Houston Queso appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Tex-Mex queso · Houston
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.
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.
Where to eat in Houston:
- The Original Ninfa's on Navigation
- Hugo's