Comfort Food Favorites

For most of us, the words “comfort food” conjure a specific dish. Maybe it’s a savory childhood staple like mac and cheese, as perfect for bingeing over a breakup as it is occupying pride of place at the Thanksgiving table. Perhaps yours has its roots in heritage: Grandma’s Bolognese sauce, straight from northern Italy, or a family recipe for maja blanca, a popular Filipino dessert pudding of coconut milk, corn kernels and toasted coconut flakes. If comfort foods share a theme, it’s that these dishes fill the heart as well as the belly — as these Horned Frog foodies readily attest.

WHO: June Naylor Harris ’79

KNOWN FOR: Award-winning journalist and cookbook author

COMFORT FOOD: Beef Bourguignon

Food, travel and Fort Worth are among the big loves of June Naylor Harris, as, of course, is her husband. Former TCU football MVP and NFL veteran Marshall Harris ’79 is a well-known studio artist venerated for creating the Flying T logo.

June Naylor Harris ’79 prepares beef bourguignon. The longtime journalist and author began cooking at a young age, inspired by her parents.

For her part, Harris started tinkering in the kitchen at a young age, inspired by her parents, whom she describes as motivated culinary explorers. In adulthood, she first encountered beef bourguignon via Julia Child; it proved a winning way to make good use of her Dutch oven. The classic French stew has become the go-to dish when she and Marshall celebrate something just for the two of them.

“There’s nothing fancy about chicken and dumplings or pot roast, but if it’s your favorite thing to eat, you want it for your birthday, right?” she said.

On New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day at her home in the city’s cultural district, a few miles north of the university, the sixth-generation Texan and Fort Worth Star-Telegram alumna might prepare beef bourguignon, often with an assist from Marshall.

It’s “easier to make than you’d expect, though you do have to be patient,” she said, promising that flambéing the veggies is a thrilling payoff. “There are few pots of goodness more satisfying in winter, especially if enjoyed with a nice bottle of red Burgundy alongside.”

During her three decades at the Star-Telegram, two of them as a food columnist and critic, Harris took cooking classes whenever she could, even in locales as far-flung as Thailand and Ireland. “Cooking for me is so therapeutic and so satisfying,” she said. Her cookbooks include The Texas Cowboy Kitchen (Andrews McMeel), co-authored with Grady Spears; Big Ranch, Big City (Ten Speed Press), co-authored with Lou Lambert; and The Texas Tailgate Cookbook (Great Texas Line Press), which she wrote with her husband mere months before the pandemic.

French stew, she said, tends to be especially versatile, and over the years she’s experimented and modified the recipe. Her preferred way to enjoy her favorite comfort food, she said, “is ladled over toasted planks of fresh French baguette, while Marshall’s is with egg noodles — but it’s every bit as good with mashed buttery potatoes or roasted new potatoes, too.”

The couple might serve beef bourguignon with petite green peas or a butter lettuce salad, lightly dressed in classic French vinaigrette.

When not at home preparing delightful meals or traveling the world, Harris has been at work for several years on a biography of Ruth Carter Stevenson, who shepherded the creation of the Amon Carter Museum to house her father’s collection of Western art. Harris’ beloved grandfather, a Star-Telegram editor, worked in the office adjacent to publisher Amon Carter’s — one of several family connections to the newspaper.

“My dad’s sister worked at the museum as a librarian when it opened in 1961,” Harris said, “so it felt like coming home.”

WHO: David Hawthorne ’07 (MLA ’08)

KNOWN FOR: NFL linebacker, food trucks and catering

COMFORT FOOD: Pulled Pork Sandwiches

When most Horned Frogs think of David Hawthorne, they picture him blitzing or tackling for TCU, the Seattle Seahawks or the New Orleans Saints (he played four seasons for each of his teams). A more current image of Hawthorne is that of a hospitality guru who has fed his award-winning barbecue to the likes of Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb and Taylor Swift.

David Hawthorne presents a pulled pork sandwich beside a smoker he designed. The former NFL linebacker co-founded the North Texas barbecue catering company Not Just Q.

Barbecue is rooted in nostalgia for Hawthorne. His father was a pitmaster known as Mr. BBQ in their hometown of Corsicana, Texas. At TCU, Hawthorne blew away his roommates, teammates and future bride, Katy Buchanan ’07, with his culinary prowess, proving himself a bona fide MVP in the kitchen and at the grill. He has mastered all meats, but when it comes to comfort food, his favorite might just be a pulled pork sandwich, a recipe he tinkered with and perfected.

“I cooked even more when I was in the NFL,” Hawthorne said. “It was fun to be able to create those big holiday meals and magic for my teammates.”

He credits his wife, and her roots in Myanmar, with deepening his appreciation for Southeast Asian flavors and food, something that living in the Pacific Northwest reinforced. The Seahawk nutritionist’s emphasis on clean eating — and the NFL’s $500-per-pound daily fine for being overweight — reinforced discipline around food and performance, he added.

Upon becoming a Saint, Hawthorne sought to learn everything about Cajun and Creole flavors from chefs and friends in the Big Easy. “Gumbo, etouffee, catfish,” he said. “We had access to great food and cuisine.”

He’d long expected food to become his next chapter when he retired from the game in 2017. He partnered with chef Eric Hansen to co-found Not Just Q, a catering company in Dallas-Fort Worth that specializes in barbecue — everything from succulent ribs and melt-in-your-mouth brisket to sausage and that peerless pulled pork.

“While rooted in traditional barbecue, we pride ourselves on pushing the envelope to create a truly unique dining experience,” he said. His food trucks make coveted stops at certain TCU and Cowboys games.

“If you’re in this area, you better know how to cook a brisket, but I’m a pork person,” Hawthorne said. His beloved pulled pork sandwich starts with a toasted brioche bun. The meat comes mixed with a savory Texas red barbecue sauce. He tops that with a Latin-style coleslaw with a vinegar base rather than a mayo base, which truly makes the pork pop. Then there’s the Carolina Gold mustard-based barbecue sauce on top, plus a few pickle slices.

“This is a sandwich with a lot of character,” said Hawthorne, who has a stake in several restaurant groups. He also cofounded a technology company called Greta that helps meat markets, grocery stores, liquor stores and specialty stores streamline inventory and operations.

“Our pulled pork sandwich is definitely something you don’t expect to get from a food truck,” he said. “But once I get people to try it, they’re hooked.”

WHO: Lanny Lancarte II ’11

KNOWN FOR: Owner, Righteous Foods, and great-grandson of Joe T. Garcia’s founder

COMFORT FOOD: Enchilada Dinner at Joe. T. Garcia’s

“I think all comfort foods are driven by warm childhood memories — a combination of experiences as well as the food itself,” said Lanny Lancarte II, who literally grew up at Fort Worth’s most iconic restaurant: the legendary Joe T. Garcia’s.

Lanny Lancarte II ’11 enjoys an enchilada plate in his father’s office at Joe T. Garcia’s, the iconic Fort Worth restaurant founded by his family. The fourth-generation restaurateur now owns the health-focused Righteous Foods.

At Joe T.’s, which has a small menu for such an outsized operation, Lancarte had a standard order: the cheese enchiladas. They remain his comfort food to this day.

That whole category of cooking harkens to family for Lancarte. “My great-grandmother was still alive when I started working [at Joe T. Garcia’s] in the early ’80s,” he said. “She had the mentality that if you’re old enough to walk, you’re old enough to work, so I was probably 6 or 7 when I started working there, doing things like washing dishes.” By the time he was in high school, he was managing substantial sections of the restaurant.

“I couldn’t go to Friday night football games because I had to work. … That was just in our family’s DNA,” he said. “Everything was about hospitality and being in the restaurant business.”

While at TCU in the mid-’90s, he did a semester abroad at the university’s one-time sister school, Universidad de las Americas Puebla. “I really started getting interested in the food side of things in the restaurant business, and my time in Mexico accelerated that,” he said. Lancarte decided to leave TCU a few credits short of graduating to pursue a program at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. (He came back to campus in 2011 to finish his coursework.)

In 2005, Lancarte returned home from the East Coast to open Lanny’s Alta Cocina Mexicana on West Seventh Street in Fort Worth. Despite its success, he opted to reconceptualize the restaurant in 2014 into a more mindful dining experience. The fare at Righteous Foods emphasizes healthful ingredients including organic eggs, halal cart chicken (marinated chicken, rice and two types of sauce) and grass-fed bison.

He admits the enchilada plate at Joe T. Garcia’s is a bit of a cheat meal, but it was a dish that his great-grandmother created, and “there’s kind of a warmth and nostalgia I associate with it. When I’m there, it reminds me of my childhood and comfort. It’s how I ate as a kid.

“All these years later, nothing has changed about the enchiladas,” Lancarte said. “When I sit down to eat it, it’s the feelings and the memories that make it so comforting to me.”

WHO: Katie-Rose Watson ’11

KNOWN FOR: Disney Dinners

COMFORT FOOD: Roast Chicken

Publicist Katie-Rose Watson found fame as an online content creator thanks to the Disney Dinners, a popular feature on her blog, The Rose Table (therosetable.com). For a Princess and the Frog party, her hundreds of thousands of followers oohed and aahed over her recipe for chicken and sausage gumbo, with many painstakingly re-creating her efforts in their own kitchens.

Katie-Rose Watson presents a roast chicken at her home in Rockwall, Texas. The food blogger behind The Rose Table is known for her Disney Dinners series and published a cookbook of the same name.

Watson credits her mother, an accomplished cook, for sparking her own love of cooking. As a German major at TCU, Watson cooked for her friends in her residence hall.

For a comforting meal at home, she craves her signature roast chicken. “I feel very chef-y when I roast a chicken,” she said. “I love a one-pan dinner, and for my roast chicken, I make it with potatoes and onions. When people show up at the house, all they can talk about when they walk in is the incredible smell.” She describes roast chicken as a perfect Sunday supper and cooks hers with garlic, butter, rosemary and sage.

Watson lives in Rockwall, Texas, east of Dallas. From there, she runs her own company, Katherine Rose Watson LLC, where she helps build brand awareness for clients in the arts, travel, lifestyle, wine and other fields. But her penchant for entertaining predates those entrepreneurial endeavors. After graduation she began to share recipes on a casual blog. Followers deemed her bacon-avocado-crab salad life-changing, which inspired Watson to blog in earnest. She launched The Rose Table in 2014. In 2021, she published a cookbook of the same name, which is available on her site and includes more than 70 recipes.

In 2018, Watson debuted her Disney Dinners, for which she creates full meals and experiences — think Snow White tea party with mini Black Forest cakes, cucumber radish tea sandwiches and gooseberry fool. Facebook invited her to join its coveted creator program, which propelled her success. To date, she has more than 40 million views on Facebook alone and boasts a strong TikTok following.

“I wanted the Disney Dinners to reflect that you can actually make your own magic,” she said.

As for her beloved roast chicken, Watson calls it a favorite in part because “it’s so easy and so cheap but seems so decadent.” She watched hours of YouTube videos to perfect her chicken-carving skills. (“I can now do it in my sleep.”) She’ll often pair the main dish with a blueberry salad with maple vinaigrette, a recipe that uses Marcona almonds. Both recipes are available on her website and in her cookbook.

WHO: Gabrielle McBay ’14

KNOWN FOR: Cookbooks, YouTube and reality TV

COMFORT FOOD: Matilda Chocolate Cake

Chocolate cake is Gabrielle McBay’s go-to comfort food — especially the Matilda chocolate cake she introduced during the early weeks of the Covid-19 lockdown, inspired by the iconic cake in the film Matilda. Rich, fudgy and topped with silky chocolate frosting, it’s the dessert she craves most, even admitting she doesn’t need ice cream on the side.

Gabrielle McBay ’14 with a chocolate cake, her favorite comfort food. The cookbook author and culinary director uses espresso and dark cocoa in her own viral Matilda chocolate cake recipe.

“The chocolate cake itself is enough for me.”

“For my chocolate cake, I use espresso,” McBay added, “which gives it an edge, and dark cocoa, which gives this fudgy richness.”

As a high schooler in DeSoto, Texas, McBay launched Crumbs, a company specializing in cookies and cakes. (Her cheeky tag line: “You’ll want to eat them!”) She brought her culinary expertise and entrepreneurial mindset to TCU, baking in her dorm kitchen and selling her famous purple velvet cupcakes and various other sweet treats throughout campus. Andy Dalton ’10 and LaDainian Tomlinson ’05 became customers. No less than The New York Times took note of her efforts, spotlighting Crumbs in a 2011 feature.

At TCU, McBay studied entrepreneurship, marketing and food management. Upon graduating in December 2014, she was cast in ABC Family’s docuseries Job or No Job, which (spoiler alert) saw her thrive at Chicago’s Table Fifty-Two working the front of house.

“I wanted to learn the restaurant industry from the inside out,” she said of her stint at celebrated chef Art Smith’s renowned Gold Coast eatery, which he later renamed Blue Door Kitchen & Garden. “It was there that I fell in love with food and wine and dining on a high level.”

McBay turned a 10-day social media experiment during the pandemic into her second cookbook, You Have Food at Home (Barnes & Noble Press), posting recipes on Instagram and soliciting feedback from her followers — a process that helped make the Matilda chocolate cake a viral favorite.

During the pandemic, McBay moved to Los Angeles to become a private chef and continue her work as a culinary director, a profession she describes as “encompassing all the ingredients of food, film and business to help my clients grow their business.” Her first night in LA, she cooked for a dinner party hosted by an artist. During her time on the West Coast, she frequently worked as a private chef for LA Lakers stars and entertainment luminaries.

For the last four years, McBay’s Good Taste, a hospitality development and media company, has focused on highlighting the efforts of other creators. Her clients include Top Chef alum Tiffany Derry, a vendor at the State Fair of Texas and more. And she still remains active on social media, particularly YouTube and Instagram.

In early 2026, she self-published her fourth cookbook, The Other Side. The holistic cookbook centers on wellness, featuring more than 60 recipes intended to reduce inflammation and promote sustainable eating.

Alas, chocolate cake didn’t make the cut.