Tortilla chips and salsa, chili con carne, and fajitas are now typical European bar food. Rare is the English pub that doesn’t serve “nachos.” The influence of Tex-Mex on world cuisine fascinates us here at Texas Eats. So when our correspondent, Julia Walsh, moved to Manchester, England in January 2017, we asked her to chronicle Tex-Mex influences on the local English fare. Here is her latest report:
On Friday, I woke up with a mission in mind: to locate and demolish a good plate of nachos. My recent experiences left me feeling reluctant to trust a pub to deliver the hot, cheesy goodness I was looking for, and with it being Cinco de Mayo, I needed a sure thing.
I found myself at Las Iguanas in Deansgate, who describe their food as “a mouth-watering confusion of native Latin American Indian, Spanish, Portuguese and African influences” and offer a “Mexican” section of the menu. (Restaurants here list themselves as Mexican, not Tex-Mex, but they often feature Tex-Mex dishes on their menus.) They looked like a promising place to go.
The starters were 3 for £15 and nachos topped the list, so we dove right in. I ordered the basic nachos (cheese, pico de gallo, roasted tomato salsa, guacamole, sour cream, and jalapenos) with refried black beans added. Despite the English style piles of wet ingredients, I can’t tell you how happy I was to see piles of molten, gooey goodness at the edges of the plate. The chips were dusted with an ancho chili salt, a welcome contrast to the plain corn chips I’ve been getting. The black beans came on the side for some reason, so after my initial photos, I poured them carefully over the whole plate.
These nachos were crunchy, melty, and delicious, delivering all the right sensations and flavors. Mission accomplished.