Witte Museum Opens Texas Food History Exhibit

The Witte Museum has opened an exhibit tracing 1,300 years of Texas food history in one 5,500-square-foot gallery.

Gather 'Round the Table: Texas Food Traditions moves from Caddo corn cultivation around 700 A.D. to Rico Torres and Diego Galicia at Mixtl, the Michelin-starred Southtown restaurant. Between those bookends, the gallery holds videos, historic photographs, shadow boxes, interactive tables, and glass-encased displays covering ingredients, innovations, and the people behind Texas foods. A mortar and pestle for grinding corn appears in one case; another traces the origin of the puffy taco. Black-and-white photographs show Ray's Drive-Inn, the five Lopez brothers, and Henry Lopez, who started Henry's Puffy Tacos in 1978. A caption notes that Raymond H. "Ray" Lopez opened Ray's Drive Inn in 1956 with a menu built around family favorites including the Crispy Dog and the Puffy Taco, first advertised as a 'Crispy Taco.'

Corn anchors the exhibit. An exhibit label states that each summer's corn harvest connects Texas to Mesoamerican roots and that corn remains essential in nearly every Texas kitchen, whether roasted, in a cup, as cornbread, corn fritters, grits, or dishes made from handmade masa. The gallery also lays out regional crops and products: peaches in the Hill Country, citrus in the Rio Grande Valley, oysters on the Gulf Coast, peanuts and pecans in South Texas.

The Witte team of 80 finished building the exhibit in September. The planning work took nearly five months. Nalleli Guillen, the museum's vice president of interpretation and curator of history, said Texans were interviewed about food memories while the exhibit was being planned. Experiences from chef Johnny Hernandez, who recalled rolling tortillas with his grandmother, led the team to expand one section beyond its original scope. "Texans are foodies," Guillen said. "People love their barbecue. Their Tex-Mex. 'Gather 'Round The Table' is what we hope is an accessible way for people to enter and think about Texas history and culture."

Six "food fights" run through the exhibit, posing questions such as red salsa or green salsa, corn tortillas versus flour tortillas, and chili with beans or without. Visitors cast votes by placing chips into acrylic tubes for their choice. Guillen expected "no beans" to win the chili question easily. "There have been so many bean defenders," she said. Chili con carne, popularized in San Antonio by the chili queens in the 19th century, became the state's official dish in 1977.

Katye Brought, the museum's vice president of communications and marketing, said she has watched strangers sit and talk. "I have really enjoyed observing people sit and talk to each other," Brought said. "It's refreshing to see people who don't know each other come together and share stories about their connection with food, or how their culture interacts with food, and to see others listening." Ellen Clark, a University of Texas at San Antonio professor emerita of bilingual-bicultural studies, appears in an exhibit video. "Tasting chili evokes so many, many stories," Clark said. "How your grandmother made it, how your mother made it, how your tías made it, how you buy it in a can of all things. How you utilize it left over. And then, of course, our cook-offs."

The exhibit closes with contemporary food culture. A 10-foot replica of chicken on a stick stands in one corner under a large jalapeño. Nearby, the mural "¡Provecho San Antonio!" by artist Kat Cadena gathers figures across eras, from the chili queens to James Beard-nominated Nicola Blaque. Homages to Pearl District, the Culinary Institute of America, St. Philip's College, and Mixtl appear near the mural. Guillen described chefs returning to making tortillas from scratch. "You have fine-dining chefs returning to the idea of making tortillas from scratch, and that's incredibly arduous work," Guillen said. "It's backbreaking work. But they are returning that traditional art form back to Texas plates today."

The exhibit runs through Feb. 7 at the Witte Museum.