It’s hard to say when my brother and I first developed our love affair with the nacho, but my best guess is that it was at a restaurant called Chadwick’s in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Chadwick’s was a favorite family haunt for its juicy burgers and laidback atmosphere, but once my brother Nick and I ordered the nachos it was the only place we wanted to go. To our developing tastebuds, those nachos were the pinnacle of culinary excellence. Recently, we returned to Chadwick’s to find the nachos disappointingly decent (the pre-made texture of the guacamole and the lack of layering detracted from the overall experience), but at the time we were entranced by the competing textures of the beans, the melted cheese, and the crispy tortilla chips; the many ways to strategically attack the towering pile of food; and the freedom to eat with our hands without fear of parental castigation. We had already begun to sense something that we would not truly understand until many, many years later: Nachos are like sex—even bad nachos are better than most other things.
Childhood ski trips out West introduced us to a whole different echelon of nachos. Up at higher altitudes, ski bums flocked to the best nachos like Somolians on a steak sandwich. At the Powerhouse Restaurant in Crested Butte, Colorado, we found that we were still playing Nintendo when everyone else had moved onto Sega Genesis. The nachos displayed a combination of size and precise stacking such that we had never seen before, and the succulent chicken was cooked on mesquite grills. While in Crested Butte, my dad also gave me my first Playboy. The magazine stayed under my mattress for the next eight years, but the hankering in my heart for Powerhouse remains to this day. A few years later, inside a little log cabin at the base of Big Sky mountain in Montana, we were introduced yet another piece of the puzzle: freshly made tortilla chips, sizzling with frying oil and retaining just the right crispiness to sustain the hearty refried beans. This restaurant had tragically burned down when we returned to Big Sky years later, but as the saying goes, those who live in wooden houses shouldn’t fry tortilla chips at high temperatures. Slowly but surely, nachos were becoming more than a favorite food for my brother and me—they were becoming an obsession. When Nick enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a bona fide mecca of nacho-making, I suspected that it was more than academics that drew him there. Sure enough, the Great Dane Brewpub moved into our permanent Top 10 by overcoming the stigma of tri-colored chips (too often used to distract attention from mediocrity) and exhibiting a bold system of layering that ensured that no chip went uncovered.
There are some people who say that there is no such thing as bad plate of nachos. They say that a bunch of tortilla chips smothered in refried beans, cheese, salsa, and guacamole is bar food at its most basic. Worst of all, they claim that nachos are “dispensable” at a Tex-Mex restaurant. This last assertion could not be further from the truth. In articulating such bold claims, these people are essentially making a choice. They are saying to themselves and others, “I am content with mediocrity. I do not demand perfection in one of the few aspects of life where perfection may actually be possible—nacho-making.” Moreover, they prove themselves to be un-American, because when push comes to shove, nachos are easily as American as apple pie or Miller High Life. And like any good American product, they may not actually be American. Some call them Mexican, some call them Tex-Mex, and some call them “bar food,” which translates roughly into “American food.” So, where do nachos really come from?
A quick hang-ten on the internet reveals a range of historically suspect answers. The most pervasive account tells the tale of Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, whose father worked at a restaurant called the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico. One day in 1943, a group of ten women crossed the border from Fort Duncan Air Base, where their husbands were stationed. Unable to track down the chef and faced with ten hungry wives, Anaya decided to improvise—he covered a plate of tostadas with grated cheese, passed it through a “Salamander” (a broiling unit which browns the top of foods), and topped the whole thing off with jalapenos. One of the women dubbed the dish “Nachos Especiales,” which was later shortened to just “nachos” when Anaya took the dish to Moderno and finally opened his own restaurant—Nacho’s Restaurant. The snack gradually spread throughout southern Texas, but it was an American entrepreneur named Frank Liberto who thrust nachos into the national spotlight. After inventing that goopy cheese that always remains in liquid form (NASA probably would have come up with it first if they weren’t so busy inventing real-inertia seatbelts), he started selling nachos as a concession item in 1977 at the Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The new stadium snack attracted the attention of “Monday Night Football” later that year. Before the game started, Howard Cossel sampled the cheese-covered chips in the reception area. According to legend, he was so impressed that he and the rest of the “Monday Night Football” team began to mention nachos in their broadcast as much as possible. The rest, as they say, is history.
Whether fact or fiction, this tale offers a number of interesting insights into the chronicles of nacho lore. It places the birth of nachos as a concept firmly in Mexico, yet the simplification and commodification of the product occurs in Texas. This sequence of events establishes the “Tex-Mex” connection, but the “Food Timeline” tells us that Tex-Mex food did not begin until the 1950s, while nachos were invented in 1943. So who should we believe? In an essay entitled “Nachos, Anyone?”, Oxford English Dictionary researcher Adriana Orr describes her epic quest to trace the etymology of the word nacho to its rightful origins. Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary had dated it back to 1969, working with the curious definition “fr. Sp. Nacho: flat-nosed.” Meanwhile, handbooks on Mexican, Chicano, and Tex-Mex words and phrases offered “Nacho, adv. Of course, naturally.” Incidentally, this is how I would respond if someone asked me if I wanted some nachos, but it still didn’t point towards the delicious appetizer in question. Finally, Orr found a passage in the 1949 edition of A Taste of Texas that read as follows: “’Pedro left. Sometime later he returned carrying a large dish of Nachos Especiales. ‘These Nachos,’ said Pedro, ‘will help El Capitan—he will soon forget his troubles for nachos make one romantic.” Incidentally, I once told my girlfriend that she tastes like nachos, which backfired and made her feel insecure. But more to the point, these “ Nachos Especiales” seem suspiciously similar to Anaya’s, only they crop up six years later. When Etymology and History collide, who is to be trusted?
My sense is that these competing claims of nacho invention and proliferation—as well as the many others found on various homemade webpages across the World Wide Web—all contain some elements of truth. Just as Al Gore claims to have invented the internet, any charlatan with access to chips and cheese could claim dominion over the first plate of nachos. Yet the more interesting question is how they developed in complexity and style over the years. The evolution of nachos beckons me toward its intrigues, and beyond that, somewhere out there, toward the Holy Grail of nacho perfection.
Equipped with our own theories of nacho-making technique, my brother Nick and I have devoted ourselves to the pursuit of this perfect plate. From the Midwest to Montana and San Antonio to South Boston, we’ve searched Tex-Mex joints, roadside shacks, and even Irish pubs on our quest. We’ve sampled everything from the concession stand chips-and-processed-cheese -sauce that pass as “nachos” to the individually constructed chips at Chiles™ that take all the art and individuality out the classic appetizer, yet still eluding us is that Matterhorn of the Nacho Kingdom that will make us stop mid-bite and exclaim, “Yes! These nachos could not be more delicious!” Home-fried tortilla chips, freshly made salsa and guacamole, and meticulous layering have reared their heads in various forms and combinations, but we have yet to find all the components align in perfect harmony.
This past summer, we even took the hunt overseas to London, where nachos are about as hard to find as a sober soccer fan. For a bonafide metropolis, London’s inability to produce acceptable Tex-Mex has always astounded me, but this track record did not deter us from our quest. On one outing that I can recall with particular clarity, our attempt to “get out of the house” for a bit quickly devolved into a pub crawl, which after a few pints devolved further into a nacho-hunt-slash-pub-crawl: a dangerous combination. This began at the Harrod’s “Green Man Pub,” which resides in the basement under one of the most impressive food halls in the history of department stores. ‘Neath such a cornucopia of fresh produce and high-quality ingredients imported from around the world, could not a decent plate of nachos be found? Alas, they could not.
Aside from the general public, nothing annoys me more than bad nachos. Strike that—I’ve thought it over briefly, and bad nachos annoy me more. These nachos were without a doubt the worst I’ve ever had, so needless to say I was entering “Incredible Hulk” mode. The chips were salty and undelicious in every way. Not only was the cheese an unpleasantly misguided cheddar, but it inadequately covered the chips. And what can I say about the beans? The chicken? The guacamole?
Nothing, because there was none! Only a side of overly sweet salsa and chive dip, which they apparently thought they could pass off as sour cream. “Not on my Gatwick Village watch,” I thought to myself as I rolled up to the bar. I flagged down the bartender and said, “I’d like to pay for the nachos,” but then I leaned in very close to him (maybe a little too close) and beckoned with a forefinger to add, “But I’d just like to tell you, these are not good nachos.”
He looked at me incredulously and asked, “What’s wrong with them?” I replied, “The cheese is terrible, the salsa is very sweet, and they are poorly constructed. I’m not trying to cause any problems but I just thought someone should know, because the fact is, it’s not hard to make decent nachos.” Eventually the manager came over and gave us the nachos for free and apologized. I was wearing a camouflage t-shirt at the time, which may or may not have affected the outcome. It’s hard to tell. What I do know is that deep down I did not accept his apology.
While the findings of the day did not fail to disappoint, I came away from it more determined than ever. I had stood up for what I believe in profoundly: the universal availability of decent nachos. When we got home, my grandmother rang up everyone in the neighborhood to boast of her grandson’s coup d’nacho over the posh department store. As a woman who has successfully returned electrical goods that she purchased during WWII, she does not take flack from anyone, and I think she was proud to see a bit of her aggressive consumerism rubbing off on me. But that’s not my style by any stretch of the imagination. After all, I once failed to complain about a Big Mac that lacked any beef patties. But finally, for once in my life, I knew that I was right.
The sad truth is that aside from nachos, the only things in life that I think I’ve acquired connoisseurship of are Guinness World Records and miniature golf, and I actually don’t really know anything about Guinness World Records except for those relating to land mammals. However, I do know that the biggest nachos ever made were constructed over the course of four weeks at a restaurant called Nachos Cantina in Australia and weighed in at over 2700 pounds. That’s about a quarter of the weight of a South East Asian forest elephant, for goodness sake! While that’s pretty big, and I know life moves a bit slower “down under,” four weeks seems a bit long and unhygienic. Needless to say, that wouldn’t have stopped me from jumping into the middle of the pile and shouting, “Look at me, I’m a giant nacho!” I’d probably walk away with minor burns from the smoldering cheese and beans, but if nachos can make one romantic, they can also make one insane.
How insane? Well, having once driven six hours to visit my brother in Wilmington, Delaware, he made me drive an additional two hours for a ten minute meal at a dingy Mexican spot in a strip mall. Though I was fuming on the ride and suffering from an irksome outbreak of eczema, the fantastic nachos assuaged my anxieties like a nip of whiskey in a baby’s bottle. On another occasion, we drove half an hour to Taco Bell to pick up packets of Fire sauce to add to our refried beans. Excessive, maybe, but we needed that little bit of extra kick that would make Emeril Lagasse say, “BAM!” We have even bypassed cheese fondue and Raclette to order nachos in the French Alps.
But while this behavior might appear totally insane to some, others understand that the quest represents an ethos that transcends food: a way of thinking not only about appetizers, but about life. An erudite gourmand trapped in the body of a desk worker, Aaron Keenan is our most trusted nacho researcher stationed in Manhattan. As he explains, the distance one is willing to travel for nachos is no trifling matter:
- If necessary I am fully able to construct a model in excel which calculates the best plate of nachos regressed against steps taken. For example, I can calculate within a 98% confidence interval, whether it is more worth it to walk 10 blocks to get nachos that rank 4 out of 10, or walk 52 blocks to get nachos that are a 9 out of 10. This is pro bono work, of course. I have a team of applied mathematics PhD’s and financial engineers at my disposal.
Unfortunately, good nachos are hard to come by in the Big Apple. As I always say, “Go to New York—you’ll either be mugged, not appreciated, or dissatisfied by bad nachos.” But, as Keenan notes, that’s just the beauty of nachos: “Unlike a nice seared fois gras in a chocolate truffle apple reduction, good nachos can potentially be found anywhere. You’ve got just a good shot (if not better) of finding a great plate of nachos in some hole in the wall in Oklahoma as you do in NYC.”
Keenan’s insight gestures towards the democratic spirit of the nacho that transcends class structures and geographical biases. A $5 plate of nachos at a local taqueria can be just as delicious as $15 venison nachos at an upscale brewpub. Rather than a melting pot (seems dangerous) or a salad bowl (a bit too “New-Age”), then, my America is the most massive plate of nachos you’ve ever seen. Every ingredient plays its own distinctive and equally important role. While the chips are the building blocks, alone they are still just chips—that’s what Hitler wanted, but no one has ever accused the Germans of making great food. More importantly, eating nachos is by and large an act of sharing. All eaters involved must choose their moves strategically to ensure that they do not leave a pile of dry tortilla chips at the bottom. And so, when I eat some nachos with my brother, I want to be able to see the last chip lying on the plate, dripping with a heart-stopping coagulation of cheese, beans, salsa, and a stabilizing dollop of sour cream, and say to him, “You have it, brother. I want you to.”
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February 24, 2009 at 2:03 pm
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