The Heyday of Chili Con Carne

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The Heyday of Chili Con Carne

The official state dish reached its apotheosis in the era of San Antonio’s Chili Queens.

by JOHN NOVA LOMAX SEPTEMBER 29, 2017

Juanita and Esperanza Garcia making tortillas; San Antonio, Texas, September 12, 1937. (When this story was originally published it was about the fact the city health deptartment ordered the chili stands to close down). These two women, along with their mother, were planning to open an indoor cafe.

Last month, we brought you 13 Comments, focusing specifically on its first contact with Anglo Texans and its role in the origins of Tex-Mex cuisine. In addition to discussing the height of the popularity of San Antonio’s Chili Queens, we’ll explore chili’s conquest of America via dispatches from old San Antonio, the dawning of its mass production, and the road to its modern role as Texas’s official state dish.  

Chili con carne has been sold in San Antonio’s plazas since 1813, and first started attracting outside notice in 1877, a few years before San Antonio was linked to the rest of America via railroads. In 1881, around the time trains started rumbling into town, a reporter from Greenville, Alabama set the tone for what would become decades of purple prose about chili con carne (or “chille cancarne,” as he spelled it) when he sent these words, perhaps the earliest full outside account of a visit to a chili stand, back to his editor: