Ninfa's

thumb|Ninfa's

thumb|300 px|Original Ninfa's on Navigation Boulevard

The Original Ninfa's on Navigation is a popular Mexican restaurant located at 2704 Navigation Boulevard in Houston, Texas. The restaurant serves both Tex-Mex and Mexican cuisine. The Original Ninfa's was started by Ninfa Rodríguez Laurenzo, a Mexican-American woman, in a tortilla factory. Ninfa Laurenzo became a full-time restaurateur and the tortilla factory closed. Mama Ninfa is widely credited with popularizing the fajita among Houstonians.

Dai Huynh of the Houston Chronicle said that the Ninfa's locations opened after the first two restaurants "failed to attract the following of earlier restaurants." Tom Laurenzo said that the Laurenzo family never became very wealthy while it controlled the Ninfa's restaurants. He said "Everything was put back into the business."

History

1970s

In 1973, Ninfa Laurenzo, a widow with five children, Laurenzo's factory was losing money, and she needed to update her equipment in order to comply with new regulations. When Laurenzo decided to establish a restaurant, she applied for loans at several banks. The banks turned her down, so a friend in Mexico City loaned her several thousand dollars. Laurenzo divided the factory facility in half. The back of the factory continued to act as a tortilla factory, while the front had ten tables and 40 chairs. Laurenzo used discarded second hand furniture and pots and pans from her kitchen in the restaurant. The Ninfa's restaurant opened in July of that year. The cuisine at Ninfa's differed from the cuisine of Tex Mex restaurants at the time. 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." Around 1976 the restaurant was becoming popular among many groups of people, including employees in Downtown Houston, area politicians, and other groups. Ninfa's became so popular that, in 1975, In 1977 Richard West of the Texas Monthly said "no other Texas restaurant dictates the dining-out habits of so many of its city's inhabitants" and that the restaurant is "a favorite topic of conversation among Mexican food fanciers not just in Houston but all over the state."

1980s

In 1980 Ninfa's had seven restaurants. Roland Laurenzo, the head of Ninfa's parent company, decided to expand the number of locations. In 1980 and 1981 Ninfa's opened four restaurants in Dallas. In 1981 the chain grossed $30 million. In 1982 the chain had 13 restaurants. Because of problems with the business, Ninfa's ultimately had to close three of the four new Dallas locations.

McFaddin Ventures

In 1985 Ninfa's established a joint venture with McFaddin Ventures, a nightclub operator, in order to reduce the family's risks in opening new restaurants. At the time opening a new restaurant would have a cost of $1.5 million. In October of that year McFaddin paid Ninfa's $635,000 for the rights of the future use of the Ninfa's name, and Roland Laurenzo and another Ninfa's executive joined McFaddin; these actions began the joint venture. Roland became the senior vice president of the McFaddin restaurant group. McFaddin was required to pay a quarterly fee to Ninfa's based on the restaurant chain's sales. As part of the agreement, McFaddin was to open 12 Ninfa's locations by April 25, 1989. After the opening of the tenth restaurant, it was supposed to continually operate ten of the restaurants for a five-year period.

Less than nine months after the agreement was signed, Roland Laurenzo and six other McFaddin employees were terminated, and McFaddin sued Ninfa's and the Laurenzo family. 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. This caused the company to accumulate a lot of debt quickly. Its Shreveport, Louisiana location had opened in October 1996. In 1998 Serrano's Cafe, an Austin, Texas-based company, acquired RioStar as part of the bankruptcy protection settlement. The family was no longer involved in Ninfa's.

In 2001 there were 55 Ninfa's locations controlled by Serrano's. The restaurants in Georgia and Louisiana were independent franchises. Niel Morgan, the owner of the Antone's po boy chain, started the new firm Legacy Restaurants, 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."

In 2012 Shilcutt said that overall, "Ninfa's hadn't been that great in a long time".

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.

The owners of the original Ninfa's plan to open another branch at BLVD Place in Uptown Houston in 2019.

Cuisine

thumb|Original Ninfa's chips, tomato salsa, and green sauce

Ninfa's historically specialized in Tex-Mex and Norteño style Mexican dishes. Ninfa Laurenzo drew inspiration from the cooking of her mother, who was a Mexican, and from Laurenzo's own travels to Mexico City. The restaurant popularized fajitas in the Houston area.

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."

References

External links

Ninfa's in Baton Rouge
Legacy Restaurants
"Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo Papers, 1971-2001." University of Houston Libraries.
"The Original Ninfa's." Houston Chronicle (Dining Guide)
Mama Ninfa's (Archive)