the.com/fajita
a humble cowboy scrap that learned to make an entire dining room turn its head.
means A Tex-Mex dish of grilled meat — traditionally skirt steak — cut into strips and served sizzling with tortillas, peppers, and onions.
from From Spanish 'faja,' meaning 'belt,' 'sash,' or 'strip,' with the diminutive '-ita' — so a fajita is literally a 'little strip' or 'little belt.' The name nods to the cut of beef it began with: skirt steak, the long strip of muscle from the cow's diaphragm. The word and dish are tied to the ranch culture of South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, where Mexican-American vaqueros were often paid in cheap, tough cuts like skirt steak and made them delicious. 'Fajita' entered wider American English only in the latter half of the 20th century, as the dish leapt from the ranch to the restaurant.
- origin
- Born from skirt steak ranch hands earned as pay
- name meaning
- Spanish for little belt or strip
- the sizzle
- That dramatic hiss is pure tableside theater
- first famous
- Popularized in 1970s Texas borderland restaurants
- purists insist
- Only skirt steak counts as truly authentic
el torito fajita sizzle — mexican restaurant chain that popularized fajitas in the us starting in the 1970s with tableside sizzling platters
matthew martinez el rancho — el rancho hotel restaurant in new mexico where a tex-mex cook is credited with inventing the fajita around 1930s