Texas Ingenuity by Alan C. Elliott

Author:Alan C. Elliott [Elliott, Alan C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Photography, Subjects & Themes, Historical, Technology & Engineering, Inventions, Biography & Autobiography, Science & Technology, History, United States, State & Local, Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX)
ISBN: 9781439660058
Google: NZKcDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2016-12-12T15:54:55+00:00

NACHOS FOR ALL THE WORLD

Is there no end to the variety of Tex-Mex food? Last year, your humble author visited a pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. Along with fish and chips, the menu included nachos. Texas innovation strikes again. The original nachos were actually invented in 1943 at a club in the town of Piedras Negras just across the Texas-Mexico border from Eagle Pass. Folks from the Fort Duncan Air Force Base frequented the Victory Club. One day, some officers’ wives showed up for a snack, and the maitre d’, Ignacio Anaya, couldn’t find the cook, so he improvised a snack for the ladies. He cut some corn tortillas into triangles, put grated cheese on them and heated them up in the restaurant’s Salamander broiler. He sprinkled some sliced jalapeños on top and presented the dish to the hungry wives.

When the wives returned, they asked for the dish again—you know, that snack that “Nacho” (Ignacio’s nickname) had created.

More and more people requested Nacho’s special dish, and the name was eventually shortened to “nachos.” There you have it. Over the next twenty-five years, nachos appeared on Tex-Mex restaurant menus in South Texas but never much farther north than San Marcos.

But wait. There’s more. In 1977, Jerry Jones (no, not the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones) was the City of Arlington’s vendor at the Texas Rangers Arlington Stadium. With encouragement from some of his employees from South Texas, he started experimenting with selling nachos the way they were made in South Texas restaurants. Although they sold well, the preparation was too labor intensive, and that limited the number of sales and profits. Frank Liberto, the CEO of Ricos Products, which provided supplies to the concession, took notice of the new product. He had a brainstorm. Adding milk to the cheese used for the nachos, he made a cheesy sauce. The mixture was heated up in a Westinghouse Roaster and could be quickly ladled up for each order. The new sauce meant that the nachos could be served up quicker and the concessionaire could make more sales and more profits.

Nachos were a big hit, but Ricos Nachos might have remained a local Texas favorite except for the linguistic exploits of two legendary sports announcers. When Monday Night Football visited the Metroplex for a Dallas Cowboys game, announcer Howard Cosell and his sidekick, Dandy Don Meredith (former Dallas Cowboys quarterback), got a taste of this new snack in the press booth before the game. During their play calling that night, they talked about the snack, wondering how to pronounce the word “nacho.” When they finally got the correct pronunciation down, they liked saying the word so much that they started using it as an adjective during the play calling. “That was a nacho run!” “And it’s a nacho catch for a touchdown!”

After a few of these “nacho”-filled games, the entire country wanted to taste this Texas treat. Ricos products capitalized on the unexpected free publicity, and over the next few years, Ricos Nachos found their way into every sports stadium, movie theater and festival in America.

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