Nachos with Cheese Sauce and Jalapeños

History & Origin

Nachos are perhaps the Tex-Mex dish with the most documented and precise origin story in the world. They were invented in 1943 by Ignacio 'Nacho' Anaya García at the Victory Club restaurant in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico - just across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. According to the legend, Anaya, who worked as maitre d', received a group of American soldiers' wives who arrived after service hours when the chef had already left. Undaunted, he improvised with what he found in the kitchen: he took some corn tortilla chips, covered them with processed cheese and put them in the oven. As a finishing touch, he added tinned pickled jalapeños. When the diners asked what the dish was called, Anaya simply replied: 'Nachos especiales'. The name stuck. Within a few years, nachos crossed the border and became the favourite snack in American stadiums, popularised by sports journalist Frank Liberto who introduced them at the Dallas Cowboys stadium in 1976. Today more than 1.5 billion servings of nachos are consumed each year in the United States alone. The cheese sauce - that Tex-Mex creation of processed Cheddar cheese - is in fact what distinguishes stadium nachos from any other similar preparation in the world.