Tex-Mex: Texas On A Plate

0:00This podcast is not sponsored by, and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas based upon our professional training and study in the past. Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it. And of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History, I'm Jean Croix. And I am Scott Sospe. Jean, anybody that listens to us? Well, anybody that sees us too knows, you know, we like food. Food's something we enjoy. That's, yeah, nobody has ever looked at me and said, I bet that guy doesn't like to eat.

1:00But you know, both of us, I think we can safely say, one of our favorite, what do we call it? Regional cuisines is, it's called Mexican food. That's one thing I want to make sure that we kind of clarify here. We call it in Texas Mexican food, don't we? But it's not. But it's not. No, no. And all you have to do is go south of the border and you will realize that what we eat and what we love and what we call Mexican food is not Mexican, it's Tex-Mex. It's Tex-Mex. It's Texan, and it's Tex-Mex, which is surprising. You see that term bandied about Tex-Mex a lot. And while the cuisine that defines Tex-Mex has been around for a long time and evolved through a number of different variations of regional styles, the term was only

2:01called coined in 1972 in a cookbook that came out. That was a described as that Diana Kennedy, she's a gunnery writer. She separated in 1972 authentic Mexican food from the American, what she called Americanized versions in her cookbook. And she called it what came from Texas Tex-Mex. It is different. People say Mexican food, well, there's this current argument going on on social media. People in California say, our Mexican food is better than Tex is Mexican food. The Mexican code says our Mexican food is better than both of them. What all they are doing is arguing something that's not apples and oranges. Yeah. California style of Mexican food is different because it's not the same type. I don't know if it's called cow mix on this. The Mexican code is a version of Mexican gelo. I love green chilies.

3:01I love. But it's not Tex-Mex. Tex-Mex has defining characteristics, Jean. There's certain things about Tex-Mex. It makes sense. Well, you tell me what they are and let me tell you what I think about them. Okay. It's really, it's defined, but this is what I define it. And I think that most people do. First, there's a heavy use of melted yellow cheeses. Not the cream cheese, nothing of a rocket cheese and make it. It's basically longhorn cheddar, American longhorn cheddar cheese. Heavy use of that, right? It's a much more than that. Dean. I agree. Dean. I want to be a bit. Refried beans, too. It's beans. Dean. Specifically, refried beans. Flower tortillas, not corn tortillas. Our pork Tex-Mex thing. And then the spices are cumin and chili powder are what are the predominant spices. Ding, ding. Yeah. So that's Tex-Mex, right there. And the enchilada gravy is red chili gravy.

4:02And folks that's chili, like you spell, the country chili. It's CHILE. Right. You know, I don't know how many Mexican food restaurants I go into that don't really know. They think they're, they're serving Tex-Mex and they say, enchiladas with chili gravy. And then they bring you this stuff that they've done basically beef chili on top of the enchiladas. And I'm like, I'm sorry. This is not chili gravy. This is chili con carne. And that's not right. Right. Right. That's exactly right. Chili gravy is what it is that goes on there. And it's, it's a distinct way of cooking that has evolved over many, many years. And it is a true border culture that has come up with the idea of, that has come about, and it's mostly melding northern Mexican variations and Americanizing them. Right. And they cross over the border from, in the South Texas and then rose out of South Texas to take over the rest of Texas. Exactly. And, you know, and I think that's, I think people need to realize that.

5:04So let me give you a couple of places. You know, and we can have this debate. We've, we kind of joked about this when we talked about an our debate about chili, right? What is chili and does it have beans? Whether or not you like beans that are not, let, let me just say this. If you go outside of the Red River or into New Mexico, the, the, the, the, the Mexican American food is different. So we took, famously, we took a trip, a driving trip. We left Houston. We went up to Lubbock and then into New Mexico up to New Mexico, spent the night like around Denver. We went into Wyoming and we went up all the way up to Montana. And then we came back again. Driving, right. And so it was a couple of times we stopped and we said, you know, what's up? So there's a, a Mexican food, you know, a, American Mexican food fast food restaurant.

6:08It was not the same. It was not at all the same. Was it, was it good? I mean, I guess it depends on your taste, but it was not the same. Now, the, so we, I just came back from Rome, right? There's a place called jalapenos that we stayed not too far away. Supposedly, my, my, my priest had been there and he told us about it and he goes, oh, yeah, there's this place called jalapenos. I said, is it, is it food like you're going to get here? No, it's not. So Mary and I, a number of years ago, we were in Helsinki. Helsinki. Imagine what kind of Mexican food they have in Helsinki. They've had a restaurant right around, you know, it's just like right in the capital area, right? Downtown. What was it called? A Pancho Vias, right? So I was like, okay, we have to try it.

7:09We have to try it. So it went in there and it was a nice restaurant. And they had food that looked very similar to text, mix, very similar, but it didn't taste like it. So the nachos, we had an order of nachos. And I will say this is I've had nachos that taste just like it before at Mid-A-Made Park. It was, you know, it was, it was that cheese dip kind of that cheese soup mix that you get at the ballpark. And, and chips just like that. And some jalapenos that didn't have much heat. I got the same top of nachos in Scotland here just last month. So you were there and you, you got to try it, right? You got to have nachos. I said, okay, let's get the nachos. And I looked at it and said, this is not nachos, this is not there.

8:10You know, that's so funny. I always love it. I don't know if it's still there, but at one time there was a Mexican food restaurant. They call it Mexican food restaurant in London. And you know what that restaurant was on the side of the former Republic of Texas Council. They got rid of that? I don't know. They mad. I don't know. I don't know if it's still there. And I was quite a few years ago. Yeah, I know what it is. Yes, right there in Trafalgar Square. Yeah, and I was still. But of course, there's, you know, so we've talked about it's an evolution. So, you know, it's a good idea for us to put together. How do we know if we said those elements were melted yellow cheese, beef, flour, tortillas, refried beans, and chili powder and cumin in there. And then also caselo, one of Texas caselo has to be part of it to an illness. So how did we get there is the thing. And of course, it's, it spans over, I mean, almost a thousand years, I guess.

9:10You know, people back the essence of Tex Mex's first evolution is this unique melding that went on mostly in northern Mexico, but all over after the, after the conquest of Mexico by spending, as you took Spanish kick of cooking styles and particularly that Spanish style that comes over is a lot of flavoring with garlic. If you've ever had Spanish food often, which is great. That's a whole not the topic authentic Spanish food on this incorporates much of the garlic. The native, the indigenous people kind of melded that with their own styles of cooking, which was the tortillas. Tortilla is an evolution of an indigenous style that they did. Of course, they were corn tortillas in Mexico and they did this and they mixed them together on this. But that's the style, but like I say, Tex Mex is also distinctly, and this is one thing I love about it. It's a distinctly working class style of cooking because as it crosses the real ground into

10:15Tijuana homes in South Texas, that staple becomes of those rural Tijuana's living in South Texas and that, you know, very harsh environment of scrub brush and having to create ways to cook that fits into their economic lifestyle, if you will. So they could use first off, they use Mesquite Firewood to make these things. Refried beans come about because you know what, that's the way of stretching the beans. Beans, you already make beans to stretch things. You refry them and make them up and mix them up with grease and put them back to make that stretch further. And so refried beans, for example, big part of that comes from that stretching. So it's a working class culture, right? And then of course, when we've had talk about before, San Antonio becomes a key place in particularly the chili coins, right? Right. And let's go a little bit into this. So what was it, you know, and that term gets thrown around and people talk about that.

11:18Who were the chili queens? Well, that was kind of something that caught people's attention. I'm going to tell you that what really made Tex Mex food, an item was about 1875. You had a person up in Kansas, a travel writer who took a train because they had just gotten railroads, but actually in the late 1800s, after the Civil War during our, what we would call the reconstruction period. They started building more trains, international trains, and trains down into Mexico by about 1904. So in the 1870s, you got trains that are coming out of Texas stretching north. And so people are starting to take the trains down. They come to San Antonio. And what do they see in market square? They see a whole bunch of food vendors set up because San Antonio, San Antonio is what?

12:26It is a military city. There have always, it's always been a military city going back to the Spanish times. And so you've got people coming in and out, you know, you've got travelers coming in and out, and you had people selling local food set up in market square. And people came down there and were trying it. They go, it's nothing they'd ever seen before, especially in Kansas. But it was nothing that ever seen before. They started eating it. They started taking it. And the things that they were impressed with were the refide beans, the chili that had beans in the Scott. And... So beans on the side. So, yeah, I mean, and so people came down to... Tomales. Tomales, so so Tomales. Tomales, right, and Tomales. And people started eating that and they said, oh, this is terrible, but we love it. Give us more. What they're really good.

13:26Where is the beer for me to get this spicy taste that I'm not eating? That's right. Which is, of course, the spice in it. It's a unique... The chili powder was a uniquely South Texas spice that they make from the red chilies. But that is... And that's this leads into this, Tomales, the train. One of the persons who stopped in San Antonio, which, you know, kind of the name evolved. And there's a question of whether it did. That train, when the trains had brought a lot of people in the San Antonio, was the Texas, Mexican railway. And a lot of people abbreviated that railway to the Tex-Mex, is what they called that. And many people began sort of applying that name to the food they got in San Antonio. One man who ate some of that food was a... I don't remember exactly where he was from. All of it was Kansas, but something... William Gephart did. And he loved the spice. He got some sample of spice. And he began to make his own spice in cellat nationwide. And of course Gephart is still one of the biggest sellers of chili powder,

14:29and which is what he began to make from those spices on that to do. Gephart's... Gephart's was living... Or he moved to New Braunfels. And so he was German, right? Gephart's. So German probably came down from the Midwest. And to be honest, I don't know much about his background. I'm sure somebody will be happy to inform us if we're wrong about this. But he comes down to New Braunfels. He tries that chili. And as you said, he says, hey, if we package this, we can make some money. So he starts making chili, selling it out of New Braunfels, that dried powder. And then he eventually moves to San Antonio. But yeah, as you're saying, Gephart's is the one who really popularized it in the United States. And then of course the next everyone called evolution happens. I believe we could say the chili queens were the... We can call them, essentially, the first at least hospitality people selling text masks on their tables and stuff.

15:33But then you began to see a real boom in it more in the 20th century. First we know the big migration from Mexico over the South Texas becomes with the Mexican Revolution. And so many people from fled Mexico into Texas. And all over the... In the New Mexico, Arizona and California also. And those... As I fled out of Texas, many of the people that came to Texas and it starts in South Texas. But it spreads as many people in Mexico and the scent do all over Texas. One of the economic activities they began to engage in more than anything else is opening little restaurants, little places where they serve this type of food in this area. And what they found out is that these restaurants is... Okay. Particularly when we moved into more areas where there are more anglos than there are. We got to make this palatable for them. We have to add things to anglos and anglos don't eat it as spicy. You know, they weren't as used to it being as spicy and there are little things that we added.

16:34So they began adding things to it. One of those is this is where the yellow cheddar cheese comes in. Because that's more recognizable to Americans. That's what they thought of as cheese. Not the... Still this day, Leslie loves Mexican owaka cheese and cream cheese. I don't want to know my Mexican food because I'm a Texan. We always have... We make our dishes and only have two different kinds of cheese. And I got to have yellow cheese on this. But also sour cream. Not something that was typically in Mexican food but it is very American. They began adding sour cream to the recipes. And this is also because in Mexico it's corn. That's what gets milk. There's not a lot of wheat. Right? And they're breads. But in the United States and Texas it's wheat. So that's where the flour tortilla is becoming. So those restaurants begin to actually serve those recipes. And supposedly, I don't know, the earliest official... If you want to call it Tex Mex restaurant, it's the Old Berunda Cafe in Martha, Texas.

17:39It operated... It opened in the 1880s and was opened until 1885. Almost a whole year. Wow. It was opened in Marbia. It was a victim of the hipsterization of Martha unfortunately. I've eaten it over on the cafe back in the early 80s. And it was as Tex Mex as you could possibly get. But what this separation begins is this evolution. This is when Tex Mex becomes its own cuisine. It's very different cuisine. They're starting cooperating all of those elements into it. You know, it's funny. We talk about the spread. Chile was the same way, right? Chile spread in the early 20th century. And in fact, if you get a Washington DC and you get off the airport there at National, you know, downtown DC, there is a restaurant in the airport called Ben's Chili Bowl. And there's one downtown too.

18:40The original down there. Yeah, the original one. Yeah, over by Howard University. Yeah. And I, yeah, Mary and I went there and Mary had a bowl of chili. It was vegetarian chili because they serve vegetarian chili. And I had a bowl. It was, it was, it was stout, but it was good. It was really good. Yeah, big chili, but never different variety of chili that could possibly be Ben's, of course, serves. And look, you know, you and I, I see remember that chili restaurant in downtown Austin. No, I go every time I go. I intentionally stay at the double tree sweet so I can walk across the street to go to the Texas Chili part. Yeah. And still some of the, you know what, some of the best ancient artists you've ever had in your life. I mean, it's just good. And so, but there's, as you say, there's different varieties. Now, I've been in different, different places and I've seen white turkey chili with white beans, no lime of beans, thankfully. But you know, they've got different kinds of beans, different types of meat.

19:41I've even seen vegetarian chili. And you can do that without me, but I've seen it with tofu and other stuff in it, different places, right? So, different things that I don't know that that's real chili. We can, we can argue about that. And I will give a lot, I will give a lot of grace on either side of that. But the thing is is that it, people adapted it. And so Ben's chili bowl is popular in the African American community. And a lot of other places around the South, chili was adopted and picked up by the African American community. Again, working class food, but its origins date back to San Antonio, right? So, it started off as a Mexican, Mexican American, it, the African American community adopted it. They changed it a little bit and other communities have likewise changed it and adopted it. And so, you'll see different things calling itself chili, but likewise, enchiladas with shrimp

20:49and fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and so it's not going to, you're not going to have brown gravy. enchiladas should have, it should be enchiladas and there's cheese enchiladas. And that should be it. That should be it. I've softened on the sour cream chip and enchiladas. Okay, I'm not going to call them Tex Max yet. That's real America. That's you know, that's when you, you know, sour cream chip and enchiladas when you go on your first date to a Mexican, that's what you know, and you put all your knowledge to your body. And well, it also becomes, this becomes a demarcation point whether you're going to have a second date. If she wants sour cream chip and enchiladas, you're calling, I don't know where they're going to go out again or not. If you want something, I want to know, make sure you can handle spicy food, right? I don't worry about that. I'll why she's food sposter than I do. She's, I don't know her mouth must be something that just made out of anything that's

21:49she can eat. If you go to the chili par, you know, I think I went with you one time and I said, I'm going to try the triple X chili. Oh, yeah. I don't know that. So remember, I didn't quite get all that bull day. Less they could afford it down her, down her throat and it had been fine too and there's another innovation. I think if we're talking about Tex-Mex, then we almost have to talk about them because first off, Tex-Mex underwent somewhat about change, particularly in the restaurants in the seventies because the startings with the time of this boom of restaurants like TGIF and Chili's and they became this kind of, it's a bar place but also an eating place and it was in cities like Dallas and Houston and even you know, other cities outside of Texas where these young urban professionals came and met after work where happy hour was a thing and they came and you know, to get off the work they had a drink and then they stayed

22:51in eighth and that became and there was a restaurant here in Dallas. A man by the name of Marley, I'm no Martinus, he's still alive by the way, still operating his chain. His store in Dallas recognized it was close to downtown and he was getting a lot of these young professionals and one thing that they began to order, it was not invented in Texas, it was a, no, you can get a lot of people to sign, a lot of controversy on where the Margarita was actually invented. The unique combination of tequila, triple sec lime juice, that shake under start up and ported to a class over rocks there. The Margarita, it's a difficult drink to make for a bartender, it's got three ingredients and you got to shake it up and it takes some time. Mariano Martinez noticed that his new restaurant, he was trying to make kind of an upscale restaurant because most Tex Mex cafes were small cafes that cater to the working class and he was trying to cater to the urban class and so he made it a very upscale place with a lot

23:55of wood, paneling and everything and they were ordering these margaritas and his bartenders were falling behind. They couldn't get the margarita out fast enough, it was clogging up orders. He was thinking about that problem when he stopped off at a 7-11 and he saw a kid giving a slurping out of a slurping and everybody's had a slurping, right? You pull the lever and that icy concoction comes out and it was like a light bulb went over Mariano Martinez's head and this is the key. So we employed a couple of people, a chemist and an engineer to tinker around, he bought a huge soft serve ice cream machine and they hit upon a formula that they could put in there that it would last and taste well and it would be frozen like the slurping that you could just pull the lever and come out and thus the frozen margarita was born in 1971 and that revolutionized the text of my restaurant. Today folks, the most popular cocktail in America is the margarita and there are about

25:00four million margaritas sold in the United States. Wow. Every month, every month, three million of those are the frozen margaritas that Mariano Martinez and they're big. Three million are frozen. Yeah, Mariano's restaurant is still a chain there. Unfortunately, for him, Mariano Martinez did not patent that machine and a lot of people began to duplicate it so he doesn't get the royalties to that. But that check folks, I think that was that one thing helped propel Tex-Mex restaurants into the multi-billion dollar industry that they are. You know, we've got an old restaurant here, a legendary restaurant here and that is Mama Nymphas, Nymphas Restaurant. On the Nymphas on navigation is a must see pilgrimages for anybody like Tex-Mex. So it also claims to have been the originator of the margarita. Now, not the frozen one, but the one with the one with the one with the one with the one. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, and Nympha started, Nympha actually got started because of another restaurant

26:06tour and that was Felix. Felix's restaurant. Miguel Martinez started Felix's, correct. And Felix's, which was down on Westheimer, right by Montrose. Now, I'm going to tell you the truth because it's not open anymore, although, you know, the family is still around. I went, we, Mary and I, when we moved here to Houston in the early 2000s, we said, well, let's go over there and try, you know, this much hyped, very famous historical restaurant. And so we went there to Don Felix's, Felix's. And I was like, we came over and say, this is very, very bland, very Americanized. And so I was telling some friends of mine who knew Felix's not. He goes, well, you know why he did that? Because that's actually the way it used to be. I was like, well, why is that? He says because it appealed to the Americans. He, they took text next food and they took out a lot of the spices, took a lot of,

27:09out of a lot of the demons to make it palatable. Now, we might say, okay, well, you know, he was selling stuff, you know, like patios or someplace else like that, you know, what was the place where you used to run up the flag when you wanted more else? Cheetos. El Pancho, Pancho. That's right. Very Americanized. They'll be comfortable then around. Here's the thing. It popularized it. It made it, it Americans, Texans adapted their palate and they started liking it. And once they started liking it, then they wanted more flavor. And so different restaurants came in and re and brought back in different flavors that probably were originally there, but not. But this whole thing about, you know, taking, like you're bringing up a very important point about in food history and neither, I mean, neither one of us are, you know, we're not like Rebecca Sharples, right? Rebecca Sharples is a few food historian, but you would eat, we'd eat food in restaurants.

28:13We're food of Christian auto. So the important thing about it is is that in many cultures, in many places, it's the poor people's food that has become popular. Now, you go over places and you try ox tail stew. That's delicious. Love it. But you know, it started off as enslaved, what enslaved people ate, right? The tail. What was left over, and now it's become spectacular. Went down to a Brazilian restaurant of a, that used to be down on 6th Street in Austin, Brazilian restaurant. It had a thing called fishwata, right? White, white rice, black beans. It was delicious, but you know what started off as poor people's food. And it's a lot of that food that has made its way. And now, now you're paying a lot more. So I go to, I go to a tech to max restaurant. I see beans and rice and tortillas.

29:15And I see the price tag. And I was like, wait a second. Yeah. Oh, it's. I know it doesn't cost that much to make it. But you know, I guess it's the cost of popularity because you know, that's the way you went to, I know when I was young, San Angel, and San Angel has some of the greatest text mix, but you'll ever, I mean, rightly so. San Antonio's known as the Macbeth of text mix. But if there's a sad lot of that, I would say it's San Angelou with some of these. They have just great things that particularly Henry's diner folks, Prince San Angelou go to Henry's diner and the original Henry's diner. They, they adapted these foods in, but it was you went there because we went there because it was cheap. We weren't, we weren't with people. And you could feed a whole family of five. Well, I don't know, those days 10 or 15 bucks because you know, you get a Mexican dinner number one with a taco, two enchiladas, beans and rice. That's the famous Mexican dinner number one. You know, cost three bucks or something. Now, now you get a Mexican dinner number one. They want to charge your 1599.

30:16It doesn't cost $59.00 to put that on the table, folks. I guarantee you it doesn't on this. But it's a, you know, that's one thing you know, food is dreamy. You know, not a train like you said, Rebecca Sharpless has done and she's wanted many. They do many, much research into the colds, implications of that. That's done me. I delve on the outside, but we can learn a whole lot about the society and the culture about what food they love and what food they treasure. And I think it says a lot about Texas that Tex Mex is our unique food because you know what it does. It melds three or four different cultures together. It melds classes together into some as we get more divided as we get partisan and politically divided. I think one thing we can always agree on right is that a good plate of cheese enchiladas with chili gravy with refried beans and good Mexican rice. Everybody likes that right from from from whatever political side you're on.

31:17You're going to like that, correct? Absolutely. Well, Scott, on that note, I am hungry. I am too. It's well, you know, folks, you know, the sacrifice we are making. We are recording this podcast at lunchtime and here and we're talking about this thing. It's actually make our bellies full. So Scott, let's put some food in the oven. Let's start getting ready to eat and let's let everybody else know that we've talked about Tex Mex. Let's let them go have some. Go find your favorite Tex Mex food folks you make. Thanks everybody. Have a great day. Actually, I'm going to have a great day. I know.