The Sombrero’s menu claimed it was the oldest Mexican restaurant in the South — not just Memphis.
Dear Vance: Looking through a box of old papers, I came across a menu for a restaurant here called El Patio. Somebody told me this was our city’s first Mexican restaurant. Is this true? — G.T., Memphis.
Dear G.T.: My immediate answer was NO, but I thought I’d supplement that terse reply by saying: The oldest, as everyone surely knows, is Pancho’s. Then, my job here done, I thought I’d resume my daily eight-hour nap, before I trudged upstairs and went to bed. This job is exhausting!
But wait a minute. Something (besides sheer laziness) was nagging at me. So the next day, I decided to pull myself out of my La-Z-Boy, and look into this. It’s a good thing I did, since I discovered how wrong I was — by more than 20 years.
First of all, Pancho’s opened their first establishment in West Memphis in 1956. The story goes that Morris and Clemmye Berger returned from a vacation in Mexico and wanted to share that country’s unique cuisine with diners in our area. They had owned and operated the Plantation Inn nightclub just outside of town, and when that ancient building burned down, they opened the first Pancho’s — notable not only for its food (especially the cheese dip) but the “authentic” Mexican decor, inside and out. Two years later, they expanded to Memphis, opening Pancho’s #2 at 1676 South Bellevue, across from Forest Hill Cemetery.
El Patio, the restaurant whose menu you own, also opened in Memphis in 1958, so I guess we can call it a tie with Pancho’s, but I want to come back to that.
Because right now I’d like to announce — drum roll, please — that the oldest Mexican restaurant here was The Sombrero, which opened at 2693 Lamar way back in 1936. Its origin story is rather vague, but it seems a fellow named Frank Lynche opened a small cafe at 2693 Lamar, in town close to Pendleton. He remained involved with this eatery for only a few years, when another owner, Boris Alexander (according to city directories) took over, and changed the name of the place to South of the Border Restaurant.
Your menu offers subtle clues that maybe Memphians weren’t quite ready for the full Mexican experience. Inside, I noticed such assurances as “It is proper to eat the tacos and tostados with your hands. Our food is not hot. Hot sauce is served with each order of Mexican food.”
But then Alexander dropped out of the picture. With no listing in the city directories, that usually suggests he either passed away or moved elsewhere. At any rate, in 1946, Eugene and Carolyn Lawson purchased the restaurant and ran it for the next quarter century, give or take a few years.
In the early 1940s, those same hard-to-read city directories showed that Eugene — Gene to his friends — was serving in the U.S. Navy. The listing didn’t provide any clues about his, or his wife’s, restaurant backgrounds, or suggest what prompted their involvement with the property on Lamar. The first thing they did, though, was change the name back to The Sombrero.
An old newspaper ad showed the fake cactus that stood outside the location at 4003 Lamar.
The Lawsons also began to search for a different location. They had already purchased a house at 4003 Lamar, just north of Winchester, where they lived for several years, and sometime around 1955, they converted their home into The Sombrero. (The original restaurant, at 2863 Lamar, became Henry’s Drive-In.)
Facebook has a number of local history pages, and on one of them a comment about The Sombrero provoked a dozen responses, with one person saying, “It was the first place I had Mexican food,” and quite a few others writing, “It was my family’s favorite restaurant” and “We ate there many times.”
Customers remembered a specialty of the house was the “Mexican Hamburger,” though they didn’t explain what made it “Mexican.” I haven’t (yet) located a photo of the restaurant, but somebody else recalled, “They had a big fiberglass cactus out front, surrounded with white rocks, and red, green, and blue lights shining on the trees and the building.” Another diner remembered “the brown serving bowls with cheese and the great food.” Someone else had fond memories of Carolyn Lawson, saying she was “quite a character” and “seemed to be the only person there who spoke English, taking our orders and giving them to the kitchen staff.”
The Lawsons ran small ads in The Commercial Appeal, describing The Sombrero as “Memphis’ oldest and finest Mexican restaurant.” One ad from the early 1960s told readers, “Tonight’s the night for that Mexican dinner,” and reassured them, “Casual Dress Accepted.” That dinner included guacamole salad, meat taco, enchilada, tamale, frijoles, arroz, and a “Mexican salad” — quite a meal for only $1.75.
The Memphis Public Library is a treasure trove, as I’ve said before, and their Memphis and Shelby County Room holds a collection of menus from more than a thousand local restaurants — including The Sombrero. It’s not dated, but must be more recent since the price of the “Special Mexican Dinner” had increased to $3.15. Items you might not expect to find included regular hamburgers, barbecued chicken, and even T-bone steaks (only $5.50).
All of these promotions stopped running in the newspapers after 1970, so I presume that’s when the place closed. La Tropicana nightclub stands on the site of The Sombrero, and a small playground occupies the restaurant’s original location.
A menu from the late 1950s for El Patio.
Okay, now that we have that settled, let’s finally talk about El Patio. The grand opening of “The All-New Mexican Restaurant” took place October 28, 1958. Located at 3886 Park Avenue, this was the second restaurant venture of Arkansans Jimmy Wirtz and Lucille Seifert, who had recently opened an almost identical establishment in Little Rock.
This wasn’t some cozy cafe. According to a Commercial Appeal story, “Mrs. Seifert said the restaurant seats 186 people without crowding and offers a full line of Mexican food, children’s plates, and charcoal-broiled steaks. She trains all the cooks.”
Inside, diners found things a bit fancier than at The Sombrero. “The interior of El Patio features a fountain near the entrance and has candlelighted tables. Decorations are in the Mexican motif.” Customers probably didn’t leave hungry. The “regular dinner” offered “spiced tomato juice cocktail, chili con queso, guacamole salad, enchilada, chili, tamale, rice, beans, and meat taco.” For $2.00, you also got a drink (punch or coffee — no mention of tea or soft drinks), and even sherbet ice cream for dessert.
In contrast to The Sombrero’s ads claiming they were this city’s oldest Mexican restaurant, El Patio always made the point of saying they were “Memphis’ Newest and Finest Mexican Restaurant.”
Within a year of opening, though, El Patio began to run ads suggesting — to me, anyway — that they were interpreting “Mexican restaurant” rather liberally. In 1959, their newspaper ads began to promote the new “Chuck Wagon Buffet,” which offered an astonishing “60 Delicious Dishes,” emphasizing this was an “American-style buffet” featuring a “Special Hot Entree Table, Cold Food Wheel, and a Delightful Dessert Cart.” Dinner was $2, lunch only $1, and children ate at half-price, with drinks included.
Perhaps El Patio was ahead of its time. G.T., your menu offers subtle clues that maybe Memphians weren’t quite ready for the full Mexican experience. Inside, I noticed such assurances as “It is proper to eat the tacos and tostados with your hands. Our food is not hot. Hot sauce is served with each order of Mexican food.”
Your menu also includes almost half a dozen typed and even handwritten additions stapled to the inside — offering steaks, fried chicken dinners, a luncheon special, and a child’s special — which tells me they were tweaking their original offerings, especially since all the notes covered up the main entrees.
Despite all these enticements, a good location across from the new Park Plaza Shopping Center, and ads encouraging groups to hold their luncheons and special events there, El Patio barely lasted two years. As far as I can tell, they closed in 1960.
Memphis diners can still find excellent food at this location, but it won’t be Mexican. It seems that in the late 1940s, two cousins, Pete Romeo and Sam Bomarito, opened a small Italian restaurant on Airways. Business was good, and they wanted to expand. In 1960, they moved to the former location of El Patio on Park Avenue, just west of Getwell. You know the place today as Pete and Sam’s.
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