104 years, eight managers, and one family turned a down-home creamery in Brenham, Texas, into one of the most respected companies in the region and the country.  The name Blue Bell has become synonymous with ice cream, and the little creamery in Brenham now sets the gold standard for ice cream production while retaining the down-home feel that first made the creamery popular among folks in Central Texas. From the original hand crank freezer to the state-of-the-art facilities today, Blue Bell incorporates the same personal service and care that it did when it started as the Brenham Creamery Company in 1907.

LEADERSHIP

A group of Brenham businessmen established the Brenham Creamery Company as a cooperative to produce sour cream butter and named H. C. Hodde as its manager the following year. Hodde also wanted to make use of the sweet cream and, in 1911, decided to experiment with producing ice cream. Blue Bell Ice Cream: A Century at the Little Creamery in Brenham, Texas 1907-2007 indicates, the “butter maker at the company laboriously hand-cranked a mixture of cream, sugar, and flavorings in a metal can surrounded by cracked ice and salt set inside a wooden tub.” This process produced two gallons of ice cream delivered by horse and buggy to Brenham families who could consume it before it melted. The enthusiastic response led the directors to approve purchasing equipment that enabled them to produce 6,000 gallons of ice cream the following fiscal year.

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I will never forget the first time I saw Sonny Look. My family went to Look’s Sir-Loin House to celebrate a special occasion in 1960, a time before eating out was common or Houston had become a national restaurant capitol.  Not long after the hostess seated us, a man approached our table, a larger-than-life kind of guy wearing a red brocade jacket.  He was incredibly friendly and spoke to all of us—even me, a eight-year-old—as if we were the most important customers who ever walked in the door. I loved the four different flavors of butter, especially the honey butter. My parents raved about the steaks, and my dad appreciated the complimentary glass of wine Look offered to the adults. Since Texas law still prohibited liquor by the drink except in private clubs, that free glass of wine had tremendous appeal!

Look won us over on that first visit, and we celebrated many special occasions and just ordinary days athis restaurants over the years because you could always depend on a first-class experience. Little did I know then what the future held. Twenty years later, my husband, Tom Harwell, went to work for Sonny at Sunbelt Hotels, and he and his wife, Carole, became our dear friends. Recently Carole sat down with me to share memories of this Houston hospitality legend.

Garret Dawson “Sonny” Look was born on April 21, 1919, in Caldwell, Texas, the oldest of four children.  He attended Brenham High School and at age fourteen took a job at the New York Café on Main Street in Brenham, just off the town square. He held every position from busboy to manager, and at age twenty-one, bought the café from the owner.  Uncommon for a small town, the menu included Alaskan salmon, oysters, flounder, veal, seven different cuts of beef, and a wide array of appetizers and sides.

Sonny married Mary Reynolds of Brenham and, in 1942, enlisted in the Navy as a ship’s cook 1^st class. He sold the café to the owner of a cab company with a “gentleman’s agreement” that Look could buy it back when he returned.  He served on the USS Beagle in the Pacific until 1945. When he came back to Brenham, the owner refused to sell, so Sonny packed up Mary and their son Gary, who was born in 1944, and moved to Houston, which offered greater opportunities.

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In the 1940s, young Irma González Galvan moved with her family from Brownsville, Texas to Houston’s Second Ward. As children, Irma’s brothers shined shoes, while Irma and her sister worked at their school cafeteria and neighboring bakeries in order to help their mother. These early experiences, combined with later work in retail, and the desire to overcome personal tragedy, culminated in Galvan’s 1989 opening of her own Mexican restaurant, Irma’s.

The success of Irma’s, particularly being named an America’s Classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2008, has brought Galvan much attention in the form of articles and interviews. Megan Schneider interviewed Irma in 2008 for the Houston Oral History Project; two years later, I interviewed her for the Center for Public History’s Project at the University of Houston, Gulf Coast Foodways: History, Culture, and Economy.

The very first time I met Irma, she asked me if the interview was going to take place right then. She was ready, I was not! When I returned at a later date, Galvan looked much as she had before—a petite lady, hair pulled neatly back, and eyes sparkling behind dark-rimmed glasses. Her physical appearance, combined with the long, white apron she wore, made Galvan look every bit the mother or friend figure amid this comfy home away from home where photographs, articles, and knickknacks cover the walls. Because most items came from family, friends, and customers, they reflect what Irma’s means to the community, what the community means to Irma, and the link between food and family.

Sandra Davidson [SD]: What are some of your earliest memories of cooking?

Irma Galvan [IG]: I was like a mother to my two brothers and my sister. I cooked for them. And I remember the first time that I learned how to make Mexican rice. … It didn’t turn out very well at first but I think when you try and try again you kind of get the niche to do it better. So we had rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, and rice for dinner, and that was the first thing that I remember. And another thing too is the picadillo, you know, the ground beef, and refried beans. I was the chef in the family. … But it was good because I learned how to be responsible and how to cook.
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By Aimee L’Heureux

“Home ec girls make clothes and model them. They learn how to prepare a first-rank meal economically and cut failures to a minimum.” Concurrent with the growth of the University at that time, the Home Economics Department grew, and in 1954 the Home Ec House was built to accommodate the expanding program. A waiting list to take a special home economics course resulted from the desire to live in the new Home Ec House, a luxury for the girls enrolled in the class. But as the times changed, so did the campus, and in 1977 the program ended. The following photo essay tells a history of Home Ec at the University of Houston.

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For a few years in the mid-2000s, S.H.A.P.E. Community Center in Houston’s Third Ward was the home to The Raw Truth Vegetarian Restaurant and Vegan Café, a local eatery that served both cooked and raw food meals to a varied clientele. One of the restaurant’s defining and unique characteristics was its raw food preparations. While the practice of following a raw food diet is quite varied in its forms—including Paleo dieters who advocate eating raw meat along with other uncooked foods; vegetarian versions that adhere to Natural Hygiene principles that eschew processed foods, condiments, and other dietary and physiological stimulants; and other paradigms—what they all typically agree on is that foods should not be heated over approximately 115 degrees Fahrenheit. To do so is believed to damage the food’s nutrient content. Though Houston has a number of grocers and eateries dedicated to the promotion of healthier eating and lifestyles, the Raw Truth was one of the few restaurants in the city with raw food preparations on its menu. This devotion to a growing culinary niche captured the attention of PETA, which recognized The Raw Truth with its Best Veggie Burger in North America award in 2005. The restaurant was run by a partnership of women that included Chef Cheryl Pradia. A native of Houston, Pradia has been involved in the culinary world for many years. She has worked for another Houston Mexican dining institution, Ninfa’s, and has received certification in raw food preparation from renowned raw food chef Alissa Cohen. The Raw Truth itself often served as the meeting place for a number of social and political organizations both internal and external to S.H.A.P.E. Pradia’s own journey on the path to the raw food diet and her tenure as head of The Raw Truth was a long one that started early on. Though The Raw Truth is no longer open, Cheryl Pradia remains active, working as a caterer and sharing the discoveries she has made about diet and health with others in workshops.

EW: What was your early relationship with food like, growing up?

CP: My paternal and maternal grandparents grew up in Louisiana—in south Louisiana, so my experience with food early on was Creole food, gumbo, etouffe, crab, shrimp, you name it, but mainly seafood. We had soul food, but it was mainly seafood, and, so I was always interested in food—in the flavors and all, so I would sit in the kitchen on a stool and watch my grandparents cook. My mother was born in St. Martinsville, Louisiana and she is an excellent cook as well.

EW: How did you begin your journey? How did you find out about raw food and the raw food movement?

CP: I really started about twenty-five years ago reading a book called Fit for Life. I was on my way out of town for the Fourth of July weekend, and I was in the airport and bought this book because it was talking about food combining and how meat just sits in your stomach for days before it’s digested. And by the time I landed, I just said, ‘no more meat for me.’ And so that next week when I got back home, I bought a juicer, and I started juicing, and the flavors of the live food were just awesome. I burned up the juicer within the week. So I bought about five juicers before I decided to buy a commercial juicer.

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There is a movement that places importance on knowing where food comes from for nutritious, environmental, and economic reasons. This trend has taken many forms, such as community gardening, schools gardens, farmers’ markets, and even restaurants that support local growers. The UH – Oral History of Houston has collected several interviews that document this endeavor. This article includes excerpts from a few of these oral histories done by UH graduate students that provide a glimpse into this growing movement.

Houston Special Gardening Program

In 1976, Arnold Brown became a county extension agent in Harris County under the Houston Special Gardening Program (six cities program) that was created out of Agricultural Extension. The program he ran served an estimated 10,000 families over a twelve year period. Eventually, the six cities program expanded to twenty-two cities. Mr. Brown’s interview with Leigh Cutler on January 31, 2006 provides an account of Houston urban gardening and farmers’ markets that have roots in the 1970s.

ARNOLD BROWN [AB]: [There] was a federal program that had been created out of the [1976] Congress by Frederick [W.] Richmond, who was a congressman from New York, and it was to create a community garden program. … They called it backyard gardening, directed toward urban and minority populations, and there [were] six cities at the time that they made the appropriations to. I was selected to become the director of the project in Houston. … Houston was the most effective [of the six cities] program … It was ranked on the basis of change in knowledge and skills and the impact the program had on communities. …

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Annette Finnigan—energetic suffrage leader, astute businesswoman, visionary philanthropist—became involved in many aspects of Houston’s development. Her contributions have had a significant impact on its citizens. Yet today few Houstonians are familiar with her name.

Annette was born in 1873 in West Columbia, Texas, to Katherine McRedmond and John Finnigan. John, orphaned as a young boy of fourteen, was forced to leave school to earn his livelihood. A thirst for knowledge and a tireless energy for hard work, however, led him to become a successful merchant dealing in animal hides. Known as a democratic-minded person, John Finnigan believed in the worth of all individuals and in doing what he could to help others, and he instilled these admirable qualities in his daughter, Annette. In 1874, the Finnigan family moved to Houston, where Annette and her sisters, Katherine and Elizabeth, attended the newly-established public schools.

By 1888, the flourishing family business, John Finnigan Hide Company, had offices in Houston and New York City. To oversee the New York office, and possibly to expand the educational opportunities for his daughters, Finnigan moved his family to the East, although they claimed Texas residency. Annette, who had not yet graduated from the Houston Normal and High School, studied at Tilden Seminary in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, and in the fall of 1888 entered Wellesley College in Massachusetts.  Undoubtedly, her years at Wellesley profoundly influenced her. Her curriculum reveals that, while she showed an interest in languages, rhetoric, and art history, she also studied the sciences. She belonged to the campus art society and participated in the Wellesley Bicycle Club, a symbol of “emancipated womanhood.” Wellesley’s unique policy of employing an all-female faculty provided strong role models and affirmed the concept of feminine leadership. Class elections and assemblies educated women in organization, leadership, cooperation, and articulating their views. This represented a new experience for females and later proved invaluable to Annette.

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On September 20, 2008, Genevieve Keeney, the director of the National Museum of Funeral History, sat down with Anna Burke Herrera to discuss the history of Houston’s funeral museum.

AB:      What are some of the more popular exhibits that you have in the museum?

GK:     “The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” … We have a TV that displays the changing of the guard, which is a very ceremonial period that happens throughout the day there. It is very structured and disciplined and touching. … Another popular one is the “Presidential Museum,” [which] displays all the different presidents throughout time starting with Washington. Of course we don’t have [artifacts for] all of them, but we do have the memorial folders or the newspaper articles or some of the actual artifacts from that president’s funeral. We do have some of the artifacts from some of the most recent presidents, and we are expanding that now, so that we can make room for Gerald R. Ford and for our future presidents, President Clinton and the Bushs. Another one is “Funerals of Famous.” … We do have Princess Grace of Monaco’s hearse. That was put on loan to us. Then we have different memorial cards and folders that are handed out at the ceremonies of the different funerals of the famous.

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One of my earliest memories is the regal feeling of sitting on top of a hand-cranked freezer as my dad grinded away making home-made ice cream.  The anticipation that grew during the long process of mixing and cranking enhanced the enjoyment of the final product, which was much better than the cheap mellorine my mom brought home from the grocery store.  Store-bought ice cream as good as home-made was unknown to me until I discovered Blue Bell sometime in my late teens.

Soon afterwards, I spent more than a decade wandering in the ice cream wilderness of Baltimore and Berkeley, pursuing a graduate education and a teaching career.  Don’t get me wrong, I ate my share of Breyer’s and Dryer’s without complaint, although regular trips back home to Texas reminded me of what I was missing. When I took a job at Texas A & M in 1981, we finally returned to Texas for good. We celebrated with bowls of Blue Bell, no doubt with background music from Willie Nelson.  Life was good.

One problem, however, remained.  My young daughter was an only child and she had me for a father.  To put it mildly, I was deeply involved in her upbringing, and very demanding.  When she was one year old, I wondered why she was not talking; at two years, why she could not yet hit a baseball.  But as she approached four, I was greatly impressed by her ability to devour ice cream.  Indeed, well before her first grade “placement tests,” it was clear to me that she was “gifted and talented” in ice cream.

At about the same time, the local Safeway began having regular sales on Blue Bell, with bargains as low as five half gallons for $10. As I read one of these ads, I had a vision of a new way forward, and I proclaimed boldly, “It’s Ice Cream Day.”  My daughter immediately understood that whatever this meant, it was going to be good.  We quickly agreed on basic ground rules:  All the Blue Bell you could eat in one day. No limit. As many flavors as you wanted. Without false modesty, I’ll admit that it is the best idea I’ve ever had.

We went to the store, and each of us picked out two half gallons of our favorite flavors. We agreed that the fifth “neutral carton” would be Homemade Vanilla, which we both loved with strawberries or chocolate syrup.  We then bagged our Blue Bell, drove home, and went to work.  On and off for the rest of the day we feasted.  My wife did not follow our journey past the first bowl, but she shared our joy and laughed along with us as we listened to old rock and roll music and ate various flavors of ice cream.  It quickly became clear that Blue Bell was meant to be savored, not gobbled down like hot dogs at a July Fourth eating contest.  No, we did not finish the five half gallons. Indeed, by day’s end, a family tradition has been established, yet plenty of ice cream remained.  To avoid overworking our taste buds, we repeated this ritual only once or twice a year. We never got sick; our stomachs knew our limits even if our brains did not.

Ice Cream Day did not stop me from being a demanding parent.  Along with other similar behavior, it did, however, suggest to my daughter that I was a natural-born goofball playing a very convincing role as an unreasonable dad. In retrospect, I even convinced myself that there was method in my goofiness.  From the day my daughter was born, I felt a strong responsibility to be a serious parent who prepared her for adulthood in an often harsh, demanding world. I also believed that a healthy dose of whimsy was good for the soul. Reading this, my daughter, who survived my parenting and grew into an exceptional adult, no doubt will scoff at my effort to cast Ice Cream Day as part of a grand philosophy of child rearing.  She will remember it, instead, as a creative excuse for pigging out on ice cream.

She now plays the role of a strict mom trying hard to limit her two-year old son’s intake of sweets, including ice cream.  Good luck to her on that one, especially with a whimsical grandpa around who recently bought her son his first pint of Blue Bell’s amazing new Orange Swirl and no doubt soon will have a talk with him about family traditions.

Tony began his restaurant career as a busboy and started working for Sonny Look as a server at the Sir-Loin Inn around 1969. He transferred to the Sir-Loin House and then to Don Quixote’s where Sonny promoted him to assistant manager. He worked with Look at the Depot when downtown was a popular nightspot. He would have continued working for Look but left after the restaurants closed.  “I was very, very happy working for Mr. Look,” Tony recalled.

At Sonny’s restaurants, Tony learned about exceptional service and food quality; but, most importantly, he found someone who shared his passion for the industry. Tony remembers,   “Mr. Look had the business in his heart, which is what I learned. Because everything I do, I learned it from him. I open my heart when I am at the restaurant  . . .  Mr. Look used to go around to every table in every restaurant. . . . Everybody knew Mr. Look.”  Tony reflected on how Sonny made the rounds of tables in each restaurant, talking to customers and pouring water and his rosé wine,  “I haven’t seen any owner of any restaurant that I worked for that the owner goes around the tables and talks to the people.”

Tony always aspired to open his restaurant, but that takes money and experience.  Once, Sonny offered to help him, a gesture that Tony appreciated, but  he was not ready.  In April 2008, however, the time was right. Tony along with his son-in-law and co-owner, Ronald Perez, opened Chimichurri’s, an upscale, comfortable, lakefront restaurant offering a quality dining experience.

The whole family, including Tony’s wife, Rosa, and their daughters, have been involved in every step of the thee-year process to realize the dream of owning their own restaurant—even down to  the most minute details of the décor. The cuisine includes elements from many South American countries and recipes incorporate specific items from those countries. Tony follows the example he learned from Sonny, visiting with the customers. “We put our heart into it because this is our own,” he said.  Ronald Perez added, “Consistency is our main concern” when it comes to food and service.

Now Vasquez and Perez are expanding the operation.  This spring, they will open a new restaurant next door, Puerto. With cuisine based on the taco stands of Mexico City, it will provide a nice atmosphere with unique offerings where families can get in and get out quickly or linger. Although the atmosphere is casual, it will have the same standards of service and quality that Tony learned from Sonny all those years ago.

Chimichurri’s is in King’s Harbor on Lake Houston at 1660 West Lake Houston Parkway, Kingwood, TX 77339, (281) 360-0015, www.chimichurrisgrill.com. Puerto opens late spring at the same address, www.puertotacos.com.