El Charrito El Charrito El Charrito is a brand of Tex-Mex TV dinners. The word is Spanish for "little cowboy". The brand was introduced in 1980 by the Campbell Taggart company, who owned the El Chico restaurant chain. Though its entrees included taquitos, queso, and beef enchiladas, it was also known for the uniquely named Saltillo Dinner, a three-compartment dinner consisting of two enchiladas (one each beef and cheese), Spanish rice and refried beans. In 1995 the parent company became Earthgrains and chose to focus on baked goods, selling the El Charrito brand to Don Miguel Mexican Foods, now a part of
Tex-Mex between Mexican cuisine and Americanized Mexican food in her 1972 book "The Cuisines of Mexico". Robb Walsh of the "Houston Press" said the book "was a breakthrough cookbook, one that could have been written only by a non-Mexican. It unified Mexican cooking by transcending the nation's class divisions and treating the food of the poor with the same respect as the food of the upper classes." The term "Tex-Mex" also saw increasing usage in the "Los Angeles Times" from the 1970s onward while the Tex-Mex label became a part of U.S. vernacular during the late 1960s, '70s, and '80s. Tex-Mex