This article appeared in Cooking Light Magazine in June 2004, at about the same time that the cookbook Nuevo Tex-Mex was published.

Tex-Mex first blazed across American tastebuds in the Wild West of the 1880s. In those days, young Hispanic women with roses pinned to the bosoms of their dresses sashayed around San Antonio’s Military Square peddling tacos, tamales and chili con carne to lonesome cowboys. The Chili Queens, as they were known, were famous both for their flirtatious sales pitches and for the spiciness of the Tex-Mex specialities they sold.

The Chili Queens gave Tex-Mex tacos, tamales and chili con carne a pretty exciting reputation. Of course, nobody called it Tex-Mex in those days. It was simply known as Mexican food. In fact, we were still calling it Mexican food some eighty years later when Americans fell in love with crispy tacos and tortillas chips in the late 1960s.

The term “Tex-Mex” didn’t come along until the 1970s when Mexican cooking authorities convinced us that this sort of Texan-Mexican fusion cooking wasn’t really Mexican food at all. The name was something of an insult, it divided Mexican food into two categories. Guacamole and tamales were authentic Mexican food. The gloppy, cheese-covered platters, the fast food tacos–and all the other stuff that didn’t get any respect–that was Tex-Mex. Suddenly, one of America’s oldest and most popular regional cooking styles had been demoted to junk food status. read more Article Archives: "Nuevo Tex Mex" 2004 »