In recent months, we’ve had to consider whether perhaps, painful though it might be, Texas French Bread had simply run its course. We held conversations with all manner of wise advisors and their collective advice was fairly consistent. The writing was on the wall. The GoFundMe money so generously donated by our community was pretty well exhausted. The time had come to stop the financial bleeding, lay off our remaining staff and put the commercial real estate that had been TFB’s home for the better part of four decades on the market.

With any luck, a sale of the TFB property would pay off the mortgage, meet our tax obligations, and offer Carissa and I the possibility of walking away whole. Perhaps we’d get lucky. Maybe there was a buyer out there with ample resources who might want to resurrect TFB and buy the property at a price point that would be attractive.

As April rolled around, we began dutifully making moves in accordance with the advice we received. We shifted the remaining staff to unemployment status and did our best to think of the business as closed (or...

Dear friends,

It’s been a bit since I reached out to you with news from your friendly neighborhood TFB. This is partly because we’ve been ridiculously busy this summer and we’ve kept one foot on the brakes in an effort to assure that everyone who comes to Texas French Bread will (hopefully) receive the kind of quality experience that we strive to provide.

But I’ve also been hesitant to do much outreach recently because things have just been so darn weird and disrupted. We spent much of 2020 open only for walk-up/takeout business at our front doors on the corner of 29th St. When we began serving folks on a sit down basis again, it was in the great outdoors in our garden. Then by June the vaccine tipping point arrived and we scrambled to reopened the doors of our dining room and invite folks back inside. It seems that just about the time we get into a groove, we find that we need to reinvent our approach.

Well - a couple of more changes are in the works. First, we’ve staffed up and beginning next week on Labor Day, we’ll be...

Dear Friends,

It has been such a pleasure to serve all of you over the past couple of weeks in our newly reopened dining room. Not only is indoor service a dramatically easier proposition than serving in the garden, but it’s given us all a huge lift powered by the idea that the pandemic conditions of the past year and a half may really be behind us soon.

All that said, beginning today, we will be closed for a few additional days for remodeling work necessary to keep our old building in good running condition. This round of work is mostly directed at refinishing the floors in the dining room - a task we were unable to complete earlier in June because rainy weather left the ancient concrete in our dining room so damp that sealant could not dry. Now we’ve got sunshine in the forecast and our contractor is available. So we’re going to jump on this window and get the job done.

We plan to reopen next week on Thursday July 1st.

As always, we appreciate your support and look forward to serving you again in a few short days.

see you...

Dear Friends,

After that deep freeze a few weeks ago, we’ve finally started to have some consistently warmer weather, and I know a lot of you have been getting back out into the great outdoors, getting your hands in the dirt, and planting spring gardens.

We want to support your gardening and love for fresh food, so tomorrow morning we are hosting a pop-up plant sale with La Huerta Nursery, a local plant nursery that specializes in native plants and wildlife habitat. Sierra Norman, with La Huerta Nursery is a master naturalist, garden designer and plant enthusiast. She will have TONS of veggies, herbs, wildflowers and native pollinator plants ready for spring gardening.

We hope you’ll come out and buy some plants from Sierra. And if you’d like to enjoy brunch in our garden while you are here, we recommend reserving a table, we've been filling up quickly these days....

Dear Friends,

Carissa and I are just back from a lazy few days at the farm. Mostly we sat out on the long stone patio above the swimming hole at Rocky Creek, the two littles, Gus and Lula lounging near our feet - the borzoi sleeping off the day somewhere cooler. She was still smarting from her encounter with the skunk (don't ask - it was as bad as it sounds).

The days were warm, but surprisingly pleasant for August in Texas. Out there away from the concrete and the traffic, we were tucked under the shade of large oak trees. The sun dappled and danced between branches, shimmering on the swimming hole below us. It was blessedly quiet and every so often a breath of air from down the creek pushed up the breezeway where we sat, ceiling fans turning lazy circles above us. In the evenings we took walks with the dogs and cooked leisurely dinners while meaningless August baseball games droned in the background.

Laurence, Mom, and Ms B beat it out of town a few weeks ago - set their compass for Maine leaving the farm empty. That being the case we elected to...