The difference between Tex-Mex and Mexican food

Patricia Sharpe:

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What I like to call classic Tex-Mex was born in Texas in the Mexican restaurants run by first- and second-generation immigrants during the first third of the twentieth century. It peaked in a kind of golden age (the color of melted Velveeta, no doubt) that lasted roughly from World War II to the Vietnam War. During this two- to three-decade span, the spicy components of the combination plate became our most treasured, and most Texan, comfort food. Going out for enchiladas and tacos was a cultural ritual that bound us together as surely as gathering for turkey, dressing, and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. By the seventies, though, the winds of change were blowing, and as streams of new Mexican immigrants moved north, bringing with them their more varied and, yes, more exciting interior styles of cooking, classic Tex-Mex began a slow, inexorable fade into the background.

What put the Tex in Tex-Mex? Three things: American yellow cheese, chile con carne, and the infinite malleability of the corn tortilla. (Rice and refried beans, while essential, were basically the same rice and beans served in Mexico.) First and foremost, though, is cheese. In Texas during the heyday of Tex-Mex, if it wasn’t yellow, it wasn’t cheese. Oh, all right—if you looked hard, you could find a few other cheeses, but they lagged far behind yellow cheese in popularity. Knowing what their customers liked, and being no fools, Mexican restaurateurs went with the flow. Most of them used mild American cheese for filling and topping enchiladas; some preferred real cheddar. (Kraft’s Velveeta, being utterly bland and easy to melt, was ideal for creating the thin, seasoned sauce called chile con queso. So beloved was queso that it took on a life of its own as the national party dip of Texas.) Maybe one in a hundred restaurants used Monterey jack. But even if there had been more-expensive imported Mexican cheeses around, few would have bought them because part of the appeal of Mexican food was that it was cheap. It would have been economic suicide to buck the trend.

The second major component of Tex-Mex is chile con carne, a.k.a. chili. The familiar spicy ground-beef stew that we all know and love, or at least tolerate, chili was already a staple in Texas well before the Great Depression of the thirties, when a poor person could buy a filling bowl of it with crackers for a nickel or a dime. Since many Mexican restaurants initially served American dishes too, chili was often already on the menu. Ladling some on a plate of enchiladas wasn’t even a stretch, and enchiladas and tamales sauced with chile con carne had practically become a basic food group by the fifties. Some restaurant owners objected that the combination wasn’t “Mexican,” and they were right. It was Texan.

Ah, the tortilla—master of, well, a dozen disguises. Tortillas go back at least to the Maya and the Aztecs, but it took the cagey Mexican-food entrepreneurs of the twentieth century and their deep-fat fryers to fully exploit the tortilla’s possibilities. The crispy taco and the now charmingly archaic puffy taco both emerged from this felicitous union, but the two most important, and most Texan, variations on the tortilla were the tortilla chip and, in turn, its apotheosis, the nacho. It is a fact that until recently, restaurants in Mexico did not serve either tostadas or nachos as appetizers, nor did the earliest Mexican restaurants in Texas. These snacks didn’t materialize until sometime around World War II. If you know a grad student who needs a dissertation topic, tell her or him to figure out which of the several cafes along the border that claim to have invented the nacho was actually the first to do it. That would be a worthy contribution to human knowledge.

One quick final aside. I haven’t forgotten the state’s most ubiquitous Tex-Mex dish: fajitas. It’s quite true that the fajita plate, with its dramatic sizzle and forest of condiments, was cooked up in Texas. But fajitas did not become outrageously popular until 1973—when Ninfa’s opened in Houston and began selling tacos al carbón—and that was after the classic Tex-Mex era.

Up until thirty years ago, Tex-Mex was the big enchilada at every Mexican restaurant in the state (sorry, couldn’t resist). Our universe back then was so Tex-centric that people would return from their first trip to Monterrey or Saltillo griping that they couldn’t get any Mexican food there. It wasn’t until travel and the arrival of new immigrants broadened our worldview that we realized that what we had here wasn’t interior Mexican food but a distinctive regional cuisine that deserved its own name. Luckily, one was easily appropriated—the catchy term already in use for the border patois that today we call Spanglish. Today Tex-Mex has been downsized to a puffy taco, but most Mexican restaurants serve at least a few dishes. (Some of the most venerable purveyors are Dallas’s El Fenix, founded in 1918; Fort Worth’s Joe T. Garcia’s, 1935; San Antonio’s Mi Tierra, 1941; Houston’s Molina’s, 1941; and Austin’s El Rancho, 1952.) Just scan the menu for words like “Combinaciones Mexicanas” or “Classic Texas Enchiladas.” If you’re of a certain age, order a Señorita Special for old times’ sake. If you’re a newcomer, have one out of curiosity. You’ll be eating a part of Texas history.
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I take issue with Sharpe on one point. Hispanics have been a part of the Texas culture from the beginning.  During the Texas Revolution, Texas Hispanics joined the rebellion in large numbers and many of them became Texas heroes who had towns named for them. 

I have to admit I have eaten at most of the restaurants Sharpe names.  When I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas I used to regularly eat at El Rancho.  When I was eating C Rations in Vietnam I would think fondly of those dishes I wanted when I "got back to the world."  Some of my troops would tell me about dreaming about ice cream or steak, but my dreams were about enchiladas.  My family moved to the lower Rio Grande Valley when I was in high school and I remember a neighbor inviting me over for a taco dinner.  I was hooked.  The school cafeteria would also prepare the Tex-Mex menu.

I also remember being upset at the identity politics played by some on the left at wanting to deny Tex-Mex to people who worked on the Trump campaign.  I was especially upset at how the treated the staff of a restaurant for actually serving some of the Republicans.  I have been eating in Tex-Mex and Mexican restaurants for decades and have found the staff and proprietors some of the most gracious people I have been in contact with.  It was outrageous to treat them with hostility for being good hosts.