I’ve been beating this drum for months now and finally we’re getting somewhere. The push to get an official state food for Arizona has hit the front page of the New York Times:

PHOENIX — Florida has its key lime pie, Idaho its potatoes and Georgia favors grits as its official state food. Arizona, hungry to lay claim to a state food of its own, is circling the chimichanga.

There is a fierce rivalry here over who exactly dropped the first burrito into a vat of hot oil and thus invented the chimichanga. But evidence supports the contention that the first mouth to savor the fried concoction, and the first stomach to churn in torment from it, may well have been that of an Arizonan.

Read the rest of the story here.

This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2011.

5 replies on “Chimichanga for Arizona State Food: New York Times Edition”

  1. I am so for a state food, but am not sold on it being the chimi. While it is a fine food in all its glorious caloric goodness, I still have reservations about borrowing from another countries cuisine for OUR state food. (I know, I know the first chimi was dropped here, blah blah blah…. its STILL mexican food)

  2. Chimis are all right, I guess – but the cheese crisp was actually invented in Arizona, and doesn’t seem to exist in most other places. Wiki even thinks it was El Charo that popularized it:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_chees…

    As to the objection that Mexican food is too ‘ethnic’ to be a state food – there really aren’t any alternatives. Arizona isn’t even 100 years old yet, and the foods that were eaten here before the state was formed are all pretty much Mexican or Indian in origin. It’s not as though Denny’s restaurants sprang up spontaneously here on February 15th, 1912.

    So, you know, deal with the reality.

  3. Fist of all I never said “too ethnic”

    Secondly, I would NEVER and HAVE NEVER campaigned for anything dennys-esque thank you very much.

    I am simply saying, Arizona’s State food, should be distinctly ARIZONAN!

    So, you know, deal with the reality of the term “Arizona State Food”

  4. The objection to a chimi was that it was ‘[M]exican food’. To say that’s not a gesture toward ethnicity is disingenuous.

    What, one wonders, is ‘Arizonan’ style food?

  5. I see your point in saying it is a gesture toward ethnicity, however that is not the case. I think that Arizona has plenty of ethnic influence, without being simply hijacked from another ethnicity.

    ie: A Jano’s menu.

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