When I began writing this blog post, I thought that the menu of Hugo’s would be the draw for people. Looking to have a great meal is one thing I can agree with Houstonians about on many levels—and Hugo’s has got some really fun, interesting, delicious food. Once I even had crickets there. And they were good. Like, really good!
Nonetheless, adventuresome eating isn’t even the most interesting thing about Hugo’s, which serves authentic Mexican regional cuisine from many of Mexico’s numerous cultural variants. Executive Chef Hugo Ortega (the Hugo in Hugo’s) considers “authentic Mexican cooking” to be “a world-class cuisine that has remained virtually unchanged by the outside world.” He seeks to find the subtle flavors of each area and integrate them into his technically-distinguished menu, bringing a reverent tone to this beautiful homage to Mexican diversity. However, despite the exceptional cuisine, despite the historic, beautiful building, despite even your love of a good story about me eating strange foods, nothing trumps the intrigue of a great story: Tracy Vaught and Hugo Ortega are plenty of story to tell.
Tracy is an idiosyncratic restaurant owner, perhaps owing to her background not in restaurants but in geology. Looking for a career change from the isolating business of rock analysis, Tracy considered a number of professions: pretty much anything that wasn’t being a geologist seemed like a good idea. It wasn’t until her uncle expressed interest in opening a restaurant that it seemed that was a natural next step to the practical, pragmatic Vaught.
She and her uncle opened Backstreet Cafe in River Oaks as a neighborhood sandwich place, and it did good business. But then something happened that does not happen often, dear reader: an employee had an idea that would change the business. A waitress at Backstreet Cafe, taking classes in restaurant management, wrote a paper forecasting how greatly profits could increase if Vaught and her uncle invested in a grill. She shared this paper with Tracy. …so Tracy bought a grill. But this exceptional quality—this attentiveness to employees, to ideas, to her work, entering into the restaurant business ego-free is what set Vaught apart. …plus she got an A on the paper.
Hugo Ortega, on the other hand, came to the restaurant business from tough times. He was born in Mexico City and was very poor, working in a Proctor & Gamble factory to help support his family. “In Mexico, we have a saying, ‘If you’re born poor, you’ll die poor.’ … I knew I wanted more from my life,” said Hugo. He immigrated in 1984 with zero prospects and sought work at restaurants as a dishwasher to improve his english and learn about the restaurant business, because young Hugo had a dream. He became a busser and cleaned floors and then all at once found himself without a job and without any friends or family to rely on.
Life had handed Hugo several tough breaks when he finally had a breakthrough and became a dish washer and busboy at Vaught’s Backstreet Cafe. Tracy’s attentiveness to her employees revealed to her that Hugo was hard-working, eager, and intelligent and she offered him a position on the kitchen line. Vaught was in the middle of trying to turn around a second business, Prego, from its defunct state and she promoted Ortega to the kitchen there where he gained experience with Executive Chef John Watt. It was then that Tracy decided to invest in her rising star employee, enrolling Hugo in the Culinary Arts program at HCC where he impressed teachers and department heads alike.
A triumphant Hugo returned to revamp Backstreet Cafe’s menu (some of his ingenuity can be found in the Roast Lamb Loin in a Dijon-Hazelnut Crust among other equally mouth-watering creations), having graduated the Culinary Arts program in 1992. He became a chef at the Backstreet Cafe… and married Tracy in 1994. 1995 saw him become the Executive Chef of Backstreet, 1996 naturalized him as a citizen and 1997 brought their first child—a little girl—into the world. Eyes prickling yet?
“This is the restaurant I have dreamed of opening ever since I started my career,” said Ortega of Hugo’s when it opened in 2002 in an architecturally significant Latin-inspired building designed by Joseph Finger, the same designer of the Art-Deco-style City Hall. Since then, Hugo was a finalist in 2012 and 2013 for the James Beard Foundation Awards, was named Chef of the Year in 2002 and 2011 Houston Culinary Awards… And they lived happily ever after. Don’t mind me, my eyes are leaking. It’s just allergies.
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