Tex-Mex restaurant roasted after Sessions’ visit
Backlash over smiling Facebook photo forces El Tiempo to quit social media
Someone important was coming to Domenic Laurenzo’s restaurant, but he didn’t know who. He knew only that the Secret Service planned to arrive at El Tiempo Cantina on Navigation Boulevard in an historic Hispanic community, one of eight locations in a city that embraced his family’s cooking almost as fervently as it does its diversity.
But when Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the enforcer of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, walked through the door and posed side-by-side, smiling, for a photo with Laurenzo, he unleashed a backlash against El Tiempo that four days later was unabated and forced the suspension of the restaurant’s social media accounts.
The photo of the pair, posted to Facebook, drew immediate and unforgiving vitriol. “We had the honor to server (sic) Mr. Jeff Sessions,” read the caption, captured in screenshots.
Patrons demanded a boycott of the Tex-Mex chain, founded by Laurenzo and his father, an immigrant family. Both gave in-
terviews distancing themselves from Sessions’ politics. Others criticized their response, or came quickly to their defense.
There was a time when a celebrity visit to a restaurant was cause for celebration, and possibly a smiling photo on the wall. But the outcry over Sessions’ visit to El Tiempo is the latest in a string of incidents nationwide in which senior members of the Trump administration have been heckled or, in the case of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked to leave while trying to eat out, and again revealed an America divided and quick to react — another flash point in the debate over whether politics should affect the way we treat others, personally and as patrons.
“It used to be that you would take great pride in having an attorney general of the United States,” noted Nancy Sims, political analyst at Pierpont Communications. “America’s in a great divide about this issue currently, about politics.”
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Laurenzo, arguably, is TexMex royalty in Houston. His grandmother, Ninfa Laurenzo, or “Mama Ninfa,” founded her namesake restaurant, which sits next to the El Tiempo on Navigation, in 1973. He and his father founded El Tiempo in 1998.
Celebrity visitors were not uncommon. But the Secret Service didn’t come every day, and Laurenzo’s 14-year-old daughter begged to be there when they did.
When Sessions walked in the door, she shook his hand and took a picture of the famous politician with her dad. A social media manager reportedly posted the photo to Facebook. It immediately set social media abuzz with outrage, much to Laurenzo’s surprise.
It wasn’t until late Monday afternoon that Laurenzo publicly shared his account of the ongoing ordeal. Others were still voicing their opinions. A rival restaurant, El Real, put up a marquee message taunting them. People such as Mark Marz, 48, who does metal work for the family’s restaurants, took to their own Facebook pages.
“They’re good people,” he said, “and they don’t deserve to have all of this backlash on them.” He posted a photo of the fajita lunch he ordered that day.
“NOW I HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER GREAT MEXICAN RESTAURANT TO REPLACE MY FAVORITE,” posted Linda Smith, 70, who ate there twice a week.
That afternoon, Laurenzo spoke on air with Michael Berry, a conservative radio host and friend, whose wife grew up in India and who adopted two sons from Ethiopia but who himself has offended any number of racial groups.
Berry introduced Laurenzo as from “as famous a Houston family as the Joneses.” Once choking back tears, Laurenzo, who supported Trump’s campaign, presented himself as someone apolitical, supported by his employees, who wants only to please his customers and was now struggling to explain to his daughter the embattled world she will inherit.
“I’m proud of my heritage,” Laurenzo, who did not respond to requests for comment, told Berry. “We just feel that this has all been really unfair, and that we don’t deserve it.”
Berry, seeing no excuse for the hate-filled remarks, addressed his listeners: “This is an opportunity for Houston, if not the entire country, to say enough.”
Touching a nerve
An hour after Laurenzo’s interview, protesters were gathering on the wide, grassy median outside the restaurant Sessions visited. “Es un honor ser inmigrante,” read one sign. “Kids not queso,” said another
No matter what he said, the photo had touched a nerve in a heavily Hispanic and solidly blue city, where nearly one third of the residents are foreign born, according to the census.
The attorney general is charged with enforcing the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration. This summer, he staunchly defended the policy of separating children from parents when they crossed the border illegally. On Friday, he spoke at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston about reducing gang violence. “This should be obvious: if we want to reduce violent crime we should reduce illegal immigrant crime,” he said.
Seventeen people gathered on the median as the day’s heat fell away. The photo was “a slap in the face,” organizer Jessica Lorena Rangel, 28, said. She hoped they could shine a light on how hypocritical it was that a business benefiting from the Hispanic community was supporting a policymaker who she saw as against it.
Rangel demanded an apology from the restaurant owner, shouting through a megaphone at the diners across the street, who drank margaritas and ate enchiladas on the patio as cheery music played. The media, on the sidewalk in between, looked back and forth on the scene, where everyone seemed to be pointing cameras at each other, sometimes smirking, sometimes tossing nasty remarks.
Separation of children
Shiv Srivastava, 33, had the megaphone: “Y’all think this is a nuisance right now?” the television writer shouted. “You know whats a nuisance? You know what’s inconvenient? Maybe never seeing your parents again.”
The controversy underscored the importance of having a social media policy and living by it, said Mike Androvett, founder the Androvett marketing company. He suggested now that they level with the audience. “If somebody screwed up,” he said, “they need to fess up.”
Sims, with Pierpont marketing, said we are no longer in the age of framed celebrities on the wall. Sessions, after all, ate at another Mexican restaurant, La Mexicana, the same day — and they had largely escaped the fierce response.
“Facebook posts consistently spin out of control,” she said. “They keep me employed.”