Dallas

51-Year-Old Tex-Mex Restaurant Herrera's Cafe to Close in Dallas

‘We’re blessed that we’ve been here this long, but the thing is: Everything’s changing now,’ says co-owner Nora Ontiveros

ontiveros family at herreras cafe
Louis DeLuca, The Dallas Morning News

Longtime Dallas Tex-Mex staple Herrera’s Cafe, on Sylvan Avenue, will close Friday, April 22, 2022.

It was started by family matriarch Amelia Herrera in 1971 on Maple Avenue, in a tiny restaurant where she brought her pots and pans from home to cook Tex-Mex food, says Nora Ontiveros, whose husband, Larry Ontiveros, is one of Amelia Herrera’s grandsons. Four decades after the restaurant opened, the Ontiveros family moved the Maple Avenue restaurant to Sylvan Avenue in West Dallas in 2014.

Three generations of Herrera’s family members operate other restaurants in North Texas that share the family name but have different ownership, such as Herrera’s Oak Cliff, Cafe Herrera in Downtown Dallas, and Herrera’s Tex-Mex in Addison. The Herreras continue to be one of the longest-running restaurant families in Dallas-Fort Worth, with 51 years of history.

The closure of Herrera’s Cafe in West Dallas will not affect the other restaurants.

Click here to read more on the restaurant's closing from our partners at The Dallas Morning News.

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