Roland Laurenzo

Class of 1965. Oldest son of Ninfa Laurenzo and Domenic Thomas Laurenzo, Roland grew up in the family food business — Rio Grande Food Products, Laurenzo’s Family Catering Service, and eventually the restaurants that changed Houston’s culinary history. In 1973, he worked alongside his mother to open the original Ninfa’s taqueria at 2704 Navigation Boulevard, the ten-table dining room whose hand-rolled flour tortillas and sizzling Tacos al Carbon launched the modern Tex-Mex revolution.

After the family sold Ninfa’s in 1996 and faced a financial rebuild, Mama Ninfa told Roland and his eldest son Domenic (’89) that it was “their time.” In April 1998 the two of them opened the first El Tiempo Cantina at 3130 Richmond Avenue in Houston’s Greenway Plaza area — the name (“the time” in Spanish) a direct tribute to Mama Ninfa’s words. Where Ninfa’s had been a tiny neighborhood taqueria, Roland and Domenic elevated the traditional Tex-Mex menu to a more upscale level of food, beverage, service, and atmosphere, with hand-carved burro bar tables, fajitas flame-grilled on proprietary Mexican-made anafre hibachis, and a colonial Spanish ranch aesthetic that became El Tiempo’s signature. From that single Greenway Plaza location, Roland, his wife Blanca, and their sons Domenic, Dante, Rocco, and Joseph grew El Tiempo into a Houston institution with more than a dozen locations from downtown POST Houston to Daikin Park, NRG Stadium, IAH Airport, Katy, and the Galleria.

Today Roland serves as President of Laurenzo’s El Tiempo Cantina and oversees the family’s related concepts — Laurenzo’s Restaurant on Washington Avenue (a casual-dining bistro combining the Italian and Mexican sides of the family), El Tiempo Taqueria, and the Laurenzo’s Family Catering Service his parents started in 1949. He has served on the City of Houston Food Insecurity Board and remains actively involved with the Greater Houston Partnership, carrying the Laurenzo family Tex-Mex tradition into its fourth generation.