’s more tequila being sent around the world than vodka these days,” Sanchez says. “The agave market is skyrocketing, and we’re offering something different.”
After driving more than an hour southeast from my hometown of Laredo, Roma is my first stop on a culinary journey across an area along the border covering over 4,000 square miles and more than 20 municipalities. For over a century, the region has offered an abundance of Tejano and Mexican favorites—from homey diners to roadside taquerias to the birthplace of the sizzling fajita at the now-defunct Round-Up Restaurant in Pharr. As the region’s population and diversity has exploded in recent years, these options have expanded to include cutting-edge dining spots, creative watering holes, and forward-
thinking makers of all stripes.
My first taste of that savory, multilayered libation at Ancestral Craft Spirits begins telling the story of the Valley: a spirit born in Western Mexico and raised in a region once part of Northern Mexico and New Spain and influenced by its Indigenous heritage. Like the prickly pear that blooms throughout the area, defining the region’s cuisine is a thorny endeavor. It requires digging through strata of complex history, shifting borders, and consistent migration. As visitors quickly learn, this history is reflected by bold cuisine that’s not afraid to ricochet between tradition and untapped gastronomic vistas. Whether that’s an international chef’s showcase, a uniquely Tejano style of mesquite smoked barbecue, or a French bistro in Brownsville specializing in escargot and caviar, nothing is off the table. While the Valley defies neat categorization, its borderless attitude is best summed up by the question printed on every bottle of Blasfemus: Why not?
Just past Roma and neighboring Rio Grande City, the rocky terrain quickly flattens into the fertile soils of the Rio Grande watershed and forms a sprawling grid of citrus groves and strip malls comprising the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolis.
Tucked away in an alley behind the textile shops and nightclubs of downtown McAllen, The Tortilleria Factory—commonly referred to as El Pocito—feels like stepping into centuries’ past. Founded by Aurelio Balli Tijerina and Herminia Gonzalez Balli in 1935, the restaurant is filled with antique-looking machinery including a decades-old molino that grinds corn into masa.
Irma Gonzalez, who now runs the operation, prepares my order of gorditas stuffed with chicharrón verde and picadillo. Each presents a distinct variety of Valley comfort food, but what really shines is the sweet freshness of corn that cannot be recreated with processed Maseca. Despite the prevalence of fresh tortillas in South Texas, The Tortilleria Factory is one of the only places that still uses the ancient nixtamal method that requires soaking kernels in water and cal, or powdered limestone.
“Customers will come in and see the raw masa coming out of the molino, and they’ll tell me, ‘This is very beautiful, like a little piece of Mexico,’” Gonzalez says.
The Tortilleria Factory was born around the same time as the agricultural industry that still defines the modern Rio Grande Valley. When the business was founded in the early 20th century, the Valley was becoming awash in citrus groves, including the ruby red grapefruit created here by genetic mutation and patented in 1933 by A.E. Henniger.
Today, some of those acres of fertile farmland have been overtaken by residential neighborhoods and an increasingly cosmopolitan dining scene. Just a few blocks from The Tortilleria Factory, across the street from the historic Casa de Palmas hotel, is Salt New American Table. Launched by South Texas culinary trailblazers Larry and Jessica Delgado in 2013, it dares to take a more worldly approach that melds haute technique with hyperlocal sourcing.
“Everyone knows what an orange or grapefruit is, and we’re super proud of our citrus in the Valley, but there’s so much more to the agriculture here,” Larry says. “Bok choy, for instance. Or beets—much of the state’s crop is grown near McAllen, then shipped north to larger markets. When we started serving things like kohlrabi, a lot of people didn’t even know what it was. But we wanted diners to be more connected to something that was being grown in their own backyard.”
In order to build sustainability, the Delgados promised to buy all the leftover produce from the weekly McAllen Farmers Market. Soon, small ranchers and growers were showing up at their back door with pounds of patty pan squash, dragonfruit, and pasture-raised meat. Larry might’ve already been leaning toward a global approach in his cuisine, but those kinds of ingredients forced him to get even more creative, with offerings like ravioli stuffed with braised rabbit from Yahweh’s Farm out of Harlingen, or 20-ounce Duroc pork chops served over a rotating medley of seasonal vegetables. Keeping one foot in the region’s past, while pushing it forward with time-honored European culinary techniques, he cooks the chop sous vide, then scores, seasons, and fries the fatty outer layer into an inch-thick chicharrón that keeps the loin from drying out.
In the decade since Salt’s debut, the McAllen area has seen a proliferation of high-end restaurants and bars, including Ambra, Toloa Rooftop, and Sidebar—swanky spots that wouldn’t look out of place on the Las Vegas Strip. That wouldn’t have been possible without someone like Larry Delgado taking that first step toward broadening the local palate.
Today, when he sees Peruvian restaurants, or Spanish tapas places opening nearby, Larry takes a certain amount of pride in the progression. Unlike before, when customers would belly up to Salt’s chef’s bar in gastronomic bewilderment, he’s no longer buried under an avalanche of questions. His customers are informed and more open to experimentation.
“It certainly helped change the culinary scene in the Valley, especially McAllen,” Larry says. “I don’t want to take too much credit for it, but afterward we saw other chefs taking chances that they might not have otherwise taken. I think we laid that foundation for a broader scope of cuisine.”
After decades of dismissing South Texas as a culinary backwater, as something inferior to Mexico or cosmopolitan cities further north, the outside world is finally recognizing its potential. That became apparent in June when Mission’s Ana Liz Pulido was bestowed a James Beard Award for Best Chef Texas. Considering the level of competition, it might sound surprising that a tiny five-table taqueria took home the culinary world’s biggest honor. But the young 26-year-old upstart has come a long way from her days of running an elote cart as a teenager in the RGV.
Even after returning from San Antonio where she attended the Culinary Institute of America, Pulido’s initial effort at being an RGV restaurateur was far more humble. When the chef first opened her taqueria in 2021, she admittedly felt like it was just another taco spot competing for the cheapest combo plate—typically an order of five small corn tortillas layered with bistec and a side of charro beans.
After an upbringing where she was exposed to the diverse cuisines of places like Reynosa and Mexico City, she longed to do something bolder. Pulido found her solution when she met Luna Vela, who started Neighborhood Molino in 2020, a business that both produced nixtamal products and helped small operators learn the process themselves.
With Vela’s guidance, Pulido’s desire to transition to quality nixtamal—particularly from an ethically sourced producer named Tamoa—required her to change her menu. She began to sell larger, more elaborate tacos and reimaged specialties that represent the complex overlapping of Mexican regional cuisines found on the South Texas border. This includes blue and yellow tostadas meant to be cracked apart and dipped into an array of house-made sauces, such as a neon orange salsa chile de árbol. Her corn prowess is also on display with offerings like a chile relleno taco and the decadent costra, a “tortilla” made of melted cheese that caramelizes and hardens on the griddle.
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“A lot of people from outside hear ‘South Texas’ and they think ‘San Antonio,’” Pulido says. “No, drive four more hours, and you’ll find us 10 minutes before you hit the border. That’s why I’m proud to represent the Valley.”
On the other end of the RGV, Brownsville has spent the last decade conjuring up a new future for the city’s historic downtown. In the early 2000s, visitors might have only found an unremarkable city bus terminal surrounded by shops selling textiles, toys, and used clothes to shoppers who would walk across the international bridge three blocks away. The area fell into disarray as a variety of global shocks like 9/11 brought the traffic to a trickle. But thanks to strategic investment from the city over the past decade, Market Square has been reborn.
“I never visited downtown 10 years ago,” says Gilberto Hernandez, owner of Búho, the city’s only independent bookstore. “You would just drive through here to get to the bridge.”
Today, the blocks that make up the historic downtown center invite tourists to dine, stroll, and shop in style. The ivory Spanish-Revival style Market Square originally served as an open-air market where residents could purchase fresh produce until the mid-20th century. About 10 years ago, the city began restoring the building, which now acts as an archives center and event hall.
I wander into an elegantly moody cocktail lounge, with shades of a Spanish speakeasy from the 1920s. Led by mixologist Chris Galicia, Las Ramblas at Market Square has been repeatedly recognized by the James Beard Award committee for its doting hospitality and a progressive menu that isn’t afraid to shake up the classics with sous vide-infused spirits and in-house tinctures. Galicia’s toddy riff, for instance, pairs floral jasmine tea with lichi liqueur, citrus, fresh pineapple, and oolong-imbued vodka.
“Brownsville has always been the underdog even in the Valley. People might just stop here on the way to the island,” Galicia says. “This underdog status lit a fire under a lot of people to ask, ‘What can we build here while still preserving the history of our city?’”
Opened in 2019 by Brownsville-raised brothers Fabian and Michael J. Limas, Las Ramblas upended the Texas tippling scene by introducing wine tastings, sponsored cocktail competitions, and an interactive drink-making series called The Liquid Lab. Since then, they’ve expanded their creative energies to include projects like Boqueron Tapas + Wine, a high-end tapas bar that sources some of the world’s finest cured meats, cheeses, and East Coast oysters. This spring, they also debuted French-American restaurant Le Rêve, where they’re pushing gastronomic limits with foie gras-topped cheeseburgers and gnocchi studded with escargot. The Limas brothers even playfully nod to the RGV’s affinity for offal in dishes like their smoked tongue au poivre drizzled over a dry-aged rib-eye.
Salt New American Table
The visionary example the Las Ramblas group has set is even beginning to draw new talent to the area, including chef Rafael Villalpando, who chose Brownsville for his new modern Mexican steakhouse, Chilmoli. Despite being born in Los Angeles and running restaurants in New York, Houston, and Monterrey, Mexico, Villalpando saw the RGV as a burgeoning dining scene that could best appreciate his talents. This includes progressive regional variations, such as achiote-marinated al pastor chicken and an elevated version of the taco estilo Matamoros with wagyu beef.
“We’re a growing community. We’re a young community. We’re innovative, and we’re finally getting the resources that we’ve always needed,” Michael says. “You’re seeing that across all of South Texas—we’re finally getting the tools to truly go supernova.”
One thing’s for certain: The RGV isn’t afraid to indulge. Whether I found myself at a small, timeworn taqueria or traversing a globe-spanning tasting menu, there is something uniquely “Valley” about most every establishment. Dining concepts include touches of Mexican influence, local chefs are inspired by the region’s ancestors, and everyone I encountered was modest and welcoming. At the end of the day, those in the Valley are just aiming to have a good time.
The region’s penchant for a party is on full display when I visit a strip of bars in the Nolana Tower Plaza in Central McAllen. What used to be a nondescript strip mall harboring the local Curves outlet is now the city’s new club scene made up of places like 80’s Brewery, The Bearded Lady, and Fast Eddie’s Sports Tavern.
One wild standout is Suerte Bar & Grill, a sharply self-aware watering hole that leans into local stereotypes. Decorated with 956-specific lotería cards and boozy concoctions that pay tribute to the sweet-and-spicy snacks of the region, it embraces its oversized Valley personality. For example, the chile-tequila-injected chamoyada called the “El Nopal”—one of many likeminded libations born during the pandemic by founder Benjamin Peña.
“We try to jump on all the trends, good or bad,” Peña says. “Suerte is about embracing where we come from in the Valley. Embracing the 956 way.”
As midnight approaches, horns and sirens announce the Takuache Show. The bartenders march in single file through the congested space holding up huge lotería cards, including one of a sleazy possum—“takuache” translates to “possum,” but is used to refer to a trashy person—with the “Edgar” bowl haircut.
This warrants multiple rounds of tequila shots, which I offer to some new friends at the bar. All but one accept. “SHE’S ON PROBATION!” her friend yells over the noise. Sobriety does not stop the girl from dancing with her friends, along with the entire raucous congregation, to cumbia hit “Bebe Dame.”
In the same manner that a Valley menu often clashes in the best possible way, the smooth accordion and syrupy vocals of the ballad are punctuated by the chanting of a frantic and sweaty crowd that still rings in my head:
Puro Pinche,
Puro Pinche,
Puro Pinche 956!
