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 Fajitas!
By Linda Stradley, What's Cooking America
Texans would probably like to lay claim to the fajita, but history gives credit to Mexican ranch workers living in West Texas (along the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border) in the late 1930's or early 1940's. When a steer was butchered, the workers were given the least desirable parts to eat for partial payment of their wages. Because of this, the workers learned to make good use of a tough cut of beef known as skirt steak. In Spanish, fajita is a form of the word faja which translates to "belt" or "girdle" in English.
The fajita is truly a Tex-Mex food (a blending of Texas cowboy and Mexican panchero foods). The Mexican term for grilled skirt steak is arracheras, and its American counterpart is fajitas. Today, the term fajita has completely lost its original meaning and has come to describe just about anything that is cooked and served rolled up in a soft flour tortilla. The only true fajitas, however, are made from skirt steak.
Fajita Facts:
Sonny Falcon, meat market manager of Guajardo's Cash Grocery, liked to experiment with ideas for using the tough skirt steak in recipes. According to the article The Return of the Fajita King in an interview with Sonny Falcon, by Virginia B. Wood, in the Austin Chronicle, March 4, 1995:
"I looked at that cut of meat and said to myself, It looks just like a belt," he says. "The first fajitas I every saw, I made myself right here in the 1960s." According to Falcon's version of fajita history, he figured his new creation would popularize an affordable cut of meat and attract more business to the family store - if he could just get people to taste it. "Anytime Dad would cook fajitas in the backyard, all our friends would ask to come over," recalls son John Falcon. "Dad knew he'd come up with something great."
In 1969, Sonny set up a concession both at a weeklong outdoor event in Kyle, Texas. He also went to rodeos, fairs, and outdoor festivals on nights and weekends selling his fajita taco to the crowds of appreciative people. Sonny became personally identified with the dish by the late 1970's, An Austin reporter christened him "The Fajita King," and the name stuck. Sonny now owns the trademark on that term. He also tried to trademark the word "fajita," but was turned down.
In 1948, Ninfa Rodriguez Laurenzo, a Mexican-American woman, and her Italian-American husband, Tommy Laurenzo, opened a tortilla and pizza dough factory in Houston. The factory wasn't succeeding, so they borrowed money and opened a Mexican restaurant called Ninfa's. Because the restaurant became so popular, they closed down the tortilla factory and concentrated on the restaurant. Around 1973, Nifa's version of the fajita was created at the suggestion of a customer who had just returned from a trip to Mexico City and asked the staff to slice a piece of steak into thin strips so he could make an upscale taco. Once the accompaniments were added - cilantro, onion, tomatoes, chilies, sour cream, and cheese - the new fajita dish became a house specialty. Originally called "tacos al carbon," it was later trademarked as "tacos a la Ninfa." Later the restaurant begin to use the term "fajitas."
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