Like pizza and yogurt, nachos are a formerly foreign food that has been totally absorbed by U.S. popular culture. All three dishes ascended concurrently in the expansive years after World War II, when so many middle-class Americans sought to broaden their cultural and culinary horizons. The moment of creation is supposed to have happened in 1943, at a restaurant in Piedras Negras, Mexico, when a group of U.S. Army wives came to eat and a maitre d’ nicknamed Nacho realized that the kitchen’s supplies had dwindled to little more than tortillas and cheese. Señor Nacho cooked the tortillas crisp, broke them into pieces, and melted cheese on top. He subsequently went on to open his own restaurant, named Nachos, and pretty soon the dish in its simplest form began to appear on Tex-Mex menus all along the border and up into the Southwest.
The introduction of Cheez Whiz in the early 1950s, and then Doritos in 1964, made nachos very easy to make as well as fun to eat, and in the mid-1970s they began appearing in sports stadiums and then at movie concession stands. Ordinary toppings include jalapeño chips, chopped olives, and salsa. Guacamole, seasoned ground beef, and refried beans are not uncommon. But there is no limit to nachos’ anything-goes personality. “Nachos Jorge,” a specialty of Pico’s restaurant in Houston, are topped with peppered pork baked in banana leaves and shredded atop the chips along with marinated onions, black beans, guacamole, hot jalapeños, and melted Chihuahua cheese. We have encountered nachos topped with fried oysters, crab meat, Italian sausage, bratwurst, and sauerbraten (separately—not all on one heap of chips).