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El Fenix- El Fenix, opened in 1918 by Miguel Martinez, was the founding restaurant of Tex-Mex. Before El Fenix, Mexican food was not really served in a restaurant setting, and also had not spread past San Antonio. El Fenix is so revolutionary to Tex-Mex because it created the cuisine, taking authentic Mexican food recipes and beefing them up with more protein in order to make the food appeal to the new American audience. El Fenix was also one of the first Dallas restaurants to install an air conditioning unit, showing further how revolutionary the restaurant was to the dining scene in Dallas. El Fenix started in an area of Dallas called Little Mexico and became and inspired the creation of the businesses the fueled the area,
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Mariano’s, founded by one of the grandsons of an El Chico founder, was founded in 1971, and soon after created the first ever frozen margarita. Before the frozen margarita was invented, the cocktail of choice in America was the martini, and tequila was not a super popular liquor to have on your shelf. Since the 1971 invention, margaritas have far surpassed the martini as the most ordered beverage and having a Tex-Mex restaurant with good drinks has become just as important as having good food. Mariano’s helped define a new age of Tex-Mex and made the cuisine popular and …show more content…
While the true origins of chili are somewhat debated, who made it popular is not. Sometime after the Civil war between 1860 and 1880, chili began being sold by a group of women named “The Chili Queens”. The chili was sold with tamales and for only a dime. The first time Chili is ever mentioned in print is 1882 in Gould’s Guide to San Antonio, where he mentions that chili con carne was available all around the Military Plaza in San Antonio. There is evidence that chili con carne existed and thrived in Texas long before its first time mentioned in print, but because of interstate rail roads that began to connect San Antonio to the rest of the United States in the 1880’s, the 1880’s might have been the first time that chili con carne was spread farther than just through cattle trails in