Pancho Villa's Saddle at the Cadillac Bar: Recipes and Memories

by Wanda Garner Cash

Overview

In 1924, Achilles Mehault “Mayo” Bessan and his eighteen-year-old bride journeyed from New Orleans to Mexico, where he ultimately transformed a dirt-floored cantina in Nuevo Laredo into a bar and restaurant renowned across the United States for its fine seafood and fancy cocktails. The Cadillac Bar built a reputation as one of the finest eateries and watering holes in the Southwest, even surviving a 1954 flood that devastated cities on both sides of the Rio Grande. Its history sprawls across more than a half-century and its food and drink drew inspiration from the culinary traditions of southern Louisiana, from pre-Prohibition New Orleans, and from the dusty border towns that straddle the Rio Grande in far South Texas.

In her introduction, author Wanda Garner Cash writes, “I grew up behind the bar: first child and first grandchild. I spoke Spanish before I spoke English and I learned my numbers counting coins at my grandfather’s desk . . . I rode Pancho Villa’s saddle on a sawhorse in the main dining room, with a toy six-shooter in my holster. I fed the monkeys and parrots my grandfather kept in the Cadillac’s parking lot.” Readers will find themselves drawn to a different, more languid time: when Laredo society matrons passed long afternoons in the bar, sipping Ramos Gin Fizzes; when fraternity miscreants slouched into the Cadillac to recover from adventures “South of the Border”; when tourists waited in long lines for 40-cent tequila sours and plates of chicken envueltos.

Step into the Cadillac Bar and take a seat. You’ll want to stay awhile.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623498986
Publisher:	Texas A&M University Press
Publication date:	12/28/2020
Series:	Tarleton State University Southwestern Studies in the Humanities
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

WANDA GARNER CASH is the daughter of Porter Garner Jr., a 1945 graduate of Texas A&M who ran the Cadillac Bar from 1946 until 1979. Cash is the former president of the Texas Press Association and Fellow of the F. Griffin Singer Professorship in Journalism at the University of Texas. The 2016 winner of the James Madison Award presented by the Freedom of Information Foundation, she is also the coauthor of The News in Texas and other books. She lives in Ingram, Texas.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xii

Chapter 1 Mayo 1

Chapter 2 Porter Joins the Business 16

Chapter 3 What the Cadillac Looked Like 28

Chapter 4 The Cast of Characters 39

Chapter 5 The Flood 63

Chapter 6 Meeting Up at the Cadillac 73

Chapter 7 The Party's Over 87

Chapter 8 Recipes from the Cadillac 95

Afterword 123

Timeline 129

Index 135

Editorial Reviews

A truly remarkable journey into the soul of the Texas-Mexico border—and the iconic landmarks and thunderclaps that define it. Wonderfully told, masterfully researched, and brimming with the compelling, authentic voice of a writer whose roots run deep along the Rio Grande.”—Bill Minutaglio, author of First Son: George W. Bush & The Bush Family Dynasty, Dallas 1963, Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life

Bill Minutaglio

Wanda Cash’s new book Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar is a historical and cultural page turner. It’s also a treasure trove of timeless and authentic recipes that almost justify the use of the word awesome. The book however does beg one seminal, existential question: Do I read it or do I eat it?”— Kinky Friedman

Kinky Friedman

This is no thin recuerdo. Wanda writes with rich detail of Mayo Bessan’s choices for ingredients and how the Cadillac Bar’s signature favorites appeared so effortlessly on the cloth topped tables of the dining rooms. There is an intimacy to this writing, that of the grandchild who was part of and witness to the workings of so legendary a restaurant and that of the gifted wordsmith who has deftly crafted a family story inside the history of Prohibition, Los Dos Laredos, international trade, and circumstances far less complex than those that define the frontera today.”—María Eugenia Guerra, publisher, LareDOS, A Journal of the Borderlands

María Eugenia Guerra

This is no thin recuerdo. Wanda writes with rich detail of Mayo Bessan’s choices for ingredients and how the Cadillac Bar’s signature favorites appeared so effortlessly on the cloth topped tables of the dining rooms. There is an intimacy to this writing, that of the grandchild who was part of and witness to the workings of so legendary a restaurant and that of the gifted wordsmith who has deftly crafted a family story inside the history of Prohibition, Los Dos Laredos, international trade, and circumstances far less complex than those that define the frontera today.”—María Eugenia Guerra, publisher, LareDOS, A Journal of the Borderlands

María Eugenia Guerra