Nachos

• 1. Introduction

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  Nachos are a Tex-Mex dish of tortilla chips buried under melted cheese, and unlike most famous foods, this one carries its inventor's nickname.

  That raises a simple question. Who was the man behind the name, and what sent him into a kitchen looking for something to serve?

  There is a second puzzle. A snack improvised for a few guests somehow ended up on stadium concourses, in football broadcasts and on a world record plate weighing thousands of pounds.

  And there is a third. Once the chips are swapped for fries or tater tots, is the result still a nacho at all?

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• 2. The Victory Club Improvisation

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  Piedras Negras, in the Mexican state of Coahuila, sits directly across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. In 1943, a group of American officers' wives crossed that border to eat at a restaurant called the Victory Club.

  The women came from nearby Fort Duncan, a U.S. Army base, where their husbands were stationed. Among them was Mamie Finan.

  The restaurant's maitre d', Ignacio Anaya, could not find the cook. So he walked into the kitchen himself and found a batch of freshly fried corn tortillas.

  Anaya cut the tortillas into triangles and scattered shredded Colby cheese over them. He added slices of pickled jalapeño, warmed the plate quickly, and carried it out to the table.

  Finan tasted it and asked what the dish was called. Anaya answered, "Well, I guess we can just call them Nacho's Special."

  The name worked because "Nacho" is a common Spanish nickname for Ignacio. Anaya was simply naming his snack after himself.

  That modest plate would soon outgrow the Victory Club, and Anaya would eventually put his own name over a restaurant door.

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• 3. Across Texas and Beyond

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  Nacho's Restaurant, also in Piedras Negras, was the place Anaya opened under his own name after the Victory Club. His original recipe later appeared in print in the 1954 St. Anne's Cookbook.

  By then the dish was already moving north. It spread quickly through Texas and the wider American Southwest.

  The earliest known appearance of the word "nachos" in English dates to 1949, in a book titled A Taste of Texas.

  Los Angeles got its own introduction a decade later. According to the history kept by El Cholo Spanish Cafe, a waitress named Carmen Rocha first made nachos in San Antonio, Texas.

  She then brought the dish to the El Cholo dining room in Los Angeles in 1959.

  Still, none of these restaurant tables prepared the dish for its biggest audience. That came from the ballpark, seventeen years after Rocha's debut in California.

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• 4. Ballpark and Broadcast Booth

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  In 1976, Frank Liberto, owner of Ricos Products, began selling a modified nacho at Texas Rangers baseball games in Arlington Stadium, in Arlington, Texas.

  Liberto's version used prepared tortilla chips with a cheese sauce poured over them, which suited a crowd that wanted something quick. It became known as ballpark nachos.

  Two years later, television did the next round of promotion. On the 4th of September 1978, the Baltimore Colts played the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football.

  Sportscaster Howard Cosell liked the sound of the word "nachos." He made a point of mentioning the dish in his broadcasts over the following weeks.

  That repeated mention introduced nachos to a whole new audience far beyond Texas.

  Liberto died in 2017. The sauce he helped popularize, however, had a long life of its own in places that would never grate cheese by hand.

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• 5. The Nacho Cheese Question

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  Schools, movie theaters, sports venues and convenience stores all share one problem. Freshly grated cheese is hard to handle in bulk, so these places turned to a processed cheese sauce mixed with peppers and other spices.

  It began as a cheaper and more convenient topping for nachos. It proved popular enough that some Mexican-themed restaurants now serve it too.

  Major grocery stores stock it as well, in name-brand versions from Frito-Lay, Tostitos and Taco Bell, and in unbranded ones.

  At American concession stands, the sauce is pumped onto the chips. It starts as a condensed product, and the cook adds water or milk along with pepper juice.

  What goes into that condensed form is a trade secret.

  The pumped sauce represents one extreme of the nacho. At the other end sits a plate built by hand, layer by layer, and that is where the dish's flexibility really shows.

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• 6. What Counts as a Nacho

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  Traditional nachos, as Anaya made them, were tortilla chips with cheese and jalapeños. That is all.

  The modern form is far more crowded. Cheese, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, jalapeños, olives, refried beans, ground beef and chicken are the usual toppings, while lettuce shows up less often.

  Plates piled high with toppings are called loaded nachos, a term that took hold in the 1970s. A typical restaurant platter gets chips, then meat and refried beans, then a smothering of shredded cheese.

  That platter goes under a broiler or into a microwave to melt the cheese. The cold toppings, such as lettuce, tomatoes and salsa, go on last, and the plate is served immediately.

  In Memphis, Tennessee, most barbecue restaurants serve barbecue nachos, and so do sporting events. Barbecued pork shoulder goes over the chips, followed by melted cheese, barbecue sauce and sliced jalapeños.

  In Hawaii, kalua pork and pineapple bits take the place of the barbecue. Elsewhere, poutine nachos swap the cheddar for cheese curds and gravy.

  Some Irish-themed bars pile the toppings on French fries and call them Irish Nachos. The Pacific Northwest has totchos, which use tater tots.

  The source draws a line here. Totchos lack tortilla chips, an essential ingredient, so they are not nachos, while barbecue and poutine versions still qualify.

  Then there are dessert nachos, which scatter toppings over a crisp base. One example is the s'more version, with marshmallow and chocolate on graham crackers.

  Whatever the style, a serving carries a nutritional price, and the numbers are worth a look.

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• 7. Counting the Calories

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  A typical corn tortilla chip has about 15 calories. Baked corn chips drop to roughly 6 each, and multigrain chips sit near 12.

  Cheese adds quickly. Mexican-style cheddar runs about 110 calories per ounce, and a layer of chicken or beef adds roughly another 100.

  A single serving of nachos can therefore land anywhere from 300 to 600 calories.

  The same serving holds around 16 grams of fat, 816 mg of sodium and 272 mg of calcium. Those figures equal 39 percent of the daily value for fat, 34 percent for sodium and 27 percent for calcium.

  A plate that large invites a bigger measure of success, and for nachos, that measure has come in pounds.

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• 8. Holidays, Plaques and World Records

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  Ignacio Anaya died in 1975. In his honor, Piedras Negras erected a bronze plaque, and the 21st of October was declared the International Day of the Nacho.

  His son, Ignacio Anaya Jr., has served as a judge at the annual nacho competition.

  The International Nacho Festival takes place from the 13th to the 15th of October in Piedras Negras. It offers live music, art and cultural activities, plus a contest for the biggest nacho in the world, registered with Guinness World Records.

  In the United States, National Nacho Day falls on the 6th of November.

  On the 21st of April 2012, the catering company Centerplate made the world's biggest serving of nachos at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence. It weighed 4,689 pounds.

  The plate held 765 pounds of chips, 405 pounds of salsa, 323 pounds of tomato and 918 pounds of meat and beans. More than 2,200 pounds of it was cheese.

  The record was broken on the 25th of September 2022, when a 4,870-pound plate was served in Los Angeles. The occasion was a party for the revived Beavis and Butt-Head, held by Paramount+ at an open-air food market.

  Show creator Mike Judge attended the award presentation and said, "This is the proudest moment of my career."

  Portions of the food, including leftovers, were packaged and donated to food banks and local homeless shelters.

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