How important are tortilla chips at Fuzzy’s Taco Shop? Muy importante. The world of Mexican food revolves around tortilla chips if you really think about it. They are generally the first thing you eat when you sit down for a Mexican meal, whether it’s with salsa, guacamole or queso, and are included in many other dishes (hello, nachos!).
But where did they come from? Believe it or not, their inception wasn’t really on purpose…
*Flashback music*
In the 1940s, a Los Angeles Mexican delicatessen owner named Rebecca Webb Carranza decided to put to use the leftover and misshapen tortilla dough accumulating on the tortilla factory floor. No need to be wasteful, right? Carranza discovered that the discarded dough, cut into triangles and fried, could be the next big thing. She began to sell them for a dime a bag at the El Zarape Tortilla Factory.
They were initially called tostadas, which in Spanish means “little triangles of heaven.” (Okay, not really.)
It wasn’t long before the folks at Frito-Lay took notice. They quickly realized they needed in on this tostada action and began making the chips themselves. They named them “Doritos,” Spanish for “little golden things.” (That one is true.)
You might be thinking, “But Doritos aren’t tortilla chips; they’re just crack in the shape of triangles.”
Well, believe it or not, at the base of all the flavoring and magic Doritos dust is a plain ol’ tortilla chip.
Other manufacturers saw Doritos’ success and joined in, creating tortilla chips of their own and selling them to the masses. The popularization of salsa, refried beans and guacamole gave further rise to the popularity of tortilla chips.
America was obsessed.
Rebecca Webb Carranza would go on to receive the Golden Tortilla award for her influence on the Mexican food industry. This despite the fact that the Tamalina Milling Company claims to have invented tortilla chips first. (The Tamalina Milling Company is to tortilla chips what the Winklevoss twins are to Facebook.)
At Fuzzy’s, we treat our tortilla chips with the respect they deserve. Our guests do, too, sprinkling them with Fuzzy dust and dunking them into one of our many dips. And, knowing what you know now, we trust you’ll never take the humble tortilla for granted again (especially when it’s slathered in cheese).
