51-year-old Herrera’s Cafe to close in Dallas - The Dallas Morning News

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Longtime Dallas Tex-Mex staple Herrera’s Cafe, on Sylvan Avenue, will close Friday, April 22, 2022.

It was started by family matriarch Amelia Herrera in 1971 on Maple Avenue, in a tiny restaurant where she brought her pots and pans from home to cook Tex-Mex food, says Nora Ontiveros, whose husband, Larry Ontiveros, is one of Amelia Herrera’s grandsons. Four decades after the restaurant opened, the Ontiveros family moved the Maple Avenue restaurant to Sylvan Avenue in West Dallas in 2014.

A vintage photograph hanging on the wall of Herrera's Cafe at 3311 Sylvan Avenue in Dallas shows the original restaurant on Maple Avenue. It opened in 1971.(Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

Three generations of Herrera’s family members operate other restaurants in North Texas that share the family name but have different ownership, such as Herrera’s Oak Cliff, Cafe Herrera in Downtown Dallas, and Herrera’s Tex-Mex in Addison. The Herreras continue to be one of the longest-running restaurant families in Dallas-Fort Worth, with 51 years of history.

The closure of Herrera’s Cafe in West Dallas will not affect the other restaurants.

Nora Ontiveros says the restaurant on Sylvan Avenue made it through the pandemic, but the economic aftershocks were tough to bear.

Herrera's Cafe moved and reopened in 2014 in West Dallas, on Sylvan Avenue. In the past nine years, the area has seen rapid growth, in part because of the construction around the Trinity Groves development.(Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

“We’re blessed that we’ve been here this long, but the thing is: Everything’s changing now. You can’t find workers to work. The food is so expensive. I think it’s time for us to go,” she says.

The restaurant had been operating on a month-to-month lease since 2020.

Herrera’s Cafe on Sylvan Avenue is considered by some as the original even though it’s not in the original location. Three of the cooks moved from the Maple to the Sylvan location and remain in the kitchen today, working for the family for more than 40 years. Ontiveros says their consistency, making popular dishes like enchiladas with chile con carne for decades, is one of the reasons she thinks several generations of customers have continually come back.

Ontiveros has been working at Herrera’s Cafe since 1976, when she was asked to help with her husband’s family business two years after she’d had twin girls. In 1984, the restaurant was profiled in National Geographic, helping the Herrera name become nationally known.

“The line was always wrapped around the building,” Ontiveros says of the original restaurant.

The fervor has continued to present-day: One family drove in from Tulsa this week, to eat at Herrera’s Cafe one last time after hearing about the impending closure.

Grandma Herrera was a single mom with five kids — an entrepreneur who was “always trying something,” as Ontiveros remembers. She owned a women’s gym, then a bar, before her brothers convinced her to open a restaurant, inspired by the great lunches she’d make when they’d come home at midday from work, for home-made tortillas and a guiso.

The matriarch died several decades after she founded the restaurant, but the family name lives on.

“It’s been a long, good run,” Ontiveros says.

“I don’t want to cry,” she says, her voice cracking. “Our customers have been so good. It’s like a family. It’s like you’re inviting family to come for dinner every night and every day for lunch.”

Herrera’s Cafe’s last day will be Friday, April 22, 2022, and food supplies are already limited. The restaurant is at 3311 Sylvan Ave., Dallas.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.

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