Yellow cheese melted with chillies, tomatoes and sometimes ground chorizo or beef, served bubbling in a black cast-iron skillet with warm flour tortillas or tortilla chips.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Chile con queso, the white-cheese-and-green-chilli original, runs back to early-20th-century San Antonio. The Houston yellow-Velveeta-and-Rotel version emerged after Rotel canned diced tomatoes hit shelves in 1943. Through the 1970s the Original Ninfa's and Felix Mexican Restaurant standardised the Houston restaurant queso: an orange-yellow pool, bubbling, with a side of taco meat or chorizo to fold in. Today every Tex-Mex room has a queso, and elevated rooms (Hugo's, Cuchara) build white versions with poblano or chorizo verde. The bubbling skillet, queso on the table before the menu hits, is canonical.
Common allergens: Dairy
Tip from the editors. Real Tex-Mex queso uses American cheese (or Velveeta) for the melt. Aged cheddar or Monterey Jack will separate. Don't fight the orange.
The Original Ninfa's on Navigation in Houston is Ninfa Laurenzo's 1973 Tex-Mex room, the birthplace of the restaurant fajita, still serving skirt steak tacos.
Signature: Fajitas (tacos al carbon), Ninfaritas
Order: Fajitas (tacos al carbon) for two, a Ninfarita on the rocks, queso and chips.
Tip: Back patio under the strings of lights beats the front room. The bar opens 90 minutes before the dining room.
Hugo's Sunday brunch in Houston is Hugo Ortega's Mexican buffet on Westheimer Road, with chilaquiles, three moles, sopes, churros and the regional Mexican.
Order: The buffet itself: chilaquiles, mole, sopes, churros
Tip: 12pm seating sells out two weeks ahead; 10am seating is easier. Tableside hot chocolate is the closing course.
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