you know, brisket is good but i never like my beef fully cooked. i know it's not steak, but still. meat is always better for me when it's rare. i'll have to go with chicken fried steak.
From Wikipedia: Ninfa's Ninfa's (at one time Mama Ninfa's) is a Houston, Texas-based restaurant chain. The chain serves Tex-Mex and Mexican cuisine. Ninfa's restaurants are located in Arlington, Beaumont, Bellaire, College Station, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Rosenberg, and Waco in Texas, Baton Rouge and Shreveport in Louisiana, and Atlanta, Georgia. The chain was started by Ninfa Rodríguez Laurenzo, a Mexican-American woman. She and her Italian-American husband, Tommy Laurenzo, opened a tortilla and pizza dough factory in Houston's East End in 1948. By 1973, Laurenzo suffered financial problems, so she opened a restaurant with borrowed money. The restaurant, Ninfa's, became immensely popular to the point where the tortilla factory closed down, and that Laurenzo became a full-time restauranteur. The fajita as it is known today is said to have originated from Ninfa's; the menu at Ninfa's calls it "tacos al carbon." The chain expanded rapidly, which proved to be a poor business decision. Ninfa's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1996, and accused its largest creditor, foodservice supply giant Sysco, of overcharging for materials. In 1998, the chain was purchased by Serranos Cafe and Cantina. The Laurenzo family is no longer involved in the business, per se. In 2000 Her son Geno Laurenzo opened a small Tex-Mex restaurant in Washington Mills, New York, a suburb of Utica in Central New York. Another location was later opened in Oneonta, New York, about an hour southeast. The restaurants are one of the few authentic Tex-Mex restaurants that are convenient to Central New Yorkers. Ninfa Laurenzo died on June 17, 2001 of bone cancer. The restaurant chain had expanded to about forty restaurants at its peak, and it went as far as Leipzig, Germany. The Leipzig restaurant, which was operated under license by Houston businessman Eckart Wieske, was bought by the bank that lent Wieske money. The expenses were too high for Wieske to handle, despite the good business. And this for the origins on just the idea of the fajita: One of the most interesting facets of the American culinary revolution of the past 50 years is our growing fascination with culinary history. It seems the more we learn about the ethnic melting pot that makes up the American table, the more curious we become about regional cuisines and the origin of specific dishes. Texas is the proud home of an authentic regional cuisine, and the provenance of Tex-Mex foods is currently a very hot topic with everyone from academic researchers to cookbook authors to magazine and newspaper food writers. In exploring the history of fajitas, several credible stories emerge, and all of them have roots in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It only makes sense that several people from the same ethnic group with roots in the same geographic area would come up with similar cooking techniques and names for the raw materials at hand. The first serious study of the history of fajitas was done in 1984 by Homero Recio as part of his graduate work in animal science at Texas A&M. Recio was intrigued by a spike in the retail price of skirt steak, and that sparked his research into the dish that took the once humble skirt steak from throwaway cut to menu star. Recio found anecdotal evidence describing the cut of meat, the cooking style (directly on a campfire or on a grill), and the Spanish nickname going back as far as the 1930s in the ranch lands of South and West Texas. During cattle roundups, beef were butchered regularly to feed the hands. Throwaway items such as the hide, the head, the entrails, and meat trimmings such as skirt were given to the Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) as part of their pay. Hearty border dishes like barbacoa de cabeza (head barbecue), menudo (tripe stew), and fajitas/arracheras (grilled skirt steak) have their roots in this practice. Fifth-generation McAllen rancher and cookbook author Melissa Guerra heard very similar stories in researching her first cookbook, The Texas Provincial Kitchen, and her upcoming work, Dishes of the Wild Horse Desert. Considering the limited number of skirts per carcass and the fact the meat wasn't available commercially, the fajita tradition remained regional and relatively obscure for many years, probably only familiar to vaqueros, butchers, and their families. Fajitas appear to have made the quantum leap from campfire and backyard grill obscurity to commercial sales in 1969. Sonny Falcon, an Austin meat market manager, operated the first commercial fajita taco concession stand at a rural Dies Y Seis celebration in tiny Kyle in September of 1969. That same year, fajitas debuted on the menu at Otilia Garza's Round-Up Restaurant in the Rio Grande Valley community of Pharr, according to Texas Monthly contributing editor John Morthland in a 1993 magazine story. Morthland writes that Garza never claimed to have invented the dish, but she did maintain a tradition of grilling skirt steak learned from her grandmother, a restaurateur in Reynosa, Mexico. At the Round-Up, fajitas were served on a sizzling platter with warm flour tortillas and mounds of condiments – guacamole, pico de gallo (chopped fresh onions, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro), and grated cheese – for making tacos. In the Mexican ranching states that share a border with Texas, a similar dish called arracheras (grilled fillets of skirt steak) has been served for decades, according to cookbook authors Cheryl and Bill Jamison in The Border Cookbook. We pick up the fajita trail in Houston in 1973, when a Rio Grande Valley native named Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo opened a Tex-Mex restaurant on Navigation Boulevard called Ninfa's. She built a restaurant empire on a good bar business and the simple, tasty foods of her Valley heritage, including fajitas, sold as "tacos al carbon" and "tacos a la Ninfa." While Tex-Mex restaurateurs such as Otilia Garza and Ninfa Laurenzo were popularizing fajitas in Houston and the Valley during the 1970s, Sonny Falcon was introducing them to thousands of Anglos and Hispanics alike at his concession stands at rodeos, outdoor fairs, and festivals all over the state. Perhaps the most unlikely character to spread fajita fame (and blur the real meaning of the word) was German-born chef George Weidmann. Weidmann was the opening chef of the Hyatt Regency in Austin in 1982, and it wasn't long before he recognized the commercial potential of a popular local Tex-Mex dish. The canny chef put "sizzling fajitas" on the menu of the Hyatt's La Vista restaurant, and soon sales of that signature dish made it the most profitable restaurant in the Hyatt chain. Weidmann spent the last 20 years of his career at the Austin Hyatt and was often called upon to travel to other properties to share his fajita secrets (he used the more tender sirloin) with other chefs in the chain. Fajitas remain a Hyatt menu mainstay to this day. Don't see anything stating this was ever created in Mexico.
how's the BBQ there? i pass it all the time but never really hear anything about the place... at least i know where to get me some chili when the craving hits.
the BBQ is great and the beans are spicy! they are the only BBQ joint in town (to my knowledge) using meat from the B3R ranch -- all-natural, hormone free beef from childress (i think.) you should definitely stop by for their signature "BBQ Bean and Brisket Tacos - with spicy bbq sauce." also, you can take your own meat to them and they'll smoke it for you (for a fee.) next time you go phesant or wild boar hunting i suggest this method. although i'm a big fan of smoking meats myself, these guys have made a sustainable career out of the practice. also, they do smoked turkeys (theirs or yours) around the holidays. enjoy.
...she did maintain a tradition of grilling skirt steak learned from her grandmother, a restaurateur in Reynosa, Mexico. ...In the Mexican ranching states that share a border with Texas, a similar dish called arracheras (grilled fillets of skirt steak) has been served for decades The whole of the South Texas cattle industry was a direct import from Northern Mexico, and the vaqueros brought their culinary style with them. Mexicans had been cooking this dish for a long time before the '60's, fatty. Texans quite possibly coined the term "fajita" referring specifically to this dish (Mexicans called the diaphragm muscle of a cow "fajita", meaning "little belt or sash". Naming it does not equal "creating" it, though. Much like chicken-fried steak is not a uniquely Texan invention - it came from the immigrant German/Czech/Polish tradition of breading & frying cuts of meat (schnitzel/kotlet) - the fajita has it's roots outside the Lone Star State. Considering how closely intertwined the culture & history of South Texas & Northern Mexico are, it doesn't make 'em any less "Texan", though.
From above article: In exploring the history of fajitas, several credible stories emerge, and all of them have roots in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
ahh dude gross! haha I'm an avid Chachos goer.. I don't know much about tex-mex.. but that stuff is good.. and not too expensive for us college kids.. Ohhh and every Wednesdays at Mission Burrito..... mmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Actually, just google "fajita origins". I don't see anything stating that fajitas ever came from Mexico. Let me know if you do. And the second article was from the Austin Statesman.
Well, all of 'em except the 2 I mentioned that involve Mexico. The wikiness you posted also says that the fajita originated at Ninfa's after 1973, which is laughable, and contradicted by other sources you posted. Fatty, if you really, really believe that people who had been living and ranching in Northern Mexico for many, many decades before there was a single gringo in Texas, suddenly, once moving across the Rio Grande, decided that grilling a cut of meat that they had no other use for was a good idea...then go right ahead.
the first fajitas i ever had were at the hyatt on town lake in austin during a UT pep rally before a game...it was probably 1985. incredible. i was in 5th grade or so...and i was so impressed with the novelty of the sizzling plates. everytime i go back to austin to visit, i try to stop in there for fajitas....kind of a weird place to seek them out, but they are/were great.
Well, "origins" means where something was originally from, and since one of those articles you posted says that Mama Ninfa herself learned how to grill skirt steak from her grandmother, who was from Mexico, then I'd say it's pretty clear cut. Somebody from Texas might have come up with the process of putting the grilled meat on a sizzling plate and serving it with tortillas, grilled onions, and guacamole, but as far as grilling skirt steak (the "origin" of fajitas), you're either in denial or have poor reading comprehension.
No. What I am saying is that Fajitas were born in Texas. By your analogy, anything in a tortilla would be a fajita, since they are presented that way. Grilling a skirt steak is not a fajita. Much like grilling chicken is not a chicken fajita. Again, find something that states otherwise. Like it or not, Fajitas are a Texas invention. Just like Deep dish pizza is a Chicago invention. (although it was created by a Texan, much like the fajita was created by an hispanic.)
The word fajita comes from the spanish word "faja" which means belt, or girdle. That would be the origin of the word fajita. Still doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that they were created in Mexico.
Did you not even read my last post? Did Chicago not invent the deep dish pizza? How is that any different???
