Pancho Villa's Saddle at the Cadillac Bar: Recipes and Memories
Description
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.
Praise for Pancho Villa's Saddle at the Cadillac Bar: Recipes and Memories
“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
“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
“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