Donica Jimenez fell for Spain in a high school classroom. Her Spanish teacher at Hockaday used to come back from trips abroad with slides, and those pictures brought the country to life for her. “I fell in love with Spain before I ever went there,” Jimenez has said.
She went on to study Spanish and Iberian culture and history at SMU. In 1989 she noticed a lease sign in a window on Travis Street and did something very practical. She measured the drive from her house. It came to 1.8 miles. She wanted to stay close to home, and that was close enough. The following year she opened Cafe Madrid at 4501 Travis St., at the corner of Armstrong, one block south of Knox.
Eleven people came in on the first day. On the second day there were 55. “It just took off,” she said.
Thirty-six years later, Cafe Madrid is still on the same corner, and the corner around it is almost unrecognizable.
For decades a Houston real estate company quietly bought up the block, one parcel at a time, under different names, so nobody realized a single buyer was behind it. Eventually Jimenez’s landlord came to her with news that he had an offer on her building, and a big one. She reminded him that her lease gave her the right of first refusal. He told her the buyer was a major developer that had been assembling land in the neighborhood since the 1980s, and her building was the last piece it needed.
She bought it herself. That was about 12 years ago.
“To me, it was worth it because I’m in it for the long term,” she said.
Look up from the patio now and you can see what she was standing in the way of. Towers have gone up all around Knox Street. A 27-story apartment building and a new hotel are opening nearby, and the old Chuy’s on McKinney Avenue was torn down this spring to make room for a 12-story office building due in 2028. Cafe Madrid sits in the middle of it, still in its original spot, more than three decades after she put in its first commercial kitchen.
Jimenez has said the construction has actually been good for business. All the people moving into the neighborhood need somewhere to eat, and plenty of them find their way to her door.
What they find is a menu that has never chased trends. Start with the tortilla española, the potato and onion omelette the menu fairly calls the most popular of all tapas. Order the gambas al ajillo, shrimp sizzling in olive oil with garlic and guindilla pepper, and keep a basket of bread close for the oil. The albóndigas andaluzas come in an almond and piquillo sauce that is worth ordering a second time before the night is over.
From there it depends on the table. The pincho moruno is a Moorish-style beef skewer marinated in cumin and smoked paprika. The mejillones con azafrán are mussels in saffron sauce, and the setas en salsa de Jerez are mushrooms in a cream sherry sauce made with Lustau. The piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese are small and sweet and gone in two bites. The paella de la casa comes as a tapa or a full entrée portion, and the full one is the move for a group.
The wine list is all Spanish, with a good run of sherries and pitchers of red or white sangria made in house. Some nights there is live flamenco guitar or harp music, and on a mild evening the patio is the best seat in the place. Some evenings a flock of parakeets circles the trees overhead.
Jimenez raised her three children around this restaurant, and some of her employees have been with her for decades. She is a woman of deep faith and has described Cafe Madrid as something close to a ministry, a place where anyone who walks in should feel welcome. You can see it on a weeknight, when the room fills with Katy Trail walkers, families out for an early dinner, and people speaking a handful of different languages.
She credits them for the restaurant’s long run. “People, customers are very appreciative of the fact that we’re still there,” she said, “and that we’re keeping some of the original history and the charm of the neighborhood.”
Cafe Madrid, 4501 Travis St., Dallas. 214-528-1731. Open Monday through Thursday 5 to 10 p.m., Friday 5 to 11 p.m., and Saturday noon to 11 p.m. Closed Sunday. See the full tapas menu and follow along on Instagram.
