Al Sabor de Mexico

The trim red trailer parked in front of the H-E-B on Highway 347 in Groves has the name “Al Sabor de Mexico” emblazoned on the side and offers the usual assortment of tacos, tortas, burritos and tamales. It meets the definition of the familiar Tex-Mex menu, but owner Lupe Reynoso’s take on the flavors of Mexico also pays tribute to the cuisine of that country well beyond the region along the U.S. border.

In addition, his story has a decidedly American flavor as the Reynoso family has cast their lot with this country as surely as anyone named Smith, Jones or Washington. With his wife, Rosa Maria and their four American-born children, Lupe works hard from 11 in the morning to 10 at night dispensing food that is tasty and healthy.

“We try not to use oil,” said Lupe. “We don’t like it – and we serve no fried food.”

Their commitment to Mexican regional dishes is apparent in many of the meat options on the menu.

Birria is shredded beef that has been steeped in a marinade that includes cinnamon, chocolate and bay leaves, usually prepared as a treat for weddings and other special events.

Cochinita Pibil is marinated shredded chicken from Yucatan with a unique flavor that includes sour orange and achiote, a spice derived from the plant that grows in the tropical areas of South America. It has a red fruit with bright red seeds.

“We grind the seeds ourselves,” said Lupe, a testament to the care taken in preparing what some might consider “fast food.”
Al Pastor is shepherd-style pork that is marinated and cooked to order in a skillet.

Other meats include the more familiar carne asada, lengua (beef tongue), barbacoa, and chorizo (Mexican sausage).

Rosa makes tortillas fresh to order, but they are homemade corn tortillas from masa.

“Flour tortillas are from Northern Mexico; in most of Mexico, tortillas are corn,” explains Lupe.

One exception to the Mexican rule are pupusas, a staple from El Salvador. A thick, corn pancake stuffed with meat or cheese, Lupe explains the pupusas recipe came to the family through a Salvadorian sister-in-law. The family pastor is also from El Salvador. The business is closed on Sundays when the Reynoso family travels to worship at Iglesia de Cristo, a Pentecostal church on the north side of Houston.

Lupe Reynoso came to the United States as a teenager in the early 1980s. Like so many immigrants from south of the border, he was drawn here by the lack of opportunity in his home country. Never afraid of hard work, he first labored in the fields picking peaches, plums and grapes in California. Through a relative, he found other work in landscaping and in a factory where he assembled videocassettes.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, was an important milestone for the Reynoso family. It granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who entered the country before Jan. 1, 1982, and had resided there continuously. Lupe got his green card then and would become an American citizen in 2002. The tests he had to pass to attain citizenship gave him a greater understanding of his adopted country than many native-born high school seniors.

Lupe developed his skills and worked in the construction industry in California for 27 years before the building boom there finally burst, leading the family to Texas. Lupe found steady work on refinery construction projects with a platform contractor, but the food service business was something he had always wanted to try.

“I would help out cooking in the church kitchen,” he explained. “I would get inspired, trying out little things.”

That inspiration and the careful attention to detail practiced by Lupe and Rosa are what elevates the food produced in the little red trailer to another level. This is not your usual taco truck parked outside a cantina or plant gate.

The four Reynoso children – ages 23 to 6 years old – help with the family business when they can, but Al Sabor de Mexico is mostly a genuine mom-and-pop affair.

The kids lead busy lives of their own. Eldest son Jerry followed Lupe into construction work at refineries with a platform contractor, Daughter Ruth is an 11th grader at Port Neches-Groves who plays on the school soccer team. She works part-time as a cashier at the H-E-B store across the parking lot from the family but wants to study forensic science in college, inspired by the television shows CSI and the Scooby-Doo mysteries.

The Reynoso family invites you to come taste a little of what Mexico has to offer. If you don’t want to dine on the single picnic table with torches alongside to ward off the seasonal mosquitoes (and when are mosquitoes not in season in Southeast Texas?) order your food to go. These delicacies can be served on your dining room table on your finest china.

Singing electrician galvanizes

Jake’s Place in Nederland is a classic Texas beer joint, located near the end of Spurlock Road in a part of town that manages to be both residential and semi-industrial at the same time.

Not to call the place a dive, but it wouldn’t be too surprising to see Guy Fieri show up in his red convertible to film a chapter of his Food Network show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” though Guy is usually searching for the food offerings of such establishments. The only consumable snacks on display on a recent Friday night were on a small rack of potato chips behind the bar, but on some Wednesdays and Sundays, the customers feast on a classic barbecue spread.

On this night, the Business Journal has come to Jake’s Place in pursuit of a story that combines petrochemical refineries, union electricians and the music business. All those elements come together in the person of David Joel, a country crooner working day and night to feed his family and make his mark in the world.

•••

David Joel Smith, 30, (who drops the Smith onstage) was raised in the west end of Beaumont, and first picked up the guitar at the age of 9. The path to his current dual careers was not smooth in the early days, but he has overcome his troubled youth with hard work, persistence and a little divine intervention.

Things are definitely looking up for Joel, and the good things happening in his life are apparent in his singing, infused with an unmistakable optimism and sunny outlook that sometimes works against his material. For example, the song about a teenage mental patient who just found out his girlfriend committed suicide is a little dark, but Joel somehow manages to make James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” his own while finding optimism somewhere in the lyrics. The world-weary cynicism that haunts so many country ballads seems far away from this promising young singer.

No matter how successful the night’s performance, the next morning finds Joel back on the job. A journeyman electrician with Newtron, Joel leads a crew building a flare gas recovery unit at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, part of the on-going expansion efforts at this and other plants in the vast petrochemical complex that is the economic lifeblood of the region.

A card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Joel is a graduate of that union’s training facility in Nederland, which has put him in position to earn a good living while he pursues his musical dream.

Ironically, it was David the Electrician who made a connection that has opened an important door for David the Musician.

As Michael Cameron, a principal in the production company Texas Digital Media, tells it, “About five years ago, we had some electrical problems at our studio in Mauriceville. … David Joel was a young guy with a lot of energy – and he figured out the problem that had eluded Entergy and solved it. … He was passionate about helping find the problem, but equally passionate about music.”

With producer Cameron in his corner, Joel made another connection that bodes well for future success. Mindful of the lyric from the group Alabama that says “if you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band,” it seemed heaven sent when fiddle player David Varnado walked into his life.

A music industry veteran who has homes in Nederland and Nashville, Varnado has performed on the Grand Ole Opry and backed up country stars from Loretta Lynn to Johnny Paaycheck to Sammy Kershaw, Neil McCoy and the late Chris LeDoux.

His partnership with Joel is still in its early stages but showing signs of great promise. At the gig at Jake’s Place, Varnado lays down exquisite fiddle lines while singing harmony and acting as almost a cheerleader for Joel, leading audience participation sing-alongs. The aroused crowd chanted for more at evening’s end, with one enthusiastic imbiber — as always — calling for “Free Bird.” Eager to please, Joel obliged with the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, though it never sounded quite like this with Vanardo’s wailing fiddle licks laid over churning guitar chords.

Their tour of the bar and restaurant scene has taken the Joel-Varnado duo to Starvin’ Marvins, Thirsty’s, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop in Nederland. Future gigs range from The Grill in Beaumont, Tequila’s in Port Arthur, and the beer garden tent at the South Texas State Fair in March.

In the meantime, Joel is still channeling electric current and writing songs in preparation for recording an album towards the end of the year. Producer Michael Cameron said it is the logical next step.

“I’m honored to have him as a friend first, and to have had the opportunity to help him on his journey. He has the drive to succeed and the musical prowess to back it up,” said Cameron. “It is my firm belief that David Joel will be a household name soon, and I can say I know him, and call him friend.”
Stranger things have happened.

Business Journal editor James Shannon offers a weekly column of business news for readers of The Examiner. For more details, see the editions of the Business journal published monthly in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Greater Orange. Check out the blog at setxbiz.blogspot.com or e-mail james@beaumontbusinessjournal.com

KSET goes silent

Radio station KSET, the Beaumont news-talk outlet that broadcasts at 1300 AM, has gone silent. A hastily scribbled note posted on the door of the KSET studio at 5550 Eastex Freeway read “KSET RADIO HAS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED OPERATIONS. OWNER HAS TAKEN OVER MANAGEMENT.” A second note provided employees an address to e-mail their timecards.

These events took place with no apparent warning on the morning of Monday, Jan. 16. An episode of the syndicated Dennis Miller Show was being re-broadcast, but the station went silent by mid-day.

Lee Melton, general sales manager for KSET, told the Business Journal, “It kind of came as a shock this morning. I got a phone call from one of my producers trying to get into the radio station.”

Melton said station owner William Hill “has changed the locks, and I have no idea what is happening. The entire crew, every employee including myself, was locked out as of this morning.”

Attempts to reach Hill were unsuccessful. A source that did not wish to be identified for this story told the Business Journal that Hill had battled health problems in recent months. According to the source, “Mr. Hill said he was going to put the station up for sale and suspended operations to conduct an audit” in order to effect such a sale. The source declined to provide direct contact information for Hill.

“Only William Hill knows where KSET is going at this point,” said Melton. “I’ve been trying to contact my advertisers and let them know. Obviously we had things on the books ready to run.”
In a little more than two years on the air, KSET had established a reputation for broadcasting local news and talk programming. The Dennis Miller Show was one of the few syndicated offerings on KSET, compared to the dominant Clear Channel station KLVI, whose daily programming hours were dominated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
While Melton expressed surprise at the shutdown, others said they saw signs of trouble at the station in recent weeks.

James Dabney, who had hosted In the House with James and Julie from 5 to 9 a.m. five days a week with his wife, said he had no idea KSET was about to suspend operations when he made the decision to leave the station.

“We did our last show on Thursday, Jan. 12,” Dabney said. “About three months ago, I told Julie I’ve got a bad feeling; something’s not right. For example, the equipment in the place was literally just falling apart and there were other issues, financial issues.”

Dabney said he told his advertisers in advance he was not renewing their contracts because he had decided to leave KSET but that all of his advertisers received all the spots they had paid for by Jan. 12.

“I told all my folks I wanted to be on the radio; I hate that we’re not, but I had concerns about what was going on and didn’t want to be (on KSET) anymore,” he said.

Citing on-going financial issues at KSET, Dabney said, “I’ve been in business all my adult life and the bottom line is when there’s no money, something’s real wrong because we had plenty of sponsors; I had sponsors and I’m sure the other shows did and the commercial breaks just seemed to get longer, yet where’s the money?”

Speculation over whether Hill was planning to sell the radio station or bring in another management group was not grounded in any verifiable facts at press time.

Melton said that decision rested with one man.

“William Hill, at the end of the day, owns the license; he owns KSET, and if he chooses to take it off the air or sell it to somebody else, he’s got that right every day of the week,” he said.


— James Shannon