Cisco's owner tired of messing with enchiladas 90 hours a week

Posh dwellings around the corner from Cisco's Bakery & Bar in East Austin clash with the funky decor of the legendary Tex-Mex joint and watering hole.

When I first walked into Cisco's, 1511 E. Sixth St., in the '70s, the customers would have thought a condominium was something you bought at the drugstore.

Yet Cisco's could one day become One Enchilada Place.

It probably won't happen in this real estate market, though. Condos are being auctioned off these days. (Ever seen a breakfast taco auction? Nope.)

Still, Clovis Cisneros, 51, the owner, has his restaurant on the market for $3.8 million.

He knows he's dreaming. "I don't think it's going to sell for that," he said. "I'm just throwing my hook out there."

Speaking of hooks, Clovis would rather be fishing. He started scrubbing pots and baking bread in this place at the age of 8. Next time you're trying to save an Austin institution, remember that the owner may not want to be saved.

"I got burned out," Clovis said. "I've been coming in here 40-something years and I've had enough. Can you imagine waking up on weekends and putting out a thousand orders of migas in one day?"

Other teens went to Padre Island. Not Clovis. "I didn't get to go on trips like the other kids did."

Clovis wants to sell the joint so his kids can go to Padre Island instead of working 90 hours a week messing with the No. 1 Dinner.

Running a restaurant is grueling business, even if it's a fun and colorful Aulde Austin institution with a sign in a back room that says, "Cisco's Marriage License Dept." on one wall and photos of Walter Cronkite, Bob Bullock and "Gunsmoke's" Miss Kitty, a fixture in there in the '80s with her hubby,Mark Spaeth, an Austin City Council member at the time.

There was a time when if you wanted the East Austin vote, you went to see Rudy Cisneros, aka Cisco, Clovis' late father. In the restaurant, you'll see a large blackandwhite picture of Ciscodressed in flowing white robes pretending to play a harp. "The Restaurateurs' Guardian Angel," it says on the photo.

And the politician's, too. An ancient American-Statesman news story on display in a Cisco's back room tells how then Austin mayoral candidate Carole McClellan (now Carole Keeton Strayhorn) visited Cisco's after Cisneros blasted her campaign and women. A man mayor "could parry the blows a lot better than a woman could," Cisneros said.

Cisneros and McClellan had what sounds like a reasonably amicable meeting, and McClellan became Austin mayor. But, as usual, Rudy got in a wise remark or three.

"You're going to need a pillow to sit up on there (the dais)," Cisneros told the 5-foot-1 McClellan. "How about one with my picture on it?"
If you haven't been to Cisco's, you don't know Austin. You just think you do.

I visited again Monday morning for refried beans and a cup of coffee ($1.25) and I didn't see a single digital screen being peered at the whole time. There's a huge map of Austin on the wall that shows civilization beginning to peter out around Howard Lane. A framed poster honors the Man Will Never Fly Society, a group of Cisco's regulars who gathered here to socialize and swap wisdom. "Given a choice, we will never fly. Given no choice, we will never fly sober," the poster says.

"Only in America could this happen," Rudy Cisneros once told me. His son wants to make it stop happening for him so he can put his feet up.

John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com