Our Story
Fifteen years. One conviction. A lot of tacos.
Food, to me, is a way of saying to people that they matter. You can hand someone a meal that came out of a box, or you can hand them something you thought about, worked over, and plated with care. They know the difference before the first bite. Everything Red Skillet does comes out of that conviction.
— Asi Adams, founder
Wednesday nights
About fifteen years ago I got serious in the kitchen. It started small: street tacos and root beer floats, sold on Wednesday nights to whoever showed up hungry. People kept coming back, and they brought friends. Those nights taught me what a crowd wants and how fast a line forms when the food is right. They also taught me how much I love feeding one.
The banquets
The tacos grew into something bigger: themed, multi-course banquets served family-style. We cooked our way around the world, through Ecuador, India, Italy, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean. We came home for a Texas harvest and a long run of Christmas dinners. I designed the menus and ran the kitchen as executive chef. Aunt Grace organized the crews behind them.
Every banquet paid for the gospel going somewhere. Those dinners funded outreach through Spring of Hope Ministries and Heritage Ministries United. They supported orphanages in South Africa, church plants in Africa, Israel, South America, and Central America, ministry to addicts, and Teen Challenge of Texas.
Every one of them trained a new crop of cooks and servers who had never worked a dinner for a hundred people. That training shows. Our crew has served more than 1,200 guests in under thirty minutes, more than once.
The café years
From late 2019 through the hard years of COVID, Grace and I worked behind the scenes at Café Homestead, the café our community calls its front porch. We rebuilt the menu, sharpened the brand, and brought back the farm table dinners. More than four dozen of the café’s best-known dishes came out of my kitchen: the quesadilla burger, the chicken fried steak, the chicken pot pie, the meatloaf, the Salisbury steak, the Cuban burger, and the jerk chicken tacos. By 2022 I had stepped back and handed the café to the excellent business team that runs it today. The recipes are Red Skillet originals, and many of them are headed for the cookbook.
The taco booth, and the kids who run it
Today the whole family is in it. Our pop-up taco booth serves birria and asada wherever a crowd gathers: Saturdays at the Homestead Market, the Homesteading Conference, and the Homestead Fair every Thanksgiving weekend.
The kids learned the business the honest way. They catered their own way to a mission trip, cooking Salisbury steak dinners, tikka masala, kafta nights, and a taco bowl dinner for 115 seniors. Along the way they learned the hard lesson every cook learns: overbuy your ingredients, and you’ll eat your own profit before you ever see it.
The cookbook, and what comes next
Cooking With Dad gathers fifteen years of recipes into one book: the sauces, the breads, the banquet dishes, and the weeknight suppers we still cook for our own table five nights out of seven. It arrives this Christmas. After that? Maybe a restaurant. For now, find us on Saturday, or let us cook for your next event.
Meet the Kitchen
Everyone helps everywhere, but each of us runs point on something.
Asi Adams
Founder & Executive Chef
The recipes, the techniques, and most of the ideas start with me. I designed the banquets, wrote the menus, and set the standard every plate is held to. These days I lead from behind, setting the vision while the family carries more of the line.
Aviva
Chef in Training · Quality
Aviva is my protégé, and she runs point on quality. She’s a perfectionist about it. If a taco, a sauce, or a plate isn’t done the way Dad would do it, it doesn’t go out.
Rebecca
Director of Operations
Rebecca runs point on the clock. Prep is done on time, the kitchen gets cleaned, and the schedule holds. When you walk up to our booth, the experience you have is hers.
Aunt Grace
Senior Advisor
Grace Owen isn’t family by blood, but the kids have called her Aunt Grace for as long as they can remember. She has cooked beside me longer than anyone and organized the crews behind the banquets. She knows the recipes, the process, and the precision, and she makes sure we honor all three.
Connie & Tina
Prep, Expediting & Front of House
They’re essential in the kitchen and at the booth. They prep, call the tickets, and hand food across the counter with a word for everyone in line.
Sean
Customer Service & Logistics
Sean is our most natural communicator, the one who makes a first-time customer feel like a regular. He’s also hauling steamer trays between the coolers and the booth and keeping the place clean.
Aaron & Ella
Youngest Helpers
They’re too young to run a station yet, but they’re in the kitchen every chance they get. Every cook in this family started right there.