Pancho's Mexican Buffet El Paso: The Founding Family on the Flag and What Happened

Seventy seven restaurants across five states, and almost nobody knew whose idea it was. We flew to El Paso to sit down with the family who built Pancho's Mexican Buffet, and to ask them the question nobody here ever got to ask: did you know what that place meant to people?

Carolina Arrambide was in the room while the whole thing went up. She is the widow of Jesse Arrambide Jr., the man who took his mother's ninety nine cent buffet and turned it into a chain. Her daughter, Rosa Saenz, still cooks her mother's and her grandmother's recipes in El Paso today.

The idea was never his. It was his mother's. Lilia came up out of Chihuahua with her mother and her sister after the family lost two silver mines and was given one hour to leave the hacienda. When her husband got sick and the money had to come from somewhere, she opened a little place downtown, put out everything she had cooked, charged ninety nine cents, and let people eat until they were done.

We get into all of it. The donut route he ran as a boy on Sunset Heights. Cooking for hundreds in the Merchant Marines. The bar at 5908 Alameda that became the first Pancho's. A thousand plates at the Coliseum. Three and four months at a time living out of a Holiday Inn while the chain spread into Fort Worth, Dallas, Louisiana and beyond. Close to eighty restaurants at the peak.

And the flag. Where the idea came from, what it did for service, and why people loved it enough to take one home.

Pancho's reached Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma. The family sold their interest years ago, and four locations are still open in Texas today. If you ate at one, tell us in the comments where yours was.

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00:00 El Paso, and the family behind Pancho's

02:16 Out of Chihuahua

04:33 One hour to leave, one railroad cart

05:53 Starting over in Nuevo Casas Grandes

06:43 Embroidery, and surviving the Second Ward

07:13 Lilia meets Jesus at the Colon Theater

11:22 The donut route on Sunset Heights

13:13 Mexican food on the other side of the world

22:28 A bar at 5908 Alameda

24:23 Mr. Calderos and Mr. Bowden

28:31 Catering a thousand plates at the Coliseum

29:04 Five stores at once

33:56 Three months at a time in a Holiday Inn

43:27 The flag

48:04 Fort Worth, Dallas, and out of Texas

52:03 Close to eighty restaurants

56:13 Selling Pancho's

60:37 The building a dealership wanted to tear down

63:37 Cooking for the Pope

68:33 The recipes the family still cooks

75:04 Green chilies in Sierra Blanca