queso recipe hit The Washington Post in 1964<\/a>, the dip had already cemented itself as both political and personal currency in Texas.<\/p>\n![\"The]()
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The queso omelet with a side of home fries and bacon is a popular item at Magnolia Cafe on South Congress Avenue.<\/p>\n
Eric Webb\/American-Statesman<\/p>\n
And yes, that processed cheese matters. You can talk all day about artisanal blends and hand-shredded Oaxaca, but Austin\u2019s relationship with queso isn\u2019t precious. It\u2019s practical. Velveeta gave queso its signature texture: glossy, elastic, engineered to never quite break. You don\u2019t build a food obsession on purity. You build it on reliability.<\/p>\n
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Still, Austin being Austin, the city couldn\u2019t leave it alone. It started riffing.<\/p>\n
Austin crowns best queso annually at Mohawk’s Quesoff<\/p>\n
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The Mohawk hosts an annual competition to find the best queso in Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Larry Johnson\/Provided by Jessica Alexander<\/p>\n
Every fall, the city gathers for the Austin Quesoff, a competition that feels like a civic ritual. Held at Mohawk on Red River, it pulls in chefs, home cooks and the kind of people who treat queso as a calling.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMyself and Mohawk owner James Moody co-founded\u00a0Quesoff in 2011,\u201d said Adi Anand, \u201cOur goal was to celebrate a dish in Texas that we both loved obsessively, but we rarely saw it receive the acclaim it deserved \u2026 and we had had a few too many Speyside Scotch drinks that night so our creativity was at a high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teams compete across categories like Meaty, Spicy, Veggie and Wild Card, with a Best in Show chosen by a rotating panel of judges. In three hours, attendees can sample dozens of variations.<\/p>\n
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Samples at the Quesoff in 2025.<\/p>\n
Larry Johnson\/Provided by Jessica Alexander<\/p>\n
From the start, Anand said, the event was less about competition and more about community. \u201cWe wanted folks from all walks of life \u2014 chefs, restaurant owners, foodies, everyday laypeople \u2014 to compete together,\u201d he said. \u201cFamily members going up against each other, co-workers battling outside the office space \u2026 but mostly, everyone to have a great time eating the magical dish of queso.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The event has since grown into something larger than a food festival. It now doubles as a fundraiser\u00a0supporting the Central Texas Food Bank. Anand said the event raises tens of thousands of dollars annually \u201call for the passion, love and taste of the delicious melted cheese dish that is queso.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because Austin isn\u2019t easy when it comes to identity. It prefers something you can share, argue over, personalize. Something with roots on both sides of a border and a future that keeps mutating.\u00a0Queso fits that bill: adaptable, addictive, a little chaotic. And delicious enough to keep bringing it to the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The queso at Torchy’s Tacos is one of the best things on the Austin chain’s menu.\u00a0 Contributed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,1223,39308,62,1468,354,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-261199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-texas","10":"tag-casual-dining","11":"tag-dining","12":"tag-mexico","13":"tag-restaurants","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-texas-headlines","16":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}