Aside from chips and salsa, many Mexican restaurants in North Texas offer a colorful dish of nostalgia and identity — murals depicting cathedrals, rivers, and mountains resembling hometowns throughout Mexico and famous iconic figures.

These floor-to-ceiling murals cater to a clientele that enjoys regional food dishes and arresting oversized images of movie stars, entertainers, and places from which many North Texas residents came.

Common are paintings of aqueducts, cathedrals from Morelia, Zacatecas, or El Cerro de la Silla, the saddle-shaped mountain towering over Monterrey, and famous singers like Vicente Fernández or Selena.

“Sometimes parents take their children to restaurants and say, ‘Look, it is like the place I used to live,’ or ‘That’s how my hometown looked like.’ Not everyone has an opportunity to travel to Mexico,” said Viola Delgado, a Dallas artist whose murals and sculptures are at galleries, public spaces, and even DART light rail stations.

With about 84% of the 2.4 million Hispanics in the area tracing their roots to Mexico, these murals are a graphic representation of North Texas’s evolving demographics.

“The murals in restaurants are a good reminder of our history — where we came from and how the places where our families lived in Mexico looked or look like,” said Delgado, 70.

At Morelia restaurant, along Jefferson Blvd. in North Oak Cliff, customers lured by its seafood menu are welcomed by a representation of Morelia’s Catedral, considered one of Mexico’s most beautiful colonial buildings.

Owner Santos Lozano, 54, commissioned the mural when he first opened the restaurant 25 years ago to honor his birthplace.

“My vision has always been to show the beauty of my city and state. I like to hear people say, ‘Oh, look. There’s the cathedral. It looks just the same (as in Morelia)’. And they take pictures when they come to eat,” Lozano said.

Four years ago, when he opened another restaurant along Buckner Blvd. in Pleasant Grove, he devoted a complete wall in the patio section to represent the cathedral with its bell towers and the city plaza. Dallas artist Uri Woody painted the mural.

“Murals are a cultural expression with roots in Mexico from great muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera,” said Mexican General Consul Francisco de la Torre.

When customers walk into Birriería Los Chivos de Oro in Fort Worth, they’re justified if, for a second, they imagine themselves walking through Nochistlán’s main square with its water fountain, an iron-cast gazebo, a bandstand, and the Mexican flag in the center. Nochistlán is a small town in the central state of Zacatecas.

The imagery occupying two walls inside the restaurant is a visual feast.

“It’s all about connecting with the culture, with who we are, and everything beautiful about being Mexican,” said owner Ricardo Luis, originally from Zacatecas. Fort Worth artist Elio Martínez, from Oaxaca, Mexico, authored the painting.

Postcards from Mexico in Oak Cliff

Murals are not new in Dallas. There are murals sprinkled throughout the city depicting neighborhood scenes and cultural icons.

“In restaurants, beyond being a beautiful landscape, (murals) are a message saying, ‘We are from there, but our place is here,’” said Rubén Arellano, history professor at Dallas College.

Oak Cliff restaurant Las Ranitas features a mural evocative of the iconic work “Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central” (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Central Alameda,) by famed painter Diego Rivera.

This mural, created 16 years ago by artist Juan Manuel Campos, includes recurrent Rivera paintings’ elements like a catrina, balloon vendors, former Mexican presidents, Porfirio Díaz and Benito Juárez, as well as children, peasants, and families walking through a town’s square.

In the mural, the artist replaced each character with toad faces, a play with the restaurant’s name, little frogs.

“We wanted the mural to convey a taste of our culture so that when people come, they can admire the Mexican art and, of course, always include a bit of humor and customize it with toads and frogs,” said owner Raúl Estrada, originally from Jalisco.

In the same restaurant, at 325 E Jefferson Blvd., there is another postcard of Mexico by the same artist, “La Feria Mexicana” (The Mexican Fair).

The painting takes over a wall, creating a background for diners to feel as if they were in a traditional Mexican festive celebration, including street food vendors, a bandstand, mariachi and families strolling.

Less than half a mile along the same street, Del Sur Tacos’ walls offer postcard images of iconic luchadores from Mexican Lucha Libre (wrestling) and an image of Emiliano Zapata, one the leaders of the 1910s Mexican Revolution.

Upon entering the restaurant, customers are greeted by an oversized representation of El Santo, perhaps Mexico’s most famous luchador, with his characteristic silvery mask and the adage: “En la vida, como en la lucha, ¡más vale maña que fuerza!” (In life, as in wrestling, cunning works better than force!).

Owners Ismael and Olmy Sánchez commissioned the mural in 2019 the same year the restaurant opened to artist Jean Paul Labastida.

At Fort Worth’s Paco’s Mexican Cuisine, customers enjoy more than tacos de Chapulín (grasshopper tacos,) fajita and enchilada plates. Artist Juan Velázquez, 34, painted images of Mexican figures that represent the culture of México, his birthplace

Nested on a wall next to the kitchen there are spray oil images of Pedro Infante and Cantinflas.

“Everything I paint is Mexican, either a Frida Kahlo or a school bus — because I’m Mexican and my art is Mexican,” said Velázquez.

Another wall with orange background is embellished with red, yellow, and pink flowers with details surrounding the face of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo at the center. her eyes gazing towards the dinning room tables.

Mexican Consul De La Torre said murals are an art manifestation that crosses borders. “It’s one of the best ways of expressing the Mexican culture.”