Maggie Rita's swears it never called a customer fat: Restaurant claims it's a fake Facebook page

Maggie Rita's Mexican Kitchen may have only one location left in the Bayou City, but that doesn't mean the Carlos Mencia-owned chain is going down without a fight . . . Or at least that's how it appears on Facebook.

Local Amanda Newman took to Facebook to say goodbye to Maggie Rita's recently-shuttered Shepherd location — making sure to bring up the infamous 2012 comments from co-owner Santiago Moreno in which he labeled his customers "old Taco Bell clients" and claimed that women only care about margaritas at Mexican restaurants.

Happy to see that your location on Shepherd closed! Insulting Houston before we tried your food was kinda 'dee-de-deee' of you! We hope they all close soon."

While perhaps not the kindest of words — right down to using Mencia's outrageously offensive "dee-de-deee" catchphrase — Newman certainly hasn't been the first to lash out at the restaurant chain.

Operators of the Maggie Rita's fan account spent five days carefully crafting this response:

I thought fat people were supposed to be jolly."

Clearly, the high road was not an option.

"After all of those comments about Houston and Houston women, I said I'd never set foot in one of those restaurants," Newman tells CultureMap. "When I saw the one on Shepherd has closed, I thought it was hilarious. It was like all that bad karma got them in the end."

Newman says she wasn't surprised by the comment, but wasn't terribly offended.

"I'm not going to get upset or hurt by an insult a third-grader would say. It just goes to show that these idiot haven't learned anything. All those bad reviews were right after all."

Facebook fake out?

When CultureMap spoke with Santiago Moreno on Thursday, the co-owner was taken aback at the news, explaining it was the first he's heard of the situation.

"I haven't been on our Facebook page for months," he says.

"I'm the only one who can use it, other than a few promoters we hired in the past. These are professional people though, so maybe we were hacked . . . Whatever happened, I sincerely apologize on behalf of the company."

Five minutes later, Moreno called back to report the account in question — which only has 154 likes — wasn't started or operated by him.

He says that the official Facebook pages are only "friend" accounts (not "like" accounts) and listed as Carlos Mencia's Maggie Rita's and Maggie Rita's Modern Mex, the latter of which was started when the first account maxed out at 5,000 friends. The second account is currently linked up to the restaurant's website.

As of Thursday afternoon, the "jolly" comment to Newman remains posted on the Facebook fan page.

This Maggie Rita's restaurant critic didn't exactly receive a civil response. Fat joke anyone?

unspecified

hail to the chef

Food & Wine's Best New Chef list includes Gulf Coast-obsessed Houstonian

Photo by Ally Hardgrave

undefined

A Houston chef is basking in the national spotlight. Food & Wine magazine has named Josephine’s Gulf Coast Tradition executive chef Lucas McKinney to its 2026 class of Best New Chefs.

Announced Tuesday, September 15, McKinney is one of 14 chefs nationally — and the only Texan — to receive the prestigious award. He joins a roster of local Best New Chef alumni that includes Michael Cordua (Churrascos, Americas), Bryan Caswell (Reef, Latuli), Chris Shepherd (Underbelly, Georgia James), Justin Yu (Oxheart, Theodore Rex), and Emmanuel Chavez (Tatemó), whose win in 2023 made him the first Houston chef to be named a Best New Chef since Yu in 2014.

Open since 2023, Josephine’s is a Gulf Coast-inspired seafood restaurant in Midtown. Named for McKinney’s great-grandmother Althea Josephine, its menu is inspired in part McKinney’s family history in the seafood business. It sources ingredients from across the Gulf Coast, including blue crab, redfish, oysters, and local produce.

Both Josephine’s and McKinney have already earned significant awards, including both Rising Star Chef of the Year and Neighborhood Restaurant of the Year in the CultureMap Tastemaker Awards, a Rising Star award from Star Chefs magazine, and a Recommended designation in the Michelin Guide.

“I don't know how to put it into words,” McKinney said in a statement. “Josephine's would be nothing without our team, the farmers and fishermen we’ve built relationships with, and our guests who support us. To be able to do something this big with Gulf Coast cooking – the fish we grew up eating, the crabs we grew up cooking, the oysters we shucked at home – means the world.”

McKinney has come a long way from his time as a line cook at Georgia James and a chef de cuisine at Hay Merchant. He credits Shepherd for pushing him to think about the future and what kind of chef he wanted to be.

"I didn’t know how big a moment that would be," McKinney tells CultureMap about his time at Hay Merchant. "The trust they put in me to have fun and cook. I look back, Chris would say, 'what do you want to cook?' I’d say a 'divey oyster bar.' Seven years later, we’re here in New York on the biggest stage with the best people. I’ll come back home on Thursday to shuck oysters."

In an essay on the Food & Wine website, Shepherd praises McKinney — who worked for him at Georgia James, Hay Merchant, and Georgia James Tavern — for the way the chef has embraced his Gulf Coast roots at Josephine’s. Shepherd praises many of the restaurant’s signature dishes, such as smoked red fish dip, gumbo, and Viet-Cajun crawfish, which sell “a few thousand pounds a week in peak season.” Shepherd notes that McKinney’s talents extend beyond his cooking.

“Chefs, staff, and diners are drawn to McKinney, not just because of how delicious his food is but because he is generous with what he knows,” Shepherd writes. “Spend enough time at Josephine’s, and you may find him pulling up a chair to explain the best way to eat a hard shell blue crab; I’ve seen him do it. In that moment, he’s passing along a Gulf Coast tradition that has been in his family for generations.”

Speaking to CultureMap from New York, Shepherd says McKinney came onto Food & Wine's radar after participating in last year's Southern Smoke Festival. Many of his fellow BNC alumni dined at Josephine's either before or after the festival.

"For me, every time you see someone who worked for you succeed, it’s a beautiful moment. All I want for them is to follow their dreams. It’s pretty amazing," Shepherd says.

Six of this year's BNC recipients, including McKinney, will participate in this year's Southern Smoke Festival, which is taking place at Discovery Green on Saturday, October 3. Southern Smoke shared which chefs are coming and what they're cooking in an email. Tickets for the festival are available here.

Food & Wine has named Best New Chefs since 1988. To be eligible, chefs must have led a kitchen for five years or less. The magazine’s editors travel across the country to scout applicants. Finalists undergo background checks, including anonymous surveys by the restaurant’s staff to evaluate the culture at their businesses. Previous recipients include culinary superstars such as Thomas Keller, David Chang, Tom Colicchio, and more.

chefs awards media