With $30 in her pocked and family recipe for refried beans, Dolores Wright started her own restaurant on or before 1956. Born in Scottsbluff in 1931 to parents of Mexican and German descent. She would make her way to Omaha in the 1940’s and find work in the meat packing plants before opening her restaurant. Within a couple of years, running a restaurant while raising five kids proved to be too much.
In 1960 her parents Howard and Eva Castaneda, along with her brother relocated from Scottsbluff where they worked in the beet fields to take over the restaurant. Howard, for who the restaurant is named, was born in north Mexico in 1909. Dolores got her start in the Omaha restaurant scene working at El Charro Cafe which operated out of the basement of a house along south 24th St. Her restaurant, Howard’s Charro, also started in the basement of a house nearby. People oftentimes confused the two restaurants and a rivalry must have developed prompting El Charro to publish an ad stating it was “still the first and original CHARRO dining house.”
The Castaneda family moved the restaurant to 27th Street before moving again into a former church at 5219 S 24th St in 1965. The restaurant remained popular prompting diners to wait in line to get one of their 16 tables. With her children now young adults by 1979, her parents retired allowing Dolores and her husband to take over. After Marchio’s Italian restaurant on 4443 S 13th St closed in 1990, the restaurant moved into this much larger space. With a dining room and banquet room that allowed up to 270 people, its kitchen was as big as the old restaurant.
Over the years Howard’s would become a community center of sorts. Dolores opened the doors to her restaurant anytime a group needed a place to meet or hold a fundraiser. Her contributions were recognized in 2001 when she was named Hispanic Woman of the Year. After Dolores passed away in 2008, the restaurant continued to operate as a family owned business until 2017. At that point, her daughter, not wanting to close the restaurant, sold it to the owners of Sam’s Leon Mexican Foods.
From its humble beginnings in the basement of a house on 24th St, not even Dolores believed how big her restaurant had gotten after she moved it to 13th St in 1990. The restaurant not only outlasted its charro competitor, El Charro, which opened in 1947 but closed in 1977, it continues to serve customers 65 years later.
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