Darrell Byers
I wish I could show you this picture my wife just texted me of my stepson. After weeks of feeling beat up and worn down — college will do that to you — he has the biggest smile on his face. He hasn’t smiled like this in I don’t know how long.
Getting your favorite local Tex-Mex spot back will do that to you, though. My wife surprised him tonight by taking him to a restaurant he thought, like a lot of us thought, he’d never see again: Pulido’s, whose simple, unfussy food has been the backbone of Fort Worth’s Tex-Mex scene for nearly six decades.
While I’m at home writing this story, they’re there, eating puffy tacos and chicken enchiladas and excellent chips and salsa, like we all used to do before Pulido’s abruptly shuttered all of its locations last year.
A team of local restaurant resurrectionists, with the blessing of the Pulido family, has brought the original Pulido’s back to life. My wife and I were able to attend a family and friends dinner there in June, and a few days after the restaurant officially reopened, my wife surprised my stepson by taking him there — he had zero clue they were reopening, and it’s his fave Tex-Mex spot in the city.
Darrell Byers
I’m sure many of you, especially if, like me, you’re from Fort Worth and were raised on our city’s Tex-Mex cuisine, have a similar affinity for Pulido’s. It was only until I started writing this story, in fact, that I realized how big of a role these restaurants have played in my life. With every move I’ve made around the city, a Pulido’s has been there to greet me.
When I was a kid, my mom took the family to the Pulido’s at I-35 and Felix on the south side. When I started working at the Star-Telegram in 1991, we began going to the original location on Pulido Street, just a couple minutes west of downtown. In my 20s and 30s, I made moves to North Richland Hills and Saginaw — and what was there waiting for me? Pulido’s puffy tacos and margaritas.
When I shaped up and settled down with my wife and stepson and moved to Ridglea Hills, the Pulido’s in Benbrook became Our Place. My stepson grew up on their freshly made flour tortillas. Our server Beatrice knew us so well, she didn’t just bring waters to our table when we arrived. She brought two waters, two sweet teas with extra lemon for my wife, a kids Sprite, a mix of corn and flour tortillas (three corn for my wife, four flour for me and my stepson), a ramekin of butter (because white people like butter with their flour tortillas, sorry not sorry), and extra hot sauce for their crispy corn tortilla chips. That was service.
It was bad enough when COVID shut the restaurants down temporarily, but bad turned to fatal last year when the Pulido family closed all of its locations, the last period of the last paragraph of that particular chapter of our lives — that is, until Gigi Howell and Bourke Harvey came to the rescue.
Known for opening JD’s Hamburgers, revamping West Side Cafe, and at present, restoring and reopening Margie’s Italian Restaurant, Howell, Harvey and the rest of their Westland Restaurant Group teammates set their sights on bringing back Pulido’s, purchasing three locations. Originally, they were going to purchase five stores, Howell says, but decided to go with three — the original on Pulido Street, the location in Hurst, and a store in Eastland. Hurst will be the next to open.
“I grew up here, too,” Howell says during our friends and family dinner there, surveying the room that holds so many memories for so many people. “What we really want to do is honor what the Pulido family has done, not reinvent it or give it a different spin. We don’t want to mess with the recipes. They’re great to begin with.”
True to what she told me, the menu is nearly identical to the Pulido’s we all know and love. It’s condensed a bit, but if you asked me what’s missing, I wouldn’t know. The puffy tacos are there, the old-fashioned enchiladas, the cheese tacos bathed in queso. They all taste like you remember.
The restaurant itself has been given a light makeover. There are new old world-style tables and chairs and a better flow in the main dining room; a revamped bar area with ample seating (there are also several new cocktails); cool new lighting fixtures; and, the main attraction, beautiful, larger-than-life photos of Dionicia and Pedro Pulido, the local couple who founded the restaurant in 1966 to feed employees of the nearby railroad yard.
“Those photos are my favorite part,” Howell says. “We really want to honor them. This has always been a family business, and it still is. The family is still involved. We wouldn’t be doing this without their blessing. We just want to keep this restaurant and this family’s legacy alive for generations to come.”
Pulido’s Kitchen & Cantina, 2900 Pulido St., pulidostx.com