Border Towns: What to Do and Where to Do It
Texas offers a wealth of restaurants, bars, shopping, sightseeing, and pleasures of the flesh along the 1248-mile Mexican border that stretches from El Paso to Brownsville. It's close, it's different, and it's fun.
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Bill Luft of Nuevo Laredo did the decor of The Pub in early Texas-Mexican historical antiques; and the Lion's Den in wild game trophies bagged by the owners. Old radios and gramophones, plus early 20th century photos of Nuevo Laredo decorate the Pub's interior. But the best feature is an astonishingly good musician, Manuel Ponce. After finishing his day job playing at church, he comes to the Pub, where he sits flanked by piano and organ. Manuel's left hand plays the organ; the right, the piano. He can play any number you request.
The two-year-old Lion's Den has a Chicago-Iike, eight-piece band that begins at 9 p.m. A typical whacked-out rumble boogie parlor with sound to jar your gold inlays, the Den Is coated in Zebra stripes and leopard spots and is a teenage favorite.
Next is one of the three Christina's Gift and Curio shops in Nuevo Laredo. Christina's is another Longoria enterprise named after Fred and Dick's sister. Ms. Longoria travels the world for the jewelry, clothes, furniture, colonial antiques, and fine handmade items you see in her shops.
Nuevo Laredo is the premier border city for shopping and no place is more impressive than the incomparable Marti's, with its imperial elegance, that features flawless baubles and bangles in a strikingly beautiful building. There are two Marti's: the main store is in town on the main avenue; the original is located across from the Nuevo Laredo market. Both stores, as well as Christina's, carry Josefa dresses, silver, jewelry, home furnishings, and furniture.
Down the street from the intown Marti's, Russell Deutsch continues a long tradition of offering the discriminating buyer the finest in jewelry, perfumes, silver, and china.
Carlos and Louie's Laredo Grill is the newly introduced rich, pampered child of the restaurants in Nuevo Laredo. You can tell it right after stepping inside. It is tastefully luxuriant, unorganized, disheveled, a restaurant that doesn't bother to comb its hair or pick up its toys. It's a royal gorge where cattle herders, cheapshot hustlers with bolus bellies, and border bluebloods all mingle in a semi-provocative manner. And, of course, the kid is a success; Shirley Temple on PTA night.
The proud doting father is millionaire Carlos Anderson, a Swedish-Mexican who made it big with similar offspring located across Mexico. His formula is simple: find some sons-of-millionaires for partners, collect their cash, and make them wait tables and do the cleaning and cooking. Co-owners Luis Herrera from Puerto Vallarta's Carlos O'Brien's and Alvaro Bernot from Willy's in Guadalajara are swimming in pesos, but they work like turks every night doing everything but loafing in the front office. The menu, like the decor, is eclectic and showy. For Carlos and Luis, the world is your oyster and they present them in a typical celebrated fashion. When you dine at Carlos and Louie's plan to eat not a little or even a lot but in wretched excess.
Start with Oysters 4-4-4, four Madrazo (spinach and cheese); four Cardenas (garlic butter) and four Diablo (Mexican sausage). Follow this with gazpacho served in a beer mug, a watercress salad, and, finally, the lime-buttered steak or Barbecued Bones (fleshy sideribs.) Pass the Alka Seltzer. It's closed on Tuesdays and is located on Nuevo Laredo's main drag (Guerrero) south of the downtown area.
The old favoritos of Nuevo Laredo continue to be capricious. Yet with a little work, eternal verities can be found. Stay on the main street all the way out of town, and on the right you will see Cabana de los Novios. From the looks of the place you think it only serves impudent scum, but inside you join other cult-worshippers who call this dump home. Frijoles borrachos (beans cooked in beer) is a gorgeous item, as are the thick tortillas and shish kebab.
El Rio Motel and La Fuente Restaurant is the place to bag down in Nuevo Laredo. This great bar offers a unique, spellbinding appetizer made with beans guacamole, cheese, sausage and jalapenos. They've got good Tequila sours, and if you are feeling headachy and out-of-sorts, quaff the El Rio "Especial" (rum, pineapple juice, apricot brandy, and grenadine.) After one you feel demented. Singles are: $12; Doubles $16.
I liked the Mexico Tipico better before it was remodeled. Nor there is more glitter and less warmth—all the accoutrements of a Parisian tattoo parlor. Mariachis are still the best in town along with machitos, charcoaled pieces of cabrito.
Patterned after the Cadillac and still famous for Tequila sours is Latinos. A unique spot, it was opened in the 1930s by workers of the bar and restaurant union and continues to be operated as a co-op bar and restaurant.
Floor shows in downtown Nuevo Laredo are sit-and-yawn sessions. The performers run through their numbers with hideous expertise, displaying a lack of spontaneity that took years to perfect. For the record, you can find these show biz bummers at the Shamrock (9:30, 11:30, 2:30) or the Hawaiian Paradise (9:30, 11:45, 1:30, 3:30).
The Capr is in town, near the bridge. It is a nice place to dance to an anonymous house band that has been playing there eight years. A block down is a gross new place (restaurant, bar with rock band) called La Mansion. Decorated in what is best described as Early American Trim-and-Swim, it has a gourmet menu without a gourmet chef aand is a pulsating pageant of the best/worst Yankee bad taste.
ROMA-MIGUEL ALEMAN
THE TOWN OF ROMA BATHES itself in sunny memories of another age. It sits quietly unwinking at the work of the 20th Century, glad to be left alone. By now, I had formed the habit of walking the main street of these little border towns, stopping in the busiest cafe at noon to listen to the conversation. In Roma, it's ranchers talking ranching and farmers talking prices. Nothing else. As tireless as cicadas, these hard-boned, perpetually tanned cowboys talk of meat prices, water supplies, and grain prices.
Lying across the Rio Grande in a dead calm, bathed in an afternoon sunlight, is Miguel Aleman. The townspeople here sleep in the afternoons, or sit in the cafes reading the newspapers, looking as if they were near succumbing to ether. I interrupted a teenage Chinese checker player for directions: "Four blocks down and two to the left you will find it. Say, cowboy, you wanna find some gorls?" With a tense sigh, I declined and marched south, determined to find the Rancho Grande Restaurant and Bar. Instead of the "gorls" I had a fairly good filet in wine sauce with a likeable price ($2.40). Breakfasts, sandwiches, and Mexican food are also available.
Waldorfs Restaurant and Bar has a passable filet mignon. The only other place to try in this parched, brickdust-colored village is Kahn's Restaurant. However, it was closed.
McALLEN-REYNOSA
AS YOU TRAVEL TOWARDS TEXAS' "Winter Garden," the Rio Grande Valley, you realize suddenly that the land is changing from sleepy, rolling bush land stocked with cattle, to vari-colored, tropical lushness. Palm trees stand erect, lining the road like palace guards topped off with green Afros. The tone and color of everything changes. A raw, massive purple burst of bougainvillaea; fruit trees sagging under their amber-and lemon-colored loads; cotton plants in well-ordered rows of rich greens topped with frozen puffs of white smoke.
In the middle of this prismatic explosion of color, across from McAllen sits Reynosa, the nightclub mecca of the border; a town that hums like a beehive after dark. Despite this honor, it seems domesticated, even tamed. It lacks the wild, brainstorming excesses of Nuevo Laredo. "Anything pressed too far becomes a sin," wrote Lawrence Durrell in Justine, and Reynosa, despite its facade, always reigns up short.
For the tourist, the city lies in two sections: main street, where you eat, spend, dance, and drink; and the day-to-day Reynosa, up the hill, centered around the town square with its inevitable cathedral.
Juan Trevino's Bar and Gift Shop is the traditional place to begin the evening. Like two other nearby splashy booze parlors, Trevinos is decorated in Chicano Hapsburg complete with rapids, waterfalls, bubbling brooks, and a plethora of pomp. It features the best gifts in town and a margarita that flows as smooth as honey from a spoon.
A few doors down, you find the Imperial, with its Spanish-modern inside and a dancing, recycled waterfall that is the show stopper. Against a background of organ music that used to be featured on Thanksgiving Day at my local Luby's Cafeteria, I watched with reptilian concentration as the colored water shot up in time to the music.
Reynosa-bound pilgrims can find as good a menu as the city offers at La Cucaracha. Mrs. Tina Ortega got her beginning in the restaurant business in Reynosa in 1952, opening Joe's place and expanding the first time to the original La Cucaracha. After two years of construction, a new La Cucaracha opened in March.
Mrs. Ortega is a strong, hard-working woman who presided over every detail of furnishings: curtains from Reynosa; chandeliers from Czechoslovakia; and a banquet room designed like an Arabian tent that is capable of holding over lOO people. The best nachos on the border are here, "Nachos Especial" (cheese, jalapenos, and beans are usual, but add to that fresh lettuce, tomato, onion). A chalupa-like nacho that is unbeatable.
Begin with La Cucaracha Special Salad (succulent and imaginative, with crisp bacon, cheese, Spanish olive oil, black olives, and a special dressing). Here, as in almost all Rio Grande Valley restaurants, the two-meat game dinner is excellent. Quail ($4.50) and Frog Legs ($4) are best unless you want to try a truly delicious Lobster Thermidor ($7.50).
Another long-time Reynosa favorite is Sam's Place. Long tables in a brilliantly lighted room set off this landmark. Be sure to order the game dinner with refried beans.
After 45 years at the same spot and managed by the same family, the US Bar and Grill Restaurant has been remodeled and now is managed by a serious young man named Javier Willars. Ask him to recommend something not listed on the menu—Milanesa, which is sort of a Mexican wiener schnitzel (good meat cut paper thin across the grain and fried in deep fat). The US Bar and Grill is a good restaurant without interior frills except for the four beautiful mirrors over the bar.
I came perilously close to having a visionary raving fit after entering the Casa Blanca nightclub. The decor and music represent a wedding cake of styles that combine the unmistakable influences of Captain Marvel and Kitty Wells. In the Presidente Lounge, on the first floor, you can drag yourself around the floor to the best in Chicano-Nashville melodies. Waltz me around again, Willie.
After being blasted by a Latin schottische, I reeled panic-stricken and dazed uptairs to the 5th Dimension Club only to enter a Martian DeMolay chapter room. On one wall, a space mural; on another, the Mona Lisa. Dominating the whole thing was a large, white space capsule with tiny slit-windows, suspended in air, wherein sat a rock-and-roll disc jockey spinning out platters. Flanking the dance floor were rows of futuristic metal chairs, all waiting for the meeting or party to begin.
More conventional is the Alaska, a typical discoteque with lighted dance floor, black-and-white trendy interiors, and a band throwing out heavy doses of macho rock.
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