Many similarities exist in the history of two iconic Mexican dishes, the Caesar salad and nachos. In both cases, the restaurants where they were created were situated near the U.S. border. In both cases, the restaurateurs were scrambling for ingredients and whipped something up to please visitors from across the border. Both dishes are 100 percent Mexican, but in desiring to appeal to foreign tastes, their creators imbued them with a global appeal and each is now served worldwide.
How nachos came to be
Nachos were created in Piedras Negras in 1943 by someone named — inevitably — Ignacio. Ignacio Anaya García, in this case, was maître d’ at Club Victoria, and one night during World War II he needed something to appeal to the wives of soldiers who were stationed across the border at Eagle Pass, Texas. Unfortunately, the cook wasn’t in the kitchen.
Anaya’s solution was an elegant one: he layered totopos (tortilla chips), Colby cheese and pickled jalapeños on a platter and popped them in the oven long enough for the cheese to melt: nachos were born. Colby cheese is perhaps a surprising element today, but it wouldn’t have been so to those living in Eagle Pass or Piedras Negras in 1943.
“In Piedras, we used to say that Colby cheese was ‘aid cheese,’” Adalberto Peña de los Santos, director of the Festival International del Nacho, told The New York Times in 2020. “It was one of the ingredients that the U.S. government gave out” during the war and which found its way across the border via the black market.
Nachos were popular from the start, and soon the “Nacho Special” was added to the menu at Club Victoria. Eventually, Anaya started his own restaurant named — you guessed it — Nacho’s.
The Festival International del Nacho
Coahuila, like neighboring Chihuahua and other northern states, is part of Mexico’s cattle country, and beef dishes such as carne asada and discada are popular throughout this region.
However, nachos belong to Coahuila in a way these other dishes don’t, although all are celebrated with festivals. For instance, the carne asada festival is held in Sabinas while the discada festival takes place in the Pueblo Mágico of General Cepeda, with both scheduled annually in March.
Neither of these events draws nearly as many visitors as the 25,000 who show up each October for the Festival del Nacho in Piedras Negras, which held its 29th edition in 2024. This annual showcase of the state’s signature food item features livestock exhibitions, the crowning of a Señorita Turismo, and culinary competitions that range from attempts to make the world’s smallest nachos to the world’s largest. A contest by spectators to consume the greatest quantity of jalapeños is also judged.
It is sometimes but not always celebrated contemporaneously with the International Day of the Nacho on Oct. 21, observed annually since 1995.
Are nachos Tex-Mex or just Mexican?
It’s an interesting question as there’s no question that nachos were born in Mexico and are a Mexican food dish. However, as chef and author Adán Medrano notes, Tex-Mex is really Coahiltecan cuisine, meaning the food culture that arose in and around San Antonio south down into the northern part of Coahuila, but with origins that predate either Texas or Mexico. Piedras Negras definitely falls within the boundaries where these regional food traditions arose.
A more conventional definition of Tex-Mex is that it combines influences from Texan and Mexican culinary traditions. Whether Wisconsin-made Colby cheese fits into either category is another question entirely, but because it was introduced into regional cuisine during the Second World War the answer seems to be at least a tentative yes.
My own feeling is that nachos are one of the rare foods that fits easily into both Mexican and Tex-Mex culinary cultures and that the dish’s ability to transcend easy categories is one of the secrets to its worldwide success.
The U.S. monstrosity: concession nachos
Many food companies and restaurants in the U.S. have for generations been doing their best to ruin authentic Mexican food. But the quest to transform real ingredients and delicious flavors into something repugnant and unrecognizable reached its zenith with the invention of “concession nachos.”
The blame for this monstrosity rests with a Texas businessman named Frank Liberto. Nacho Anaya had passed away by the time Liberto started serving concession nachos at Arlington Stadium, home of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, in 1976. So he wasn’t forced to see his beloved Colby replaced with emulsified cheese so processed that refrigeration is unnecessary and can be pumped straight from a dispenser.
Two years later, in 1978, concession nachos debuted at the Dallas Cowboys stadium and were touted during a Monday Night Football broadcast by Howard Cosell. Before long, they were served at virtually every other sporting venue in the country. Needless to say, however, these aren’t real nachos but a twisted perversion of the original.
Coahuila and the birth of Mexican wine
No discussion of Coahuilan cuisine can exclude the state’s wines. Nachos and wine may not seem like a natural pairing, and they’re not. Beer is a better accompaniment to Nacho Anaya’s creation. But wine is a perfect pairing for Coahuilan beef and has a very long history in the state, dating back to the 16th century and the establishment of a mission at Valle de Parras.
In 1597, thanks to a grant to Don Lorenzo García from King Felipe II of Spain, vineyards were planted at Hacienda San Lorenzo to produce wine and brandy in Valle de Parras in the southern part of Coahuila, 140 miles west of Monterrey. Later renamed Casa Madero, this winery, whose grapes are irrigated by natural springs between the desert and the Sierra Madre Occidental, has been in continuous operation for 427 years, making it not only the oldest in Mexico but in the Americas.
Chris Sands is the Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best, writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook and a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily. His specialty is travel-related content and lifestyle features focused on food, wine and golf.
Source: Mexico News Daily
