It is not Thanksgiving with no journey to Cleburne Cafeteria on Bissonnet.
The Classics is an occasional collection that spotlights and celebrates Houston’s oldest bars and eating places.
It’s lunchtime at Cleburne Cafeteria. Thanksgiving—one of many restaurant’s busiest days—beckons, simply over every week away. However Cleburne proprietor George Mickelis, 65, is totally immersed within the regular hum of an unusual Tuesday.
“It’s hen and dumplings day!” Mickelis exclaims. He talks like he walks and works: nonstop. “I’ve an enormous Italian contingency right here at this time—they’re all of their 80s and 90s. The lads sit over there, and the ladies sit in there,” he says, motioning to a personal room, simply off the cavernous important eating space. One other visitor seems to say hi there, and Mickelis needs him a belated completely happy birthday. “He simply turned 95 years previous!” he says, then turns again to his visitor. “You’ve acquired extra hair than I do! Nonetheless driving? Good, good. How’s your son?”
Heat chatter, full trays, and chirping service bells create a symphonic murmur on the beloved family-owned cafeteria, which has served impressively constant homestyle cooking in Houston for nearly 85 years. Most of Cleburne’s recipes date again to 1941, if not earlier, and are nonetheless ready the unique from-scratch methods, with one notable exception: Mickelis’s father, Nick, made the choice to switch lard with olive oil within the early ’70s. “It was unparalleled on the time, however my father was from Greece, and really health-conscious,” Mickelis says.
Regulars have been coming to Cleburne Cafeteria for many years.
A cussed insistence on natural produce and premium imported components comparable to Cokinos further virgin olive oil, mixed with classic recipes and methods, makes Cleburne someway not your grandmother’s cafeteria, and—concurrently—proudly, defiantly, actually your grandmother’s cafeteria. Actually, Cleburne makes the argument that trendy well being meals and conventional consolation meals might be the identical scrumptious factor. “It’s heart-healthy cooking. I in all probability don’t promote that sufficient,” Mickelis quips. “I exploit natural broccoli, natural spinach, natural carrots. I ought to say it!”
Cleburne’s hearty entrees comparable to corned beef and cabbage, nation steak and potatoes, baked ham, and Cornish recreation hen are provided alongside brilliant sautéed greens and crisp salads. The old school macaroni and cheese derives healthful richness from milk, eggs, and shredded Vermont cheddar.
When Mickelis’s mother and father, Nick and Pat, bought the cafeteria from Anabelle Collins and Martha Kavanaugh in 1953, the spot had already been open downtown on Cleburne Avenue for greater than a decade. Nick had immigrated to the USA from Patmos, Greece, in 1948, after serving with allied troops in World Battle II. He arrived in Ellis Island, then made his option to Houston, the place he discovered work washing dishes in his brother’s cafe. A promise to ship a portrait dwelling to his mom in Patmos led Nick to a pictures studio, the place the proprietor and photographer Pat Canfield snapped his image—and would later inform their youngsters it was love at first sight.
Going by means of the road on the old school Cleburne Cafeteria is at all times a delight.
“My mom owned her personal enterprise, and that was uncommon for a lady within the ’40s,” Mickelis says. “She was very sensible. My father was too, and an artist.”
Cleburne’s partitions function a gallery of Nick’s work: Supple oils on canvases pay transferring homage to remembered Greek vistas and vignettes. In a surprising portrait of Pat, who handed away at 96 two years in the past, Nick captures her magnificence to regal impact.
Then, there are Cleburne’s buildings—sagas themselves. Nick, Pat, and their two youngsters lived above the unique downtown cafeteria in a 12-room home that was a former speakeasy, the place Nineteen Thirties Houston snuck by means of secret passages to gamble. In 1969, the household moved the cafeteria to its present Bissonnet Avenue location. Fireplace decimated Cleburne not simply as soon as, however twice: first in 1990, only one 12 months after Nick handed away, after which once more in 2016. Every time, the group rallied, and the Mickelis household rebuilt.
Ninety-one-year-old Nuncio Martino, one among Mickelis’s aforementioned “Italian contingency,” has eaten at Cleburne for many years. “It’s the one place I do know of that you could get actually recent greens and simply good meals,” Martino says. “George solely buys high-quality produce. Every little thing now’s fast-food and fried. You used to have the ability to go to a restaurant and get a plate with meat and greens. You may’t try this anymore. The place are you able to go get collard greens?” Martino laughs.
Savory greens are certainly a draw, together with turkey and dressing, that are on the menu Thursdays and Sundays, year-round.
There’s nothing Cleburne proprietor George Mickelis would slightly be doing.
For generations of Houstonians, going dwelling for Thanksgiving has lengthy meant going to Cleburne. “We see individuals weekly, each day. They get to know you, you get to know them,” Mickelis says. “That’s the gorgeous half.”
The cafeteria is at all times open on Thanksgiving, in addition to Christmas, 11am to 8pm, for each eating in and takeout. However it wasn’t at all times that means. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Mickelis household initially gathered with cousins, aunts, and uncles to prepare dinner within the cafeteria’s kitchen—and left the doorways unlocked. Driving by, clients noticed the exercise, and stopped.
“Folks walked in and requested, ‘Are you open?’” Mickelis says. “My father stated, ‘No, we’re simply right here with household, however get a plate. Are available and eat.’”
Phrase traveled quick: Cleburne Cafeteria was serving. “My mom and father noticed there have been a variety of lonely individuals. Not all people is blessed to have youngsters on the town, a partner nonetheless alive, a brother or sister they will go go to,” Mickelis says. “We’re that household for them.”
It is not simply the good meals—the nice and cozy hospitality shines by means of at Cleburne Cafeteria.
Household, sure—and luxury meals maestros. Cleburne Cafeteria turkeys are boiled for a number of hours with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, oregano, kosher salt, and fresh-cracked black pepper. Then, the turkey is basted with paprika, butter, extra black pepper, and salt, and roasted within the oven. It’s a sure-fire option to get a golden, juicy turkey breast. The liquid is used to make the corn-bread dressing and the giblet gravy.
“It’s backbreaking work. A 28-pound chook in an 80-quart inventory pot? You get 4 or 5 birds in there. The water is boiling and splashing as you pull them out. That’s one factor concerning the Cleburne: We do issues the laborious means,” Mickelis says, grinning.
Mickelis praises his workers, lots of whom have labored in his kitchen for many years, together with 14 individuals with greater than 30 years and 5 with over 40 years of service. The group brings their households with them once they work on holidays, and are paid double, plus bonuses.
For Mickelis, household has at all times been the purpose. “If I came upon I used to be dying tomorrow, I don’t assume I’d do something completely different,” he says. “I actually love the cafeteria. It jogs my memory of my mother and father. It jogs my memory of an easier time. Because the world modifications, the cafeteria doesn’t actually change. There’s consolation to that.” He grins once more. “If I can’t crack the eggs, grate my very own cheese, and boil the turkeys, I don’t wish to do it.”
Cleburne Cafeteria closes early at 2pm on Thanksgiving Eve. On Thanksgiving Day, Cleburne is open common hours, 11am to 8pm, for each dine-in and takeout.
