TexaFrance • Round Rock

TexaFrance • Round Rock

Written by Katie Gutierrez Thursday, 01 May 2008

A food lover his entire life, French-Canadian Jean Pierre Parant left Quebec at age 21, following his culinary dreams to the United States. Starting humbly but with ambition, Parant accepted his first culinary job as a maître d’ at a Florida restaurant. He then worked as food and beverage manager at a string of major hotels across the country, including the Four Seasons.

Meanwhile, Texas-born David Griswold was pursuing a similar path by graduating from the Hilton Hotel and Restaurant Management College at the University of Houston. Upon his graduation, Griswold moved to the West Coast to launch a catering business.

In 1981, more than a dozen years after Parant moved to the United States, he relocated to Austin to work as a troubleshooter for the Ramada Inn. “I didn’t even know what Austin was back then,” Parant said. “It was still a small town.”

Shortly thereafter, Griswold returned to Austin. His catering business was thriving in California, and he had plans to build another one locally. That was when Parant and Griswold’s paths crossed.

“I was working at the [InterContinental] Stephen F. Austin Hotel and was selling David’s business partner some pâtés,” Parant said. “Eventually David and I met and found that our interests really aligned.”

Early in 1985, Parant had a revelation. “One day I was walking down the aisle [at a grocery store] and saw a pasta sauce for $5.89,” Parant said. “I thought, ‘I could do that and sell it for a dollar and make money all day long!’ It was a little harder than that, but that’s what we did.”

TexaFrance was born that year, with a product line that began with pasta sauces and expanded to salad dressings, dips, jellies and chutneys. Today, the company’s busy production kitchen is located in Round Rock and employs a team of eight. There are more than 50 different products under the TexaFrance label, none of which have any chemical preservatives. The culinary duo also does contract packaging. “We’ve been fortunate that people came to us asking for us to create their sauces,” Parant said. “The first was a large Oregon company that approached us and said, ‘We’ve done two blind tastings of basil pesto, and yours came in at the top both times. We wonder if you would do our pesto.’ I said, ‘You got that right!’” That was almost 15 years ago, and Parant and Griswold’s client roster now tops 50.

These days, TexaFrance fans can purchase the company’s imaginative line of sauces at natural food stores like Whole Foods as well as H-E-B. “The products we have out there are so versatile,” Parant said. “They’re all you need for a fast, easy and delicious meal.”

Pesto suggestions

According to Parant, the key to transforming an old favorite — or even a blah dish — is the sauce.

Garlic pesto “It’s a terrific product. Of course, pesto was originally used for pasta, which is fine, but there are so many other uses. Try it on scrambled eggs hollandaise or even on potatoes.”

Sun-dried tomato pesto “I like to rub it on a ruby trout and then grill it. The trout will take that flavor, and it’s different and delicious.”

Roasted poblano pepper pesto “It has big chunks of poblano and tomato. I make a smoked turkey soup and put the pesto in it. It’s simple and terrific.”

Wild mushroom pesto “I make a veal dish and use a little bit of cream. Then I add the wild mushroom pesto and have a wild mushroom cream sauce.”