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.
That story comes to life in “Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar, Recipes and Memories,” which will be published this fall by Texas A&M Press. The author, Wanda Garner Cash, is a granddaughter of the founder and a daughter of Porter Garner, who built its modern reputation during his tenure from 1946 until 1979.
Cash, who lives in Ingram, has been the director of the Texas Arts and Crafts Fair, since retiring as a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016.
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, 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.
Pre-orders available at TAMUpress.com by searching for “Pancho Villa’s Saddle.” https://bit.ly/2Crz8q4 Review copies are available from Texas A&M University Press Consortium, subject to approval.