The Friar, the Chili, and the Beginning of an Empire

History tells us about Friar Bernardino de Sahaguin. Apparently, the good Friar was a little on the sweet side of heavy and liked to eat almost as much as he liked spreading the good word. The Friar also liked to explore. He was not afraid of his fellow man as much as some of his Conquistador compatriots who were also exploring the hinterland of what we now call Mexico. During his travels, the huge monk with the travel-stained robes was more afraid of missing a meal than he was of any discomfort, tragedy, or even language barriers that might keep him away from all of his goals.

Once upon a time, when Friar Bernardino was especially keen on making new friends and increasing the spread of almost everything in the New World, he came across a clan of cooking women who would later be identified as the lovely ladies of the Aztec people.

The women were indeed remarkable. They worked together well and were extremely efficient. The aroma that attracted Friar Bernardino to a cozy little arroyo was incredible. The women were cooking over a series of stone ovens, and the tight little canyon in which they were producing the mouthwatering savory scent was a perfect kitchen. Rows of roughhewn beams and overhead thatching set the scene, covering the ovens, and by the time the good Friar crossed under the shady threshold, the tiny women who were grinding chili peppers and making the savory red stew knew what he wanted.

After his first meal, that was most probably the origin of modern-day chili, Bernardino was so inspired he recorded his delight and findings in his travel journal that eventually made it back to Spain.

Many years later, Spanish cattle ranchers and cowboys began to add beef to the pots of chili pepper stew, and this addition would have no doubt delighted Friar Bernardo even more. The next chapter in the recipe and culmination of modern chili came with settlers from the Canary Islands. These folks were big fans of hot and spicy but also were in love with garlic and the earthy essence of cumin. By the 1700s, the spicy pepper stew of Friar Bernardino and the lovely Aztec women of the arroyo kitchen became much more of a heavy staple than the original ingredients.

During the middle 1800s, and especially after the California gold rush, wagon trains and Wild West cattle drives came across a new kind of fast food that became an easy way to feed everyone who was hungry, but also busy.

With a focus on quick and easy, but also fiery and delightful, chuck wagon cooks began to make chili bricks. These innovative time savers were nothing more than dried bricks of chili peppers and beef jerky. When a little coffee and whiskey, or even a canteen of water, brought the concoction into a mouthwatering boil above a campfire, the hard-working trail-hands were never happier.

By the late 1800s, Friar Bernardino would have been more than excited and hungry when a newfangled type of chili kitchen became a mobile home to the Chili Queens of Texas. The Chili Queens were another type of enterprising young women who were operating traveling chuck wagons in San Antonio. 

Even with Friar Bernardino’s best efforts, recipes, and travel journals, it was not until the World’s Fair Exposition of 1893 that chili became world famous. This brought the Chili Queens’ culinary delights into the mainstream of unforgettable, and with the publicity from the World’s Fair, spicy, hot, and savory, began to saddle up and head into the Midwest.

Almost like an unstoppable wild prairie fire, chili caught on about as quickly as a spark to kindling, and soon the cowboy-infused concoction that began with the Aztecs began to stew into something new business owners were calling chili parlors.

The chili parlors were as simple or extravagant as the local markets could stomach, and before a train whistle or a newfangled fire engine could sound even one alarm—let alone three—chili parlors had made it all the way to New York City!

Meanwhile, a few years later, and exactly 99 years ago from the present day, J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice opened a 12-seat root beer stand in Washington, DC. The homemade root beer stand was a big hit throughout the first summer, but when Halloween was over and November claimed the calendar, ice-cold root beer was not offering much appeal.

With JW worried and fretting about the future of his summertime root beer success, Alice fell into step with the generations before her. Realizing that innovation was always the key to survival and understanding that something savory had to come out of a business that once served only root beer, a determined Alice Marriott went to work.

Unbeknownst to her husband, Alice, in her best dress, blazed the trail over to the Mexican Embassy and rustled up the official Mexican recipe for hot chili tamales. With her husband at first dismayed and then delighted with the overwhelming success of the savory scents seeping out to attract the everyday folks on the streets of the nation’s capital, Marriott emerged into the food service industry.

Although Friar Bernardino, with chili stains on his travel-worn robes, might have been the first to sample a native delicacy that slowly but surely began to add more and more ingredients, he would—most likely—be very proud that a humble canyon kitchen with a timber roof and stone ovens would change cowboy history, and perhaps—not surprisingly, the culinary world.

Tom Williams is a Marco Islander and the author of two books: Lost and Found and Surround by Thunder—the Story of Darrell Loan and the Rocket Men. Both books are available on Kindle and Nook.