A Major Mealtime in Marfa

In the normal world, lovers of food and wine don’t typically go looking to eat in a Texas town that chalked up only 1,980 in the latest census. All the same, it’s been a very long time since anybody accused Marfa of being “normal.” With its reputation as a world-class arts destination attracting visitors from Europe and from New York and Los Angeles, the hungry folks turning up here from Houston, Dallas and Austin have every claim to local status. At least they know enough to order the chilaquiles pictured above when they settle in for dinner – inside, outside or at the new bar – at the restaurant called Cochineal.

Like a lot of things about Marfa, and a lot of people who come here, Cochineal has always seemed like a work in progress. Opened a few years back as a fine-dining establishment – probably the most ambitious the town had ever seen – Cochineal was a creation of chefs Tom Rapp and Toshi Sakihara, who’d given up the successful Etats-Unis on Manhattan’s Upper East Side when they fell in love with West Texas. Recently, however, the two have transformed Cochineal’s concept, devoting most of its menu to casual small plates and trimming its sophisticated wine program to focus on a bar serving signature cocktails. By all accounts, the change has been a huge success.

Before there was a Cochineal, there was a Maiya’s. In fact, chef-owner Maiya Keck may have been the first transplant (from the Northeast, specifically) to start attracting culinary attention to what had been a Texas town with bigtime art and a smalltime Dairy Queen.

Then and now, Maiya’s works its Italian magic right on what Marfa has of a Main Street, Highland Avenue, running a few blocks north from Highway 90 to the lovely peach-and-cream Presidio County courthouse. Open for dinner only, Maiya’s offers a few tables outside, and on many evenings those may be the best seats in the house.

For those who want a side order of history with their meal, dinner at Marfa’s landmark Paisano Hotel seems very much in order. Now open for dinner (and drinks!) only, Jett’s Grill is named after the character James Dean played in the iconic West Texas movie Giant. In fact, while the Paisano was designed by famed Southwest architect Henry Trost and opened just in time to suffer through the Great Depression, its finest hour was surely when Giant stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Dean stayed here during filming.

For food, check out Jett’s intriguing spin on chicken fried steak with pistachios and a jalapeno sauce. Or maybe one of the nightly specials, like the Portabella Parmigiana seen above with, well, penne as the pasta, of course. Or hell, just do like everybody else around here and order a margarita at the bar.

Visitors to Marfa on weekends may (and should) be disappointed to miss the Tuesday-Friday lunches at Food Shark, the town’s quirky version of a food truck. Thanks to Austin transplants Adam and Krista Bork, who do a lot of catering around town as well, a midday meal under a breezy pavilion along the railroad tracks has become one of Marfa’s few must-have food experiences – right along with the Shark’s signature dish, a spin on falafel called (of course) Marfalafel.

If you find yourself missing Food Shark some weekend, you can always check out the couple’s bizarre, late-night emporium devoted to all kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches amid snow-screened antique television sets. And there’s word of a new brick-and-mortar restaurant by the Borks coming soon to Highland Avenue. There’s a TABC notice in the window now, so the place is sure to involve alcohol.

Padre’s opened its doors as a live music venue, and that it quite often is. What it offers every day, though, is a lot of beer, wine and cocktails, plus some occasionally serious food with Texas Meets Cajun flair. Yes, eating at Padre’s does feel like eating in a bar. It tends to be dark, and there are games just about wherever you turn.

Still, as the commitment of longtime musician and founder David Beebe has turned in other directions (the Houston native serves on the town’s council), other partners have deepened Padre’s culinary commitment. “You can get French fries now!” somebody in town is certain to exude. For his part, Beebe has adjusted his business model to include a food truck inside an Airstream.

Q Café and Bar, which started up next to Cochineal, is the latest self-portrait by a couple with roots in Houston and Chicago that has seriously committed to Marfa as their home. Pat Quin is the primary face of Marfa Realty (yes, she sold me my house), while her husband Tom Schmidt brings a resume filled with running hotels in the Midwest to the tough job at hand. Q is a terrific place for light, super-casual lunches during the week, and then gets extremely busy for breakfast over the weekend. Houses aren’t on the menu exactly, but I’m sure they’d let you buy one in Marfa for desert.

Squeeze Marfa (subtitle: “a swiss café”) has a terrific “location, location, location” right across from the courthouse and just around the corner from the Paisano. It could be called a coffeeshop, and certainly brews and pours a variety of coffees - except that its specialties are actually “squeezes,” made from healthy things like carrot, apple, ginger and kiwi. And yes, they do traditional smoothies and something called “creamsicle sodas” as well. The tiny place has lots of charm, in addition to lots of orange paint, with a dollop of tables inside and out. At lunchtime, the soups and salads have developed quite a following.

While yes, you can get a cup of coffee at Squeeze Marfa, you really need to get into the habit of stopping for coffee at a quirky little success story called FRAMA (that’s “Marfa” with the letters all mixed up), where you can also do your laundry at a sibling enterprise called Tumbleweed. Do your laundry, drink your coffee and use the free WiFi while listening to NPR’S Morning Edition on Marfa Public Radio – you’ll be well on your way to local status by then. And if you make it to FRAMA in time, you can munch on a “morning edition” of muffins or scones baked by Krista Bork of Food Shark fame.

For several years now, one of the most popular places to eat in Marfa has been Pizza Foundation – the name a delicious play on the Chinati Foundation, the main art draw for the works of the late Donald Judd. The building that housed this super pizzeria (operated by Maiya Keck’s sister and her husband, who always kept his vehicle decorated a la Boston Red Sox parked out front) has recently been sold and given a renovation. Still, word around Marfa is that a bigger and better Pizza Foundation will be back soon. Everyone is certainly hoping so.

Any conversation about the Marfa dining scene will, of necessity, focus on interesting places that serve tourists and transplants – places whose food, drink and service are in line with where these people came from. But in addition to a great, down-and-dirty local bar named Lost Horse Saloon, Marfa absolutely does have a collection of mostly Mexican restaurants that cater to locals. One of the very best is called Marfa Burrito, which at breakfast and lunch serves a huge variety of burritos as well as the glorious asado plate pictured above. Keeping a similar schedule and a similar menu are Alice’s Café, Borunda’s, Tacos del Norte and, at the western edge of town, Mando’s. The latter gets rather lively at lunchtime, as you can see.

In the end, the best thing about Mealtime in Marfa is actually being in Marfa. So far from everything. So close to, well, itself.