Sylvia's Anniversary Parties
Celebrating 25 Years as Owner/Chef, Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen
The anniversary celebrations will be held from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, April 20 at the Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen located at 6401 Woodway, and then a week later from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, April 27 at the Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen located at 1140 Eldridge Parkway.
At both locations on those days, celebrants will be able to enjoy both free and discounted snacks, drinks and meals, including the La Reina Margarita created just for this anniversary. There will also be a special price for an enchilada dinner featuring four of Sylvia’s popular enchiladas, her south-of-the-border Mexico City and Puebla enchiladas and her north-north-of-the-border Refugio and Sarita.
Want to become an official member of the Queen’s court? Sign up for an enchilada-rolling race. On both days, Sylvia will oversee a contest of contestants celebrity rollers trying to fill, roll and sauce the most enchiladas in a timed race. Winners will receive a Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen Gift Basket that includes a copy of Sylvia’s Enchilada Queen Cookbook, spices and jars of her famed chili gravy among other items.
And on the subject of that cookbook, Sylvia will be on hand to sell personalized copies of the hardcover book plus other legacy items from the restaurant.
When it comes to claiming the crown for Houston’s enchilada kingdom, there is only one who wears the crown – Chef and Restaurateur Sylvia Casares. With her passion for the humble enchilada and Tex-Mex food in general, her fans began calling her The Enchilada Queen soon after she opened Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen. Now with two restaurants and 20 varieties of enchiladas on the menu, the crown has a permanent fit.
Besides the more than five million enchiladas sold, Sylvia’s estimates the restaurants have sold more than 52,000 gallons of queso and produced 58,240 gallons of Sylvia’s signature chili gravy. Oh, and anyone want chips? As of the end of 2023, some 120,640 gallons of salsa made it to the tables. As they say on Antiques Roadshow, these are conservative estimates.
Casares was born on the Texas-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, and grew up with an acute interest in food, flavors and taste, learning to cook from her mother and grandmother. She graduated from University of Texas with a B.S. in Home Economics, and her first job was as a Home Economist with Uncle Ben’s Rice where she worked for 10 years. In 1999, after selling food items to restaurants, Casares opened her first solely owned restaurant in far west Houston.
At Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen, cooked into every delicious enchilada, mouth-watering rellenos, savory flauta and each soup, stew and mesquite-grilled steak is a cultural history that brings the tastes of the South Texas Valley – the birthplace of Tex-Mex cuisine – to the Bayou City. The menu is as much a record of the handmade foods found along the South Texas/Mexico border as it is a list of offerings that keeps diners coming back year after year.
While everything on the menu deserves top billing, as the restaurant’s name implies, enchiladas are the stock-in-trade. As a nod to her heritage on both sides of the border, her enchiladas (and some combination plates) are names after cities across Texas and Mexico, like Refugio, Brownsville, Alice, Seguin, Mexican City, Laguna Madre, etc. In all, there are TWENTY delectable enchiladas to choose from, and each lives up to the restaurant’s slogan, “Enchiladas to Drive For.”
Casares overcame a potentially life-ending tragedy in 2012, and not only recovered but thrived, and achieved another of her long-time dreams by publishing her debut cookbook, “The Enchilada Queen Cookbook” in 2016. Her talents and achievements were also recognized by the acclaimed James Beard Foundation when she was named a semifinalist for Best Chef: Texas for the 2022 James Beard Foundation Awards.
Sylvia’s is no longer at its original location, having outgrown that space in just two years and relocating to a location on Westheimer, just west of Dairy Ashford. After adding new locations at Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen 6401 Woodway near Voss in 2009 and another at 1140 Eldridge, just south of the Katy Freeway, both of which included wood-fired grills and expanded its menus to put those grills to full use, the Westheimer location, unable to expand, was closed in 2014.
It is the Eldridge address where this Enchilada Queen regularly holds court in the form of ongoing cooking classes, which include subjects from making chili rellenos, Tex-Mex sweets, South Texas grilling breakfasts, and her most popular classes of all around the holidays, tamales. Oh, and yes, there are classes on making enchiladas as well. The Queen remains loyal to her subjects.
Casares is also a successful author, having written and had published her first cookbook, The Enchilada Queen Cookbook: Enchiladas, Fajitas, Tamales and More Classic Recipes from Texas-Mexico Border Kitchens, which came out in November 2016 by St. Martin’s Press. Casares’ brother Oscar Casares, award-winning author, is a contributor.
To visit Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen, go to 6401 Woodway Dr., 713-334-7295; or to 1140 Eldridge Pkwy, 832-230-3842.