For anyone who’s lived in or visited Texas, you’ll know that BBQ and Mexican food form the basis of our diet from the time we’re born, and every small town or big city has its own style of both. With the exception of folks from Dallas, Texans are not particularly fussy, but they’re serious about food, so a visitor will find it hard to have a bad meal from Galveston to El Paso, Amarillo to Brownsville. That’s what makes it so much fun to travel the state, stopping in as many roadside joints as you can. Paired with historic and current Mexican culinary influences, smoked meat is found in every corner of the state today, with as many regional and local varieties as there are stars in the sky. Because there are so many varieties, folks will like to think they are experts on “real” Texas BBQ, but in Texas, we like it all.

People often ask how I learned to cook, but the truth is that I’ve been homesick for Texas food ever since I moved away for college. I grew up in Houston, but my family is spread all over the state, so growing up we ate blue crabs down in Galveston, BBQ up in Austin & Fort Worth, Mexican food in the Valley, Southwestern food out in West Texas. At home in Houston, we were spoiled with a huge variety of cuisines, largely owing to the fact that there are more international communities living in and around Houston than in almost any other city in the country. 

Here at East of Texas, you’ll find dry-rubbed, low-heat smoked meat  – a version of a tradition that came to Texas from the Czech immigrants who settled in the central part of the state – the Hill Country around Austin. If you’ll remember your Texas history, you’ll know that the area we now know as Texas was originally part of Mexico, and its cuisine remains so heavily influenced by Mexican cooking traditions that it’s got its own distinct category that most of us shorthand to “Tex-Mex.” As is so common in Texas, we’re pairing delicious smoked meat & vegetables with a wide variety of Tex-Mex sauces, spices, slaws and dips that you can find all over Texas. 

Over the years as I’ve lived all over the country, I’ve tried to recreate the foods that I miss most from Texas. Cooking for Dinners on the Porch and then bringing The Porch to life filled something in me that finally made Winston-Salem feel permanent to me as my family’s home. East of Texas is a place where I hope to share with you all what I love about the spirit and food culture of Texas. I hope you’ll love it, but if you don’t, that’s cool too. I know all of us have a special dish or food that just feels like home to us – maybe your mom’s meatloaf or the pizza that you can only get at the little joint around the corner from your childhood home. For me this space and menu brings back watching my grandfather pickle green tomatoes from his garden, sitting on a picnic bench with my dad at his favorite burger shack in Houston, feeding my kids big old Texas beef ribs for the first time, eating way too much guacamole & chips over frozen margaritas with friends, and making my grandmother’s Chile con Queso so spicy that you wanted to stop eating it but you just couldn’t. 

Some of the recipes you’ll see here are versions of classic dishes that I grew up eating, and others are things that we’ve developed just for this project. We’ll keep experimenting, mixing things together and having fun as we go. As long as we’re always a welcome table where you can gather to make memories with friends and family, we’ll be happy. If you love the food, even better. 

– Claire Calvin