Tag Archives: Dallas History

by Steven Doyle | July 21, 2026 · 5:44 pm

The Real History of Fritos, Frito Pie, and the Dallas Connection

In 1932, a twenty-eight-year-old confectionery manager named Charles Elmer Doolin ordered a sandwich and a nickel bag of corn chips at a small San Antonio café. He liked the chips enough to track down the man who made them, a vendor named Gustavo Olguín who was getting ready to move back to Mexico and wanted to sell off the business. Doolin bought the recipe, a hand-cranked potato ricer, and nineteen retail accounts for one hundred dollars, borrowed from his mother, who reportedly pawned her wedding ring to help raise it.

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Remember La Tunisia? Dallas Once Had One of the Most Gloriously Over-the-Top Restaurants in America.

Before Dallas had a fine dining scene worth arguing about, it had La Tunisia — and La Tunisia had a seven-foot doorman named Abdull who had allegedly been a palace guard for Sheik Mirza Hassan of Morocco and wore ceremonial Watusi chieftain’s robes to work every day on Harry Hines Boulevard.

It was that era in Dallas. And it was that kind of restaurant.

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Rose’s Bluebonnet Sandwich Shop: The Dallas Burger Legend Nobody Could Find

The address was 4515 Greenville Avenue, but that didn’t help much. The building sat back off the street, down an alley near Yale Boulevard, behind nothing that looked like a restaurant. No sign. No parking lot to speak of. No indication from the street that anything worth finding was back there. Judge Buchmeyer — a federal judge, a man accustomed to having things run efficiently — drove up and down Greenville trying to locate it before finally giving up, parking, and walking until he found the door. When he walked inside, Mickey Mantle was sitting at a table eating a burger.

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Tagged as Burger, Dallas, Dallas History, Rose's Bluebonnet Sandwich Shop, Wayback Machine

by Steven Doyle | May 7, 2026 · 4:20 pm

A Dallas Drive-In That Made National Headlines

In February 1940, a teenage girl from Houston named Josephine Powell appeared on the cover of Life magazine. She was wearing a drum majorette outfit with very short shorts, a plumed hat, and boots. She was holding a tray. She was a carhop at a drive-in restaurant called Sivils, and after that issue hit newsstands, Louise Sivils started receiving letters from young women all over the country asking for a job.

Four months later, J.D. and Louise Sivils brought their operation to Dallas.

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