Jaunted

The Mexican restaurant was opened by George and Aurelia Salisbury in 1927 and now sits in a part of Koreatown that's less than well-maintained. In the last 80 years it's spawned a veritable archipelago of sister restaurants and spinoffs, stretching from the Westside to Pasadena. [Ed. Note: You will find Juliana at the Santa Monica location on most Friday nights.]

It's the kind of local institution where stars occasionally drop in just because that's what they've always done. Jack Nicholson, for instance, loves himself some El Cholo. The menu features ginormous servings of Mexican fare for a little under $10 a dish. The interior is also pretty big, with large banquet tables on one side, smaller tables on the other, and a full bar in between.

The margarita recipe that the restaurant uses was allegedly introduced in 1967. An El Cholo regular found himself dissatisfied with the alcohol content of the cocktails and, approaching the bartender, did what had to be done. Eventually the restaurant became the world's largest user of Cuervo 1800 Tequila and the first to introduce premium ingredients in a margarita. What we're saying is that these are not weak drinks.

Now the nachos thing. El Cholo has long claimed that they introduced nachos to Los Angeles in 1959, when their server Carmen Rocha did a little freestyling in the kitchen. Rocha ended up staying with El Cholo until a little before she died last October. She's part of the restaurant's image, featured on everything up to the postcards that they sell in the front.

When she died NPR ran a story entitled "Waitress Who Introduced L.A. To Nachos Dies." The LA Times ran their obit with the phrase "... Waitress Credited With Introducing L.A. To Nachos" in the headline.

The point, for those of you keeping track at home, is that Rocha brought nachos to LA from San Antonio. So it's weird that Kevin Roderick from LA Observed would then slam El Cholo for claiming that Rocha out-and-out invented the dish:

When longtime El Cholo waitress Carmen Rocha died in October, the L.A. media hailed her as the creator of nachos. It's not so, says chef and Travel Channel foodie Anthony Bourdain and his producers. On last night's "No Reservations" from along the U.S.-Mexico border, they gave the historical credit to Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya, said to have thrown together the first nachos in 1943 at an eatery in Piedras Negras. Wikipedia's users agree, for what it's worth, and say Anaya beat Rocha's first serving of the cheesy chips by 16 years.

This in turn prompted a frustrated "WTF?" press release from El Cholo:

El Cholo says through its publicist that the claim regarding Carmen Rocha has always been that she introduced nachos to Los Angeles. "We never claimed Carmen 'invented' Nachos," says owner and restaurateur Ron Salisbury in a release. "We have always stated that Carmen introduced them to the city as a special treat for her guests, and the recipe she used was based on an old family recipe she brought with her from her hometown in Texas."

[Photo: pixxiestails / Flickr]