Food, in the cowboy tradition, is usually more pragmatic than transcendent. Fajitas are a notable exception.Unless you happen to live in Texas — and possibly even then — forget everything you know about the fajitas in your local sorta-Mex restaurant. Shrimp or veggie fajitas? Pretenders to the throne.
In 1984, Texas A&M lecturer Homero Recio traced fajita history back to the ranches of 1930s south and west Texas. He also surmised that his grandfather, an butcher in Premont, Texas, helped coin the term.
“We talked to my grandmother, who was from northern Mexico, and she said she had never heard the name in Mexico,” Recio recalls, “But she had heard it from her husband, who was in south Texas.”
According to Recio, the Mexican cowboys known as vaqueros often received throwaway scraps as part of their pay, including the cow’s diaphragm, which helps hold in the animal’s innards. In Spanish, faja means belt or sash; fajita would be “little belt.”
The diaphragm, which we now call a skirt steak, is covered with a tough membrane that allowed the vaqueros to grill it outdoors directly on open mesquite coals — the prototypical fajita.
Fast forward to the late ‘60s, when Sonny “Fajita King” Falcon started selling fajitas in Kyle, 20 miles south of Austin. Falcon spread skirt-steak gospel at fairs throughout the state, finally opening a Fajita King stand in Austin in 1978. The dish sprang to nationwide success after a restaurant at the Austin Hyatt Regency put it on the menu in 1982.
Fame can corrupt a food, and absolute fame dealt fajitas a double blow. First, the price of skirt steaks — formerly one of the best deals at the meat counter — has skyrocketed. Second, the term “fajita” has come to represent nearly any grilled tidbit, marinated and served up sizzling hot with tortillas.
If you want a true fajita, fear not. Beginning last fall, Austin newspapers reported that Falcon, who left the food industry in the early 1980s, was staging a comeback in Kyle, where he started his fajita legacy in 1969.
So forget the canned mariachi music, strawberry margaritas and fajitas you think you know. A true American delicacy awaits, just north of the border.
