1952 Time Magazine article on Felix Tijerina

Monday, Aug. 17, 1959

A 400-Word Start

"Until he was 14, squat, jolly, Texas-born Felix Tijerina could not speak a word of English. He was like thousands of other Mexican-American children: his mother taught him to read and write in Spanish only. And had he gone to school, he might still not have learned English. At the time (1920), Texas segregated Mexican-American schoolchildren on the basis of language—a discrimination usually as enduring as skin color. According to the odds, Felix seemed doomed to stagnate behind the language-discrimination barrier for the rest of his life.

"Felix was made of sterner stuff. When he went to work as a restaurant bus boy in Houston, he started with the word 'catchup,' painfully taught himself to speak, read and write excellent English. Today, at 54, Felix Tijerina owns a chain of thriving Texas restaurants, is president of the nationwide League of United Latin American Citizens. But civic-minded Restaurateur Tijerina has not stopped there. In his spare time, busy as a platoon of pedagogues, he has launched an assault on the language barrier. By last week Tijerina had worked out a method that may spread among Spanish-speaking children throughout the nation."

Complete article at Time.com

Tragedy Strikes

From the Houston Press

Felix Mexican Restaurant Closes After 60 Years in Business

Fri Mar 21, 2008 at 10:27:06 AM

Felix Mexican Restaurant at 904 Westheimer has shut down after 60 years in business. Longtime patrons are leaving notes on the front door of the shuttered Tex-Mex institution demanding an explanation. “We need some closure,” one note read.

Felix Mexican Restaurant was the granddaddy of Houston Tex-Mex. It was named for Felix Tijerina, a Mexican immigrant who worked at The Original Mexican Restaurant on Fannin before opening his own Tex-Mex restaurant, The Mexican Inn, in 1929. Felix’s first Montrose location opened in 1937.

The flagship restaurant at 904 Westheimer opened in 1948. At the time, a regular dinner cost 50 cents. In the heyday of the chain, there were six Felix Mexican restaurants in Houston and Beaumont. Tijernia became active in Houston politics and was a four-time national president of LULAC.

Read more at the Houston Press website

Best Vintage Restaurant (2005)

Felix Mexican Restaurant

904 Westheimer, 713-529-3949

When Felix Jr. announced that the city's most historic Tex-Mex restaurant would close its doors for lack of business, he set off a near-riot. People came from hundreds of miles to eat one last meal at the restaurant they grew up in. Families who had been eating there for more than 50 years slipped Polaroids of themselves under the glass tabletops. If the enchiladas at Felix, served in Spanish sauce or bland brown chili gravy, taste absurdly old-fashioned, it's because they're geared toward the Anglo palates of the late 1940s. And according to Geneva Harper, who has worked as a waitress at Felix from the day it opened in 1948, nothing has changed. Except that the Mexican Dinner went for 50 cents back then. So why eat there now? Besides the nostalgia rush, Felix Mexican Restaurant provides a glimpse back to our culinary roots. It is to modern Tex-Mex what a scratchy recording of the Delta blues is to rock and roll.

From: Houston Press