I’m Chiquito Quesito, and I’m here to say,
Cheese dip has to be made the Arkansas way
The jingle to go along with native Arksansan Bill Halstead’s reproducing (on 8/31) this silly dip pun he found on Facebook (from who knows what source):
(#1) The signage is for a dip in NOAD‘s sense 3a, wilfully misunderstood as about sense 2:noun dip: … 2 a thick sauce in which pieces of food are dunked before eating: tasty garlic dip. 3 [a] a brief downward slope followed by an upward one: the road’s precipitous dips and turns. [b] an act of sinking or dropping briefly before rising again: a dip in the share price.
And queso is short for chile con queso (‘chili with cheese’), which Wikipedia identifies as:
an appetizer or side dish of melted cheese and chili peppers, typically served in Tex-Mex restaurants as a dip for tortilla chips.
Now three further explorations: about dip signage; about dipspreads and dips in general, and varieties of queso in particular; and then some Facebook exchanges with Bill Halstead about cheese dip as a significant item in Arkansas’s food culture.
Dip signage. A characteristic warning sign (from the Sigo Signs Store on Amazon):
(#2) Alternatively readable as a promise of some dunking sauce coming up
Some of the dip signage available:
DIP, HIDDEN DIP, DIP AHEAD, CAUTION DIP AHEAD, SMALL DIP AHEAD, DOUBLE DIP AHEAD
[Digression on defaced signs. Some of the DIP signs have been defaced by further material handprinted on them. At least four types (in the examples the original DIP on the sign is underlined; the other material is the added stuff):
— DIP understood as ‘sauce’: BEAN DIP, CLAM DIP
— DIP as a syllable in a longer word: SERENDIPITY, DIPLODOCUS (with a rough dinosaur drawing)
— DIP understood as other than ‘slope’ or ‘sauce’: SKINNY DIP (with DIP ‘a brief swim’)
— DIP as an imperfect pun: DONKEY DIP (with DIP a pun on DICK ‘penis’)]
Cheese-based dips. The larger world in which these are located is that of the condiments I’ve called dipspreads. From my 7/26/13 posting “Benedictine and its kin”, about Benedictine / Benedictine Spread, a condiment made with cucumbers and cream cheese:
Benedictine is a foodstuff that belongs to a conceptual category I’ll call DIP/SPREAD, for which there is no standard label in English; I’ll use the invented label dipspread. Dipspreads are thick enough to function as spreads … But dipspreads are also thin enough (or can easily be thinned a bit) to function as dips
(Many of them will also work as sauces, for salads or on cooked foodstuffs.) The world of dipspreads then embraces hummus, bean dip, guacamole, caviar, clam dip, baba ghanoush, and much more, including cheese-based dips. Notably the dips associated with Mexican and southwestern cooking, eaten with chips of some kind — but, as it turns out, also coming from various other traditions; Wikipedia has separate entries for cheese sauce, chile con queso, beer cheese (spread), pub cheese, cheddar sauce, and dipping sauce.
Mexico Chiquito and the cheese dip of Arkansas. Return with me now to Bill Halstead on Facebook on 8/31:
— BH (in Sells AZ): IYKYK [‘if you know, you know’] All that is offered in these Northern wastelands is [Queso] Blanco. Blecho.
— AZ (in Palo Alto CA): Yes, but where are the chips?
— Ellen Evans (in Oakland CA) > AZ: In California. With the good cheese.
— BH: I was weaned on the OG [‘original’] cheese dip — Mexico Chiquito, Protho Junction [AR]. Of course, it’s been 40 years, but that stuff looms large in my memory. I am sure if I were to visit one of the remaining Chiquitos, it would not match what lives in memory.
I’ve tried to fill in some of the stuff that might make this more interpretable to people who aren’t plugged into BH’s sociocultural world, but now I need to dive in deeper.
Ok, so Queso Blanco, described by someone who (unlike BH) really likes it: from Mary Younkin’s Barefeet in the Kitchen site, “The BEST Queso Blanco Dip” from 12/16/22:
Queso Blanco Dip is a creamy, spicy, perfectly smooth and cheesy dip just like they serve at your favorite Mexican restaurant. Queso blanco is a melted cheese dip that’s delicious every which way you eat it.
… Smother a burrito with this queso, pour it on a burger, drizzle it across roasted potatoes, pour it over Spanish rice, layer in into nachos or dip your chips in it. However you enjoy this Queso Blanco Dip, it’s sure to knock your socks off.
… The BEST Queso Blanco Dip starts with combining white American cheese, chopped green chiles and pickled jalapenos in a bowl. Milk, water, cumin and just a little juice from the pickled jalapenos are added before the whole thing goes in the microwave.
(Note that it works as a dip, a spread, and a sauce.)
Its offense in BH’s eyes is that it’s bland, all white instead of the intense yellow or orange of (regular) queso dip. (Note that there’s no special vocabulary for yellow / orange queso dip; it’s just queso dip, the (literally) unmarked stuff.)
On to Mexico Chiquito. First, Spanish chico ‘boy, guy, dude’ and its diminutive chiquito ‘(little) kid’ (affectionate). Mexico Chiquito is then the affectionate name of a Tex-Mex restaurant, originating in the Prothro Junction area of North Little Rock AR and noted for bringing a new food culture to Arkansas (Arkansas abuts Texas, but Little Rock is about 300 miles from Dallas / Fort Worth, and around 600 miles from San Antonio and Hispanic Texas, so Mexico Chiquito was a genuine importation).
The restaurant’s logo, and the puffery (and possibly fabulizing) About page on its website:
(#3) The logoThere was no cheese dip as we know it before Mexico Chiquito created the dish in 1935. There was no fruit punch as we know it before it debuted the same year at the same humble, dirt-floor restaurant in the Prothro Junction area of North Little Rock, Arkansas. Blackie Donnally introduced those Tex-Mex staples – plus enchiladas and tacos – to Arkansas (and the world) after he and his wife moved to the state from Texas.
In 1979, Jerry Haynie bought the restaurant and expanded it into a mini-chain across central Arkansas, growing the footprint but wisely not changing the recipes. Haynie was already a veteran successful restaurant owner, and his five daughters grew up working in his eateries – Mexico Chiquito and more.
After Haynie’s death in 2011, his daughters took over the business and as one of the top woman-owned restaurants in Arkansas, Mexico Chiquito continues to serve a loyal fan base with the great food that’s defined Tex-Mex since 1935.
And then, from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas:
Cheese dip is considered to be an important part of Arkansas’s food culture.
… a cheese dip, according to the rules of the World Cheese Dip Championships, is defined as “a dip made of primarily cheese(s) or processed cheese product, with or without additional ingredients, not limited to meats, vegetables, or dairy additives, served warm or hot and eaten primarily by dipping a hard tortilla or chip into said product.” The most popular variation involves processed cheese, such as Velveeta or Kraft, mixed with chili sauce [such as Ro-Tel (canned tomatoes and green chillies)], but there are thousands of recipes that use various types of cheese [AZ: including those that insist on good cheddar cheese rather than processed cheese food; tastes diverge strongly on this point].
(There’s nothing like legalistic definitions: with or without, not limited to, said product.)
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