Meet Sylvia Casares of Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sylvia Casares.

Sylvia, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My restaurant career actually began before I started working in a restaurant, but I didn’t know it at the time. It began in 1976 when I accepted a position with Uncle Ben’s Rice in Research & Development. My ten-year career at Uncle Ben’s started in their test kitchens and then moved to new product development as a food scientist. After 10 years, however, I realized I wanted to do more with people who were actually in the foodservice business, so I moved to sales & marketing. I first worked for a local distributor and then moved up to a manufacturer’s representative where I called on hundreds of restaurants in three states.

One of the key observations I made during this time came as a surprise. Most restaurants seemed to be serving just average food but were, nevertheless, successful. I made up my mind I should/could go into the restaurant business and make a difference with the quality of food I would serve. That food would be, of course, dishes from my childhood on the Texas-Mexican border. In 1995, I dived into the restaurant business by purchasing a rather new Tex-Mex restaurant just outside of Houston. It was doing nicely but the owners were feuding and wanted to sell. I believed I could do better and make it a success in spite, never once thinking I had absolutely no experience in operating a restaurant.

Ignorance was bliss, in a way, as I went into it with none of the doubts that maybe I should have had but would have made me hesitate. I immediately focused on improving both the food and service. Sales boomed in the first year.

However, my partnership fell apart after the second year and I ended up selling my half and headed closer into Houston to start a restaurant by myself. My restaurant had 18 tables and was, by every definition of the term, al tiny hole in the wall. It was in a small, unnoticeable shopping center with the front door facing a side street, even though the address was a major road with 100,000 cars going in each direction. I was barely breaking even for the first 18 months and was on the verge of selling/quitting, but at the last minute, I decided to “circle the wagons” and give this everything I had to grow my business.

I decided to redecorate/brighten my dining room, and I rebranded from a rather generic Mexican name that most people could not remember to Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. This name stood out and marketed the items my customers most loved. I also took another financial risk and leased a billboard for six months across the road from my restaurant that read, “ The Best Enchiladas in Houston are Also the Hardest to Find!” It had a large arrow pointing to the restaurant. We soon were exploding with customers, and everything turned around. When my lease was up, I moved to a larger and more visible location, and within a couple of years, the Houston Chronicle discovered my enchiladas.

I soon became a destination restaurant in the greater Houston area and was being called The Enchilada Queen. My dream had been to have my restaurant in a more centrally located area, so in 2009, I leased a spot closer to a premier real estate area in the city.

Looking back on this second venture I now see that even though my restaurant was well known in Houston, I had two definite setbacks. One was the Great Recession, which by 2009 was hitting restaurants in Houston hard. The second problem was that I did not have the management team I needed to maintain the smooth operation of the first restaurant while building the second location. It was a terrific struggle but after several years of hard work, I finally reached my goal. In 2014, I opened my third Sylvia’s in Houston’s energy corridor (far west Houston). It was shortly after this time, I closed the oldest location, which was very close to the new spot and needed major renovation to add what I had in the two newer spots.

Has it been a smooth road?
It has not by any measure been a smooth road! There have been numerous setbacks and times of severe discouragement and desperation which were created by economic downturns, natural and man-made disasters, difficult landlords, countless burglaries, vandalism, lawsuits, threats and poor decisions. Most consistently was just a plain old fear of failing in a business that knows a lot of failures. Most of my obstacles were created from a lack of general, overall all business knowledge.

I was basically a “food person” in the restaurant business. I knew and understood a great deal on preparing and using great food, but that’s only a small part of running a restaurant. You have to pay more for good ingredients, but that doesn’t mean a customer wants to pay more for it. There are labor issues, administration issues and just plain old, expensive maintenance issues. I made some decisions that were, in the end, hurtful to my business.

Also, I know that for me as a woman who had never had an interest in dealing with mechanical issues with equipment in the kitchen or in the building, it was an added challenge that opened the door for me to be taken advantage of along the way. I had a lot to learn. Natural disasters came with a few challenges, too. In July 2016, some people walking late at night by the Woodway location saw smoke and flames coming through the roof. It was a kitchen fire that closed us for more than two months.

No one was there, so thank God for late-night strollers. A year late, Hurricane Harvey came through Houston in August. Within just an hour or so, we had a foot of water in the Eldridge restaurant. Miraculously, we got to the restaurant in time to save a lot of the furniture and stuff and opened two weeks later. Unfortunately, the storm had flooded the businesses all around us as well as hundreds of homes in neighborhoods nearby. These were all our customers, so it took months and months for us to get back to normal.

One of the most frightening but also enlightening times of my life came in 2012 when I suffered a near-fatal gunshot wound to my abdomen from a former general manager and significant other. Recovery time was six long months, but I returned to work determined to continue with my goals. This was a life changing time for me as I realized I had zero life-work balance, and I was basically exhausted to the core.

For the first time, I realized that what I had managed to achieve had been done because of me, not because of a business partner, a spouse, children or relatives to support me. I did this as a determined woman, who are still few and far between in this business, and as a person with a dream.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen story. Tell us more about the business.
To our customers, I have a restaurant that is known for having excellent enchiladas from both south and north of the border. I am known for having overall excellent food (enchiladas and wood grilled meats) with great service. We prepare 14 different sauces for our 19 different enchiladas. In one of my restaurants, I added a large teaching kitchen where, several Saturdays a month, I offer classes on everything from South Texas breakfasts or grilling meats to enchiladas or tamales.

On a larger scale, however, I am also proud to be serving food made from recipes that represent the food I grew up eating in South Texas along the Mexican border. These recipes are authentic, just as mothers and grandmothers in south Texas prepared. This isn’t a sales point, but a dedication I have to keep this culture alive and educate new generations on a truly unique regional heritage.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to receive national recognition over the years, – including Top 50 Tex-Mex Restaurants by Texas Monthly Magazine and Ten Great Mexican Restaurants in the US by USA TODAY – but one that helped fulfill another dream came in 2015. That was the year I was selected to compete on “Beat Bobby Flay” show. To compete on that show was not my dream, but to write a cookbook was.

So, while I did not win on TV, I took the time I was in New York to call on several book editors. I sold my cookbook to St Marten’s Press, and in November 2016, The Enchilada Queen Cookbook was released. It’s done very well and even received the International Latino Book Award for best cookbook in 2017.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
The best – and most challenging – thing happening to restaurants of all kinds today is the fact we are getting customers much, much more educated in culinary traditions and different kinds of food. When I started Sylvia’s, most people knew about Tex-Mex food and they kind of knew Mexican food. Today, they know Tex-Mex food from the border and how it’s different than Tex-Mex food in the Panhandle and how both are different than Tex-Mex food from Southeast Texas. It’s the same with Mexican food.

The know Mexico City food is different than Puebla and so on. It’s exciting because I’ve been able to develop all these dishes from all these regions and have people seek them out. One of my first surprises, when I was selling products to restaurants before starting my own, is how many were relatively successful but served just average food. That’s becoming harder and harder to do now. People know and people understand.

One thing I’m proudest of is having so many employees that have been with me for a long, long time. That’s a rarity in the restaurant business, but I think it is beginning to change. Owners know the better the employee, the happier the customers. And good, well-trained employees are treasures. I think we’ll see these bonds grow much stronger in the years to come.

Contact Info:

• Address: 6401 Woodway Dr., and 1140 Eldridge Pkwy
• Website: www.sylviasenchiladas.com.
• Phone: 6401 Woodway Dr., 713-334-7295; 1140 Eldridge Pkwy., 832-230-3842
• Facebook: Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen-Woodway; Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen-Eldrige

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