Chef and restaurateur Matt Martinez Jr. long has worked venison and wild boar into his tamales. What's inside a real tamale is a matter up for grabs these days. Whole Foods Market in Arlington and the Dream Cafe in Dallas also carry her tamales. Macy's in the Galleria may seem an unlikely place to pick up tamales, but chef Martinez hopes to change the perception. Recently, he opened Matt's at Macy's, a Tex-Mex food station on the third floor near kitchenware.
Customers can dine in or get it to go, and tamales are a takeout specialty.
In Mexican households, tamales are tied to the holidays because traditionally they were made in wintertime, when hogs were slaughtered and the heads were used for the filling, says chef Martinez, demonstrating his hand-crank Tamale King machine. The machine creates a perfect tubular shape of meat rolled inside masa, a filling which is then placed on the oja . With a machine, you get a perfectly measured amount of filling. Their daughter, Anne Connally, operates Canyon Specialty Foods out of the former Dobbs House kitchen near Love Field, where she bottles soups, salsas and sauces for restaurants. We don't really do this for the money.