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RAYMONDVILLE — The boots are still here, the iconic backward boots which conjure a memory fine and powerful.

It is one of many memories conjured by the dining room of Boot Co. Bar and Grill where hard hats and old license plates and Shiner Bock cut outs craft an intriguing personality.

I’m glad I’ve come to Boot Co. Bar and Grill at 205 E. Hidalgo Ave. where I can get to know this intriguing personality with its nostalgic jukebox, its Don Quixote sculpture, its mounted deer heads and …

Some great food.

The menu lists a great many dishes which appeal to me. House Favorites include the buffalo chicken burger, the fried shrimp burger and the shrimp and catfish combo.

I could start off with some enticing appetizers; the fried mushrooms I find especially appealing, as do the cheese sticks and the fried pickles. The wings seem more like a full meal than an appetizer. The fried jalapenos scare me with flashbacks of accidental consumptions and panicked rushes to the water faucet.

I think I’ll forego the appetizers and go straight to one of the house favorites, the chicken fried steak. I always enjoy this meal. I have enjoyed it in many places, and I would like to see — and taste — its rendition at Boot Co.

While I wait for my meal, I absorb more fully the personality and the history of Boot Co. Bar and Grill. This restaurant with the rather unassuming façade has quite a story to tell, and the front of the menu tells it very well.

The name “Boot Co.” comes from the name of the original business here, “Rios Boot Company.” Abraham Rios opened that business in the mid-1920s to make and sell leather boots. Rios had a distinctive style of boot and developed a reputation for quality and craftsmanship.

So stellar and far reaching was that reputation that his client list over time included President Ronald Reagan, President Harry Truman, and Jordan’s King Hussein.

This boot making industry immediately grabbed my attention 25 years ago when I moved to the Valley. Rios of Mercedes was doing a brisk business in the mid-Valley, and I explored this craft in great depth. The Mercedes operation was one of many connected to the Abraham Rios family business.

Rios of Mercedes is still in business today but the Raymondville location where I’m waiting for my chicken fried steak closed after Abraham Rios died in 1978.

The boot business is gone, but the boots are still here. An old boot with stitching sits on the windowsill next to me. A wooden duck sits on another sill, the flags of all the military services hang from the ceiling, and a miniature wooden set depicts an old western town complete with a saloon and a sheriff’s office.

The dinner crowd arrives. Voices fill the room with pleasant and animated conversation while the jukebox plays country music. A man and his wife enter. He stops to speak to some friends at a table, and his sits at another table facing a wide-screen TV showing the NBC News.

The conversations in the room are charming in their innocence.

“We ain’t no spring chickens anymore,” someone says.

“You want grilled vegetables?” says a waitress.

“You did say you wanted grilled mushrooms, right?”

A group of retirees slowly rises and walks haltingly toward the door, and a large family of at least two generations quickly takes their table.

My chicken fried steak arrives at my table. It is a very good steak, a tasty steak, but it is not as tender as I would like.

But, the flavor of this chicken fried steak makes that extra effort more than worthwhile, and the mashed potatoes and the gravy and the green beans all satisfy my appetite.

I like Boot Co. Bar and Grill, for its fine food, the attentive service and the crowd of customers filling the dining room with warmth and good cheer.

It’s sort of scribble scrabble placement of license plates, the hard hats, the baseball glove all create a fun and liberating energy which I can appreciate very much.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

The post Raymondville’s Boot Co. Bar and Grill has great personality, fine food appeared first on MyRGV.com.