Before the Old Borunda Cafe became known for stacked red chile enchiladas and visits from the cast of “Giant,” it was an adobe restaurant called Tula’s. It opened in 1887, when Marfa was four years old and the railroad was bringing workers, ranchers and travelers to town. One account of its earliest menu points to a simple meal: steak and eggs.
That detail is among the leads Marfa guitarist and researcher Nick Hurt is following as he traces the lives of the three women who ran the cafe. In his “Marfa History Search” column in the Nov. 13 issue of The Marfa Mimeograph, Hurt starts with the founder, Gertrudis “Tula” Borunda, and asks readers who remember the restaurant or the family to help fill in its history.
Big Bend Reporter’s 2023 story, “Birthplace of Tex-Mex: The Old Borunda Cafe in Marfa,” traced the restaurant’s influence through the dishes it became known for. Hurt’s research adds detail about the women behind those meals and the 23 years Tula spent running the restaurant before it took the Borunda Cafe name.
Before it was the Old Borunda Cafe
Tula and her brother, Cipriano Borunda, came to Marfa from Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, Mexico, Hurt writes. The first restaurant stood near South Dean and East El Paso streets, according to the Central Marfa Historic District’s National Register nomination. An undated photograph Hurt published shows a long adobe building with painted window frames, a picket fence and a figure leaning in the doorway. Hurt thinks the building may also have been the family home and wonders whether the person in the doorway was Cipriano.
Big Bend Reporter’s earlier account described the first meals as ranch fare. Food writer J.C. Reid reported that Tula served mostly American food to railroad workers and ranchers, with Mexican food one day a week. Hurt is still looking for details about what she cooked and where she got her ingredients. Did she raise chickens? How did she keep food fresh before electricity? Did she serve tortillas or jalapeños with the steak and eggs?
“If a Mexican woman makes steak and eggs in Texas is it Mexican food? Or Tex-Mex? Or American fare?” Hurt wrote.
A move to East San Antonio Street
Hurt dates Cipriano’s marriage to Carolina Paloma to 1892, at Guadalupe Church, now St. Mary’s. Big Bend Reporter’s earlier story placed the marriage in 1910. In Hurt’s account, 1910 was the year the couple took over the restaurant after living on a ranch near Marfa. Carolina was born in Las Cruces in 1873, when New Mexico was still a U.S. territory, and moved to Fort Davis as a child.
In 1910, Carolina moved the restaurant a block south to 203 E. San Antonio St., at South Dean Street, and renamed it the Borunda Cafe, according to the historic district nomination. The family lived next door, and a wagon yard and corrals formed a courtyard behind the building. Carolina ran the cafe until 1938, when her daughter, Carolina Borunda Humphries, took over.
Tamales and chiles rellenos were part of the menu, but the dish most closely associated with the cafe was enchiladas montadas. Flat corn tortillas were dipped in red chile sauce, stacked with cheese and chopped onions and topped with a fried egg. The 2023 story also described chile macho, a green chile sauce served over Fritos, and chile colorado con puerco, pork in red chile sauce. The historic district nomination says the cafe was widely regarded as the oldest Tex-Mex restaurant in Texas.
When Hollywood came to dinner
Humphries was running the cafe in 1955 when “Giant” brought James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson to Marfa. Big Bend Reporter’s earlier story recounted that all three ate there. George Thomas, writing decades later in the Midland Reporter-Telegram, remembered that his family called the place Carolina’s and that Humphries turned the sign to “Closed” whenever the food ran out. He recalled that even Taylor once arrived too late.
A 1962 photograph preserved by the Marfa Public Library shows Humphries in the kitchen preparing a meal for 15, using wood-burning and gas stoves. Six years later, Pancho Borunda wrote about the restaurant and described photographs of the women at work for a Marfa High School history class. His paper is preserved in the University of North Texas Libraries’ Portal to Texas History.
The cafe closed in 1987, its centennial year. Pancho later served flat enchiladas at Borunda Bar & Grill in Marfa. Food writer Robb Walsh asked him to describe the recipe Humphries had made famous and published it in The Tex-Mex Cookbook as “Old Borunda Stacked Red Chile Enchiladas.”
Hurt, whose work includes Marfa Public Radio’s “In Tune,” is collecting memories of the restaurant and the Borunda family. Anyone who remembers eating there, working there or knowing the family can reach him at OldBorundaCafe@gmail.com.
