When I traveled to Nairobi after breaking up with my fiancée, the brisket I found there inspired me to come back home to East Texas.
My roll recipe has been passed down to the women of my dad’s family for generations. Now that I have kids, I have a different view of the tradition.
Or, really, any tattoos relating to the Mexican culinary experience. Now that I’ve gotten inked eleven times in nine months, I’m wondering why this form of self-expression is calling to me.
Much of the joy of a great used bookstore is in discovering the messages scribbled in a paperback’s margins.
When I wrote my YA novel, I hoped to inspire teens to figure out their beliefs around complicated political questions. But amid a wave of book bans, my book could get prohibited from school shelves.
It sounds extreme, but so is our weather.
Growing up in Georgia, I wanted nothing more than to be a Texan. When I finally moved here, I learned what that really meant.
When I first arrived in Texas, I didn’t get the fawning over Whataburger. I tried to understand by eating 21 straight meals there.
Gardening brings us together, even as culture wars divide us over almost everything else.
One writer—who was served by Velma and ate from a salad bar in a Roadster—finds the eatery, with locations in San Antonio and Addison, equally unnerving and enticing.
It’s small-town Texas’s go-to convenience store snack. Texas Monthly’s taco editor finally gives it a go.
I like to think I am Texas Tough when it comes to the heat. But lately, my fortitude has been tested.
Can medical science truly explain the mystical, mysterious experience triggered by a simple malfunction in my inner ear?
A longtime Houston outdoor-sports writer looks back on sixty years of surfing the Gulf Coast.
After learning that their long-awaited baby wouldn’t survive childbirth, two parents suffered the pain of finding maternal health care out of state.
As I untangled Chris’s affairs, I discovered a trove of books, letters, and unarticulated love.
San Antonio’s most-coveted spring party accessory is also a force for good.
A nightmarish scene in Larry McMurtry’s epic novel triggered my unshakable—and completely illogical—fear of snakes.
The 19-mile Houston road isn't the kind of place tourists appreciate. But it's everything I love about my city.
I didn’t think I’d get to be a mom. Now that I am, the passage of time confounds me.
After decades of visiting the fest, I set out to create an “age-appropriate” schedule packed with talks on menopause and death.
As a Texpat living in New York during the pandemic, indulging in a delivery of family-style brisket and spicy beans kept me close to home.
Long before it became a meme stock, the Grapevine-based video game retailer lodged itself in the hearts of a generation entranced by the storytelling it found inside those plastic boxes.
Mmmmm, tastes like red.
In the Tex-Mex wars of my mind, the victor was never in doubt.
Sometimes food is less about the taste (or the ingredients . . . or the presentation) and more about being home.
Sure, the restaurant chain was founded in Dallas and is currently headquartered there—but the concept also embraces the Dallas identity.
I long thought they were at odds, but after a summer in Texas and a deep dive into its history, I discovered that they have been married for decades.
I left homogenized Austin for the Texas Gulf Coast—and felt right at home amid the Speedo-wearing bikers and chicken feet–fed alligators.
Follow these tips and tricks to becoming beloved at your local watering hole from the guy who literally wrote the book.
Attica Locke looks back on her 2012 essay weighing her Houston pride against the fact that “there are things about the state that just don’t work for me.”
An escape in 1950 inspired my novel. The wildly different public reactions show how much our relationship to animals has changed.
As a child, I experienced the boundary between Texas and Mexico as its own distinct place. Now I know why.
The day commemorating the emancipation of slaves in Texas says as much about our future as our past.
Fifty years ago, Texas Monthly was little more than an idea dreamt up by a local lawyer with minimal experience in journalism. Then it was an actual thing. How did that happen?
For more than fifty years, the state I call home has repeatedly surprised me. The Texas of 2023? Well, it’s got me thinking a lot about how far we have, and haven’t, come.
Along with its descendant, the towering wind turbine, this spindly mechanism turns fast and slow, measuring out our days.
After raising three kids on a budget, novelist Amanda Eyre Ward indulges her teen fantasy of being the parent who says, “Order whatever you want.”
Edward Abbey’s acolytes and their ilk lament the overcrowding of natural spaces. But the land was never theirs to begin with.
A fan from day one muses on sixty years of joy and heartbreak—and whether winning brings redemption.
The convenience of the store’s grocery-pickup service comes at a small financial cost. The personal price is up to you.
In Andrews, this mostly serve-yourself Tex-Mex restaurant was a community staple that’s still remembered fondly after its closing.
Living in a taco-obsessed world and reporting on border issues makes senior editor Jack Herrera’s relationship with the dish complex—and a little frustrating.
A wedding, a broken taillight, and a missed exit: a family outing from Brownsville heads north and then goes south.
Cecilia Ballí recalls reporting on her family’s legal victory over the lawyer who swindled the Ballís out of lucrative land rights on Padre Island.
Despite my frustrations with our state’s politics, I love our flag and think it belongs to Texans of all persuasions. Trouble is, I can’t seem to find a pair that fits.
Swimming before sunrise became a necessary ritual for novelist Elizabeth McCracken during an uncertain time. And then came the strangers.
My family’s shack on an island in the world’s largest hypersaline lagoon has brought us closer to the fishing—and to one another.
I’ve lived in Uvalde for thirteen years. Our community is more complex and nuanced than media portrayals suggest.
I used to feel ashamed that I didn't speak Spanish. Now I understand why my parents didn't teach me.
