Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

The kitchen is closed: my friend Pete Dominguez used to own some of the hottest restaurants in Dallas, where celebrities and their entourages feasted on Tex-Mex. Now he's alone, broke, and nearly forgotten.

Article Excerpt
Pete Dominguez eases his rattletrap Chevy Malibu into the driveway of the old house in Wills Point. "Here we are," he says cheerfully. "Home." The house was a showplace when he bought it, in 1970, but now it's literally falling apart--paint is peeling from the Greek Revival columns, one corner of the wraparound porch has collapsed, and the roof looks as if wolverines have camped there. Pete paid cash for it, $10,800, which was little more than pocket change for the young and energetic impresario of a burgeoning chain of Mexican restaurants. That was then. Now he struggles to pay off a mortgage of more than $100,000, a debt incurred in one last, futile effort to save his failing business. Once, Pete Dominguez was the toast of Dallas. But at 68, he is alone, broke, and nearly forgotten. "I used to think I'd come out here and retire," he tells me as we step gingerly across some broken boards and into the foyer. "Yeah, I'm retired all right." This is said without bitterness or rancor but with a melancholy acknowledgement that irony is the worst of life's aimless jokes.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The floors are littered with piles of old clothes, magazines, and assorted trash, telltale signs that there hasn't been a woman around for a long time. Pete's second wife, Graciela, divorced him years ago, no longer willing to tolerate his drinking. His mother used to stay here from time to time. You can see her touch in a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in one of the downstairs rooms. At 88 she's mostly confined to a rest home in Austin; the grand house that Pete purchased for her years ago fell victim to his mounting debt a while back. Same thing with his 220-acre farm near Wills Point. They're all gone,...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!