There’s an old saying: Keep your friends close, and keep your nachos much closer.
From Tex-Mex to Italian spots, you’ll find nachos everywhere in Dallas. Nachos are season-free, unbound by Earth’s calendar, in a way few other dishes get to be. Nachos save lives in summer or during those special Dallas winters with pipe-breaking freezes. Nachos are hardy year-round, like cacti, and they’re as bountiful and binge-able as a season of Love Island.
When it comes to nachos, you might be picturing round chips with a bird-yellow, pump-action queso likely served in a toy helmet. But these eat more like an emergency than a soul-comforting appetizer.
Dallas’ iconic dives and some of its long-standing restaurants achieve something far greater with this 82-year-old snack.
It didn’t take long before nachos got labeled as Tex-Mex, but the first plate was reportedly served in Coahuila, Mexico, in 1940. In a recent New York Times story, author and chef Pati Jinich tracks the origin of the dish: Ignacio Anaya, who was known as Nacho and worked as a host at a restaurant in Piedras Negras, literally threw together a fast appetizer — fried tortilla chips, Colby cheese and pickled jalapeños — for a group of military wives traveling in from the Rio Grande. Decades later, Texas took notice:
“It was Frank Liberto, a businessman from Texas, who took nachos to the masses in the 1970s,” Jinich writes. “Mr. Liberto introduced ballpark nachos in 1976 at a Texas Rangers baseball game, then in 1977 at a Dallas Cowboys football game.”
Today, nearly 50 years later, you can find absolute solace in a plate of nachos that feels close to Anaya’s version. These life-changing local nachos are delivered compuestos (“compound”) style, which means the individual chip is layered with the eternally correct combo of beans, melted cheese and pickled jalapeños. This is peak nacho achievement.
Layered or scattered in a pile, quality chips lose their wholeness and structural integrity, or, worse, are left untouched by all of those toppings that worked hard to crown your surface layer of nachos. Finding yourself solo at a bar with a basket of individually topped nachos has a completeness, a just-for-you-ness that’s irreplaceable, and Dallas restaurant owners tend to agree.
“I was raised on compuestos-style in San Antonio, and I still crave those. It’s not the way I make them at Goodfriend, but they’re definitely my preference,” says David Peña, executive chef at Goodfriend Beer Garden in East Dallas. “Good tortillas, lard, beans, picadillo — it’s a perfect food.”
“Toppings on one chip only because there’s no way toppings hit all the chips in a trash can,” says Easy Slider co-owner Miley Holmes. Caroline Perini, the other half of Easy Slider, agrees: “I’m a toppings-on-one chip person. The nachos at the Landing are perfect in my book.”
Mariel Street, owner of local burger chain Liberty Burger, agrees: “At a restaurant, I’m a one-chip person.” She says the layered way is a “culinary cop-out.” “It’s really 95% chips and 5% good stuff.”
Lakewood Landing understands pile style. Under dim light and the cracking of pool balls, a plastic basket of beef nachos at Lakewood Landing is like going to church. I’m certain that I’ll be at the counter with a basket of their eight individually layered masterpiece nachos, served around salsa and sour cream like the face of a clock, never too few or too many, when the world is honest-to-god ending. Their chips remain crunchy to the bitter end, despite each carrying layers of smooth refried beans, Monterey Jack and cheddar cheeses, and seasoned beef all the way to the edge. The green onions showered on top of each nacho is always the greenest thing at the bar.
Two more gems with nachos you can dive into wholly are at Avila’s Mexican Restaurant on Maple Avenue and Desperados on Greenville Avenue. Both need to claim historical markers for their versions of the dish. Both have good beans, melted cheese that span half-moon chips chips alongside scoops of guacamole and sour cream. The pico de gallo is bright and crunchy and zapped all over with lime juice on both iterations. Desperados adds an electric scoop of pickled carrots and jicama. It makes for starry-eyed eating, and you’ll find the nachos mute all other distractions around you.
Do not forget E Bar’s nachos. The version at this decade-old bar, run by Tex-Mex restaurateur Eddie Cervantes, gets a few more amps from grilled onions and poblano peppers flung over each dressed nacho. Grilled fajita steak is the way to go — it usually arrives charred and tender. Carnivores should also rejoice at Mia’s, one of Dallas’ long-standing Tex-Mex joints with the bright walls and the ability to hunker down behind a carafe of salsa. Their nachos are straight comfort, each topped with few ingredients. It is simplicity in the form of tender cubes of steak scattered over chips that are absolutely blanketed in melted cheddar.