Items11The creator’s order
  1. 1Chili con carneChili con carneBefore there was a Tex-Mex restaurant, there was a chili stand. From about 1870 to 1930, the women known as the Chili Queens cooked and served in San Antonio's open-air plazas, Military Plaza chief among them, and their spicy beef stew is where this whole cuisine starts. A proper bowl is all about…0
  2. 2Tex-MexTex-MexThe combination plate That crowded oval plate with an enchilada, a taco, rice and refried beans is a Texas invention, not an accident. Otis Farnsworth, owner of San Antonio's Original Mexican Restaurant, which opened in 1900, is credited with putting rice and beans alongside the main dish, though…0
  3. 3Chile con quesoChile con quesoQueso is the dish people mock until the bowl arrives. Chile con queso was on Texas menus as early as 1910, at San Antonio's Gunter Hotel and the Original Mexican Restaurant, and a 1939 church cookbook from Lubbock already made it with Velveeta. That processed-cheese version is the point, not a…0
  4. 4EnchiladaEnchiladaCheese enchiladas with chili gravy If you order one plate to understand Tex-Mex, make it this. Chili gravy is a mash-up of flour-based gravy and Mexican chile sauce, usually meatless, built from fat, flour, broth, chili powder and cumin, and food writer Robb Walsh calls it the essence of the…0
  5. 5Frito pieFrito pieChili poured over corn chips sounds like a dare, and that is half its charm. Fritos were created in San Antonio in 1932 by Charles Doolin, and Texans credit his family kitchen with the first chili pie. New Mexico points instead to the Woolworth counter in Santa Fe, where Teresa Hernandez sold…0
  6. 6NachosNachosNachos are a border dish in the truest sense. The original combination of chips, cheese and jalapeño peppers was first served in 1943 in Piedras Negras, just across the river from Eagle Pass, Texas, reportedly for a group of American military wives from the Texas side. Then Texas made them famous:…0
  7. 7King Ranch chickenKing Ranch chickenThis is Tex-Mex from the casserole dish rather than the restaurant: layers of tortillas, shredded chicken, cheese and canned soup, baked until bubbling. Nobody really knows where it came from, and the famous ranch in its name is known for its beef, not chicken. What it lacks in pedigree it makes…0
  8. 8TacoTacoPuffy taco, San Antonio San Antonio's signature taco starts as a flattened ball of masa fried until it puffs into a light, airy shell. Arturo Lopez is generally credited with making it famous at Ray's Drive Inn, serving the West Side since 1956, though his brother Henry disputes the claim and runs…0
  9. 9TacoTacoBreakfast tacos Egg, potato, bacon, chorizo or beans and cheese in a warm flour tortilla: the most useful food in Texas. The earliest stateside mention found in print is a 1959 San Antonio newspaper story about a taco vendor who started on the West Side and sold bean and egg tacos downtown. San…0
  10. 10FajitaFajitaFajitas began as ranch-hand food: skirt steak, once a throwaway cut, grilled by Mexican ranch workers in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s. Sonny Falcon ran the first commercial fajita taco stand at a Diez y Seis celebration in Kyle in 1969, Ninfa Laurenzo sold them as tacos al carbon at her Houston…0