Today is International Day of the Nacho, so declared under somewhat murky
circumstances and murkier authority for this date in 1975 after the
tragic death of the delicacy’s inventor, Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya at the age of 81. This celebration is not to be confused
with a strictly U.S. National Nacho Day observed annually on November 6
promoted by the cheese industry.
I know. It comes as a stunning surprise to gourmets
and foodies that nachos are not steeped
in traditional Mexican cuisine.
The story goes that Anaya was
laboring as the maître d’hôtel—although I am relatively certain that no one
ever called the front house manager
by that title—at El Moderno Café in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, a border town just across the Rio
Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas in 1943. One evening the restaurant was closed when it was besieged by a
gaggle of soldier’s wives from Ft. Duncan in Eagle Pass. The women had escaped the boredom of camp life for a day of alleged shopping. But one more than suspects the junket
included more than a bit of the drinking
and carousing that are the main
attraction of border towns.
Whatever they were doing, the ladies
were as ravenous as they were raucous and demanded something to
eat. The kitchen staff had already left so Anaya rustled up what he
could. He cut several corn tortillas into wedge shaped
quarters and fried them in deep fat.
He melted left-over shredded cheddar cheese, poured the resulting sauce over the chips,
and sprinkled on sliced pickled jalapeños.
The ladies devoured the platters
and enquired what the new dish was called.
Anaya shrugged and for lack of a better name stammered out Nacho’s especiales. Their ravenous approval began another
tradition—chowing down on the dish after bouts of serious drinking. On their return to Texas the ladies raved
about them and soon others were asking for them.
El Moderno put Nacho’s especiales on
the regular menu. Other joints on both sides of the
river soon followed. It didn’t take too
long until the name was shortened to just plain nachos. Anaya himself gained such local notoriety that a few years later he was
able to open his own place, Nacho’s
Restaurant and went into competition with his former employer as the
official home of the nacho.
Nachos were first noted in English print in a 1950 book A
Taste of Texas but it was not until 1954 that Anaya’s original recipe was published in St.
Anne’s Cookbook, one of those local
fundraiser cookbooks.
In 1959 Carmen Rocha, a waitress at El Cholo Restaurant in San
Antonio was sent to Los Angeles
to open a franchise of the
restaurant there and added nachos to the menu, introducing the dish to the West Coast.
But nachos did not really take off
until entrepreneur Frank Liberto,
owner of Rico’s Products developed a
nacho sauce that could be easily applied
to pre-fried chips from heated dispenser and a newer version
called stadium nachos really took off. He began vending his new product at sporting
events at Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Texas where sportscaster Howard
Cosell sampled them and mentioned them repeatedly on broadcasts of Monday
Night Football.
After such an impressive culturally
significant endorsement, nachos
went viral. The creation of dispensers in which bladders
of nacho sauce could be kept piping hot for days, maybe even weeks,
meant that the delicacy could be served for school lunches or dispensed by bar
tenders, teenagers with acne behind the counter of movie concession stands, and sold for
the price of complete fast food meal,
or self-dispensed by drunks in gas stations at 3 am.
These days at American dining
establishments like Chili’s enormous platters
of nachos are served and are garnished with embellishments like salsa, chili, sour cream, black olives,
ground beef, chopped onions, and re-fried
beans. This form of nachos supreme have
even gone international and can now be found from Helsinki to Hong Kong.
You can now even enjoy nachos at
home by heating 12 ounce, jars of
nacho sauce in the microwave and
pouring the contents over a plate of bagged
tortilla chips.
El
Moderno was one of the few places that still served the original recipe just as concocted by Anaya who was commemorated
there by a brass plaque. But the fabled eatery closed in
2009. A fast food operation now operates in the city under the same name,
but it is safe to say they don’t serve the original recipe.
The epicenter for the celebration of
the International Day of the Nacho remains in Piedras Negras. The celebration, however, is city-wide and now stretches over a three day weekend closest to October
21. Festivities include the annual
recreation of the World’s Largest
Nachos as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records and
by an annual nachos competition which was judged by Ignacio Anaya Jr. until his death in 2010.
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