Here’s an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette about Chicksandqueso.com
LITTLE ROCK — Annemarie Dillard is crazy for queso.
“I’d bring it in a Thermos and eat it for lunch,” Annemarie recalled, dreamily, of her days at Pulaski Academy.
Her sisters and their mother share her love.
Not a problem as long as they stayed close to central Arkansas, the birthplace of cheese dip, where even pizza restaurants and burger joints glop it over tortilla chips and french fries.
As the young women flew the coop, however, they discovered the greater world is cheese-dip challenged.
Fortunately for Annemarie, her family, and, for that matter, the entire Newnited States, one of her sisters married a fellow who pays attention to matters of great import.
(Of course, he would. He’s a news anchor in Orlando.)
Upon coming to Arkansas, Craig Lucie, who grew up in Florida, which is to say he grew up cheese-dip deprived, was astonished. Cheese dip, he discovered, is more than a menu item: “It’s a way of life.”
After he had married into the family, Craig discovered in a “study” of cheese-dip demographics that, in large measure (and how else would you eat cheese dip?), cheese dip is a chick thing.
His wife, and mother- and sisters-in-law confirmed his conclusion.
So for the love of family and melted Velveeta, Craig stepped into the worldwide queso gap and launched an Internet site devoted to Arkansas’ culinary contribution. He calls it Chicks and Queso, a name, he assures me, that is OK with the chicks in his life.
(See chicksandqueso.com.)
“I just created it for my wife, her sisters and her mom,” the 29-year-old Floridian said Monday.
“Totally for fun.”
He posted recipes for cheese dip and listed restaurants that serve it.
The chicks in his life were so enthusiastic about it that they put it on Facebook pages, and next thing they know, it’s catching on.
People are sending recipes and links to videos that demonstrate how to make queso. It’s a clearinghouse for all things queso. “A one stop shop,” Craig says.
Craig will soon post the queso recipe that will best go with the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Annemarie figures she wasn’t even walking yet the first time she tasted cheese dip, probably at Way Out Willies, one of her family’s favorite spots.
“I could eat it for every meal,” says Annemarie, director of contemporary sportswear for the company that bears her family’s name.
She agrees with her brother-in-law’s assessment about women and queso. “I don’t know what it is, but I have more friends that are enthusiasts who are women. I know people who will eat it with a spoon.”
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New Events Added to World Champion Cheese Dip Festival
Kerry Kraus
NaturalStateBlogger@gmail.com
Those cheese dip festival people are at it again. Always looking for ways to increase the public’s enjoyment at their event, they’ve added some new attractions: a cheese dip eating contest and a boat and RV super sale. All of this and more takes place on September 24.
In announcing the additions, the Southern Cheese Dip Academy said “Our friends at http://chicksandqueso.com/ are sponsoring the inaugural World Cheese Dip Championship Chow Down, a cheese dip eating contest that will take place at halftime of the Arkansas/Alabama football game. The game will be shown on the large screen at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock.
The stadium will also be the site of the 3rd Annual Arkansas Boat & RV Super Sale, where guests can browse new and used boats, RVs, motorcycles, and ATVs in the parking lot outside at no cost. The Super Sale show hours will be Friday, September 23, from noon until 7 p.m., Saturday, September 24, from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. and Sunday, September 25, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
September is Hunger Action Month so attendees are asked to bring canned food donations which will be given to the Arkansas Food Bank.
Tickets for the World Cheese Dip Championship are now on sale at all Pulaski and Saline County USA Drug stores. The cost of admission is $10 for adults; children ages 10 and under attend for free. Tickets will also be available at War Memorial Stadium on the day of the event. Proceeds benefit the Harmony Health Clinic. The official website www.CheeseDip.net has a full schedule of events.
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How much do they love QUESO (Sorry CHEESE DIP) in Arkansas? They made a MOVIE about it!!!!
You can watch it here:
http://vimeo.com/6608438
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“In Queso Fever: A Movie About Cheese Dip” http://vimeo.com/6608438About this video: “A light-hearted documentary exploring the birth and popularity of cheese dip in central Arkansas.” |
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An article on the history of when CHICKS started eating QUESO/CHEESE DIP:
From The Arkansas Times/www.arktimes.com
Little Rock’s essence? It’s cheese dip
My first wife, and this was long ago because we married much too young and split predictably and quickly, brought to our otherwise ill-advised union a recipe for cheese dip.
It tasted much like the classic signature dish of Little Rock’s Mexico Chiquito restaurant, which, I am now told, may well qualify as the world’s original cheese dip.
Little Rock’s culinary culture may be defined not by catfish or barbecue or the plate lunch, but by cheese melted with peppers and spices.
Anyway, my childhood sweetheart departed for unknown points west and I lost the recipe.
I’ve spent four decades, nearly, trying to duplicate it. I know all the ingredients. I know the process. I just don’t know the amounts — of cumin, chili powder, paprika, dry mustard, garlic powder, ketchup and … well,
I’m telling too much.
I can get mighty close. It’s tasty nearly every time, unless I get it a tad floury.
You need a double-boiler. You make kind of a roux. You top it off with jalapeno peppers.
One trick is getting the heat just right for the next application.
And it is a common misconception that you must use Velveeta. A block of Kraft Deluxe American Cheese, shredded, does the melting and absorption trick better than Velveeta.
You can’t really shred Velveeta, its being such a processed glob. The best thing to do with Velveeta is to compress it into a little ball and throw it at somebody.
You wondering where I’m going with this. So I’ll tell you.
I’m going on October 9 to Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock to the first annual world championship cheese dip contest, underwritten by Kraft Velveeta and Ro*Tel, the classic combination for quick-and-easy cheese dip.
I don’t so much care for it, having been exposed to the greater virtue of Mexico Chiquito’s and a home-cooked imitation.
I don’t intend to enter. I simply want to revel in this historic celebration.
What happened was that I ventured out the other evening to the 4th annual Little Rock Film Festival for a showing of short Arkansas-made documentary films, one of which — titled “In Queso Fever: A Movie about Cheese Dip,” was young lawyer Nick Rogers’ 31-minute exploration.
He’d grown up in Little Rock absorbed in cheese dip, then ventured elsewhere in the country to learn, as many of us have learned, that this culinary icon was much harder to find the further you got from his hometown.
His research led him to assert, until someone proves otherwise, that the first commercial cheese dip ever concocted and served took place in the early 1930s at a dirt-floored Mexican establishment in Prothro Junction called Mexico Chiquito.
What apparently happened after that was that Little Rockians, addicted to this stuff, came to believe that cheese dip was a Mexican staple, and newcomers to the Little Rock Mexican restaurant scene were obliged to offer the dish.
But it’s not really Mexican. It’s not actually Tex-Mex. It’s Ark-Mex. To be more precise: It’s more a Little Rock thing than an Arkansas thing.
Nachos, chips slathered in cheese sauce, came along much later, in the 1940s.
So Rogers’ movie research led him to the headquarters of Kraft and Ro*Tel, which, prompted by his queries, decided to promote the joint use of their products by favoring him with seed money to throw this first world cheese dip contest right here on the Arkansas River.
There’ll be cheese dip judging, salsa tasting, chip-making, live music, festival-styled exhibits and the Arkansas-Texas A&M football game blazed on the ballpark’s big screen.
It could become — and should become — the quintessential Arkansas event.
By the way: Rogers’ movie is very nearly stolen by editor Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times. He has a certain exuberant eloquence when it comes to food and he applies it here in a near-poetic description of the act of plunging the sturdy scoop-shaped Frito chip into a dense cheesy substance.
For more about the movie and the festival, just go, of course, to cheesedip.net.
I should mention that any cheese dip contest proceeds will go to an organization sponsoring free health services for poor people.
Cheese dip championship satisfies a variety of tastes
Creamy and thin or chunky and thick; spicy and white or mild and yellow; without meat or jazzed up with ground beef, pork sausage or even crawfish, cheese dip is as varied as the people who celebrated it Saturday in North Little Rock.
The first World Cheese Dip Championship was held at Dickey-Stephens Park and may have been too much of a success. Event director John McClure said the 30 or so professional and amateur cheese dip chefs went through 250 four-pound cases of tortilla chips within the first hour and a half of opening at 11 a.m.
“I just bought 30 more cases,” he said about 2:45 p.m. “I’d say that’s pretty successful. We didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. This will lead to a bigger and better event next year.”
Some of the competitors had already run out of dip by 3 p.m. and were just milling around waiting for judging at 7 p.m. In some cases where there were no chips, people slurped the gooey goodness down like shots of tequila.
In addition to cash, the best amateur’s recipe will be featured on the menu at the Capital Hotel’s fine-dining spot, Ashley’s. The professional winner is invited to participate in the 2011 Roadfood Festival in New Orleans, a celebration of regionally significant cuisine.
Proceeds from the event will benefit Harmony Health Clinic in Little Rock, which provides free care to low-income patients.
Competitors in the professional category included restaurants like Mexico Chiquito and Conway’s Stoby’s, both of which are well-known for their cheese dip, as well as others like Ferneau and Dizzy’s in Little Rock.
Mary Lawrence, a paralegal at Mitchell Williams law firm, was among the amateur competitors. The firm is a sponsor for the event, and Lawrence won her office cheese-dip contest with a creamy concoction that uses cream cheese, sour cream, chives, sausage and a secret salsa recipe in addition to the common Rotel brand chilies and tomatoes.
Rotel and Velveeta were also among the event’s sponsors.
“I started out with the cream cheese and sausage and Rotel, and just kept going from there,” she said.
Her mother, Claudia Sewell, was helping Lawrence fill tiny sample cups for guests. She said Lawrence always loved to tinker in the kitchen.
“Anything in the kitchen she would put in the pot and try it,” Sewell said laughing. “Everything but the kitchen sink.”
Upon tasting Lawrence’s cream cheese dip, Miranda Wright exclaimed: “Oh. Is that cream cheese?” She returned for a second helping.
“This one is my favorite. The first thing I tasted was the cream cheese. The first thing that he tasted was the sour cream,” she said motioning to her boyfriend, Ced Pennington, who didn’t seem too impressed with Lawrence’s dip.
“My favorite was Dizzy’s,” he said. “It was real good. It had red chilies, green chilies, and whatever else they put in it, they did the right thing.”
Some attendees could be seen carrying their own supplies of corn chips and flavored tortilla chips. One family even arrived with muffin tins, which made good trays for the small sample cups.
The group – dad, Brian Sokolosky; mom, Jan; daughter, Jessie; and son, Drew – was torn over which dip was best of the eight or nine samples tried within an hour and a half.
Jessie raved about the Ferneau submission, which included crawfish. Her dad said he strongly supported Hogs and Kisses’ dip, which had beef.
McClure said he likes it all.
“I really don’t discriminate,” he said. “White or yellow, spicy or mild, meat or no meat, I’ll try it all. I just don’t trust my cooking skills. I leave that part to the professionals.”
Home of Hogs and… cheese dip?
In the matter of cheese dip, Nick Rogers is unequivocal: Central Arkansas is its birthplace and the cheese-dip capital of the United States.
Blackie Donnelly, who opened Mexico Chiquito, concocted the first commercial cheese dip here in the 1930s, Nick says.
Nick, a North Little Rock homeboy, put his macho queso dip where his mouth is in a documentary that he released last year. Nick, a lawyer, is ready to rumble with anyone who cares to challenge.
The absence of cheese dip made Nick’s taste buds grow fonder as he spent 10 years in Florida, St. Louis and New York, where he interned in Bill Clinton’s Harlem office.
“I started to notice that many of my comfort foods weren’t available,” he says, cheese dip among them.
He realized, conversely, that cheese dip appears in a plethora of places in central Arkansas.
Mexico Chiquito’s cheese dip, his first as a kid, remains his favorite.
“It’s a little bit like religion and politics,” he says. “You stay loyal to what you were raised with without questioning it.”
Lee Richardson, executive chef at the Capital Hotel, appears in Nick’s documentary, In Queso Fever: A Movie About Cheese Dip (www.
nickscheesedipdoc.
com).
Chef Lee does not serve cheese dip at either of the hotel’s restaurants, Ashley’s or Capital Bar and Grill. He prefers handcrafted items for his menus, and a processedcheese product wouldn’t fit his themes.
He is quick to say, however, that he does not oppose cheese dip on moral grounds.
“I find it just as difficult,” he admits, “to step away from the bowl as anybody else.”
Nick’s documentary inspired John McClure, a local events promoter and self-confessed cheese-dip addict, to propose to Nick the idea of a World Cheese Dip Championship. The event of their collaboration will debut at noon Saturday at Dickey-Stephens field. (You can watch the Razorback-Texas A&M game on a big screen.) Velveeta and RO*TEL are among the sponsors.
A $5 ticket buys a 2-ounce tasting cup; the $10 admission buys a 4-ouncer and membership in the Southern Cheese Dip Academy.
In Nick’s documentary, you can see Chef Lee soften for Nick’s cheesedip evangelism.
“It’s easy for me to agree … that it’s important in bringing people together socially,” he told me Friday. “I certainly value it for that.”
Chef Lee will put his menu where his mouth is: For a month, he will serve the champion amateur cheese dip in one of his restaurants. Hint: It won’t be Ashley’s.
World Cheese Dip fest not for Swissies, faint of havarti
A wise philosopher once declared, “It ain’t easy being cheesy.”
OK, so it was an animated feline- Chester Cheetah in those 1980s Cheetos commercials.
But having survived last weekend’s inaugural World Championship Cheese Dip Festival at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock, I can say that cat knew what he was talking about.
Spending a day chomping cheese dip and chips can be hard – well, since we’re talking about melted cheese here, let’s say “semi-firm” – work.
And we weren’t quite up to the challenge.
We “brie”-zed into the event thinking this would be a piece of cheesecake.
We could have bought the $5 amateur armbands, entitling wearers to small sample cups of the dips cooked up by amateurs and professionals. But we figured we’d be big cheeses and go for the $10 VIP bands empowering wearers to more substantial servings, voting rights and a cheese dip discount card to use at participating restaurants.
We should have “queso”- ed the crowded stadium better when we arrived – just 90 minutes into the festival, when lines were long and at least one depleted purveyor had already packed up. We would have noticed that one vendor was supplying handy stadium nacho trays to secure chips and plastic dip cups.
Instead we started where vendors only had napkins and plastic cups to clumsily contain chips. It was awkward trying to scoop and snack while standing and balancing beverages. (I suppose we “curd” have sat in the stands, but that would have separated us slightly from the food, and our inner “muensters” would have none of that.)
Still we managed, resorting to my companion’s shirt pocket as an impromptu chip bag. (Unsophisticated? Absolutely. But consider the occasion. This was a fromage dip fete.) Next year, we vowed, we’re getting even cheesier: fanny packs and beverage belts.
We quickly realized we “gouda” gotten away with just paying the $5 – after all, we noticed all vendors ladled the same amount of melted goodness (in most cases; a few concoctions were a bit watery and weak) regardless of attendees’ armband color.
Besides, testing just a few concoctions that ranged from meaty, mild and mellow to smooth, spicy and even shellfishy (the blackened crawfish in Ferneau’s inventive creation), we started to feel full with more than half of the vendors still unvisited.
We left, though not de-“feta”-ed! We vowed to digest and return later that night. But hours later, we still had no room and friends reported the first-time festival was such a hit that vendors had no cheese dip by early evening.
So we’ll look forward to the chance to “fondue” it again in the future when everyone is “cheddar” prepared.