A Night In Old San Antonio, or NIOSA as locals call it, has been the centerpiece of food-minded Fiesta revelers for 75 years.
Indeed, many of the four-night gathering's handheld eats have reached South Texas icon status. Nearly every Alamo City native knows the gloriously crunchy, pickled jalapeño-tinged deliciousness of Chicken on a Stick or the perfectly golden brown crispness of a NIOSA buñuelo — even if they're unsure of their origins.
Fortunately, the San Antonio Conservation Society — the group that organizes NIOSA as its biggest annual fundraiser — has documented the lore behind many of the party's most beloved snacks. And the inside scoops may be as delicious as the items themselves.
"NIOSA comestible recipes can be something someone on staff saw that really looked great, an innovative idea that maybe they saw at a fair or they dreamt up in their sleep," 50-year Conservation Society member and NIOSA Chairwoman Patti Zaiontz said. "And some [NIOSA chairpeople] are food people. I actually came up with some of the things we serve today. The fried green tomatoes and the Steer on a Stick were ideas that I had many, many moons ago when I was a vice chair in the office."
Though many of NIOSA's most asked-after eats came from members of the board, others have stories deeply rooted in festival history.
For example, Maria's Tortillas — a popular vendor whose crisp yet pliable corn tortillas are hand-patted and grilled on-site before being buttered and filled with cheddar cheese and salsa — is named for Maria Luisa Ochoa, housekeeper to 1951-53 Conservation Society President Ethel Harris. During her tenure, Harris enlisted Ochoa to make tortillas for the event, and the expansive booth has since become a tradition many visitors flock to first. Today, Maria's sells nearly 6,600 tortillas annually.
Production changes
Savory anticuchos, the marinated steak shish-kebabs available in NIOSA's Mexican Market area, also can be tied back to Harris. A friend brought back the anticucho marinade recipe from Peru, and Harris saw to its NIOSA introduction in the mid-1950s. For more than 50 years, the skewered snacks were among those prepped by hand in their actual booth. However, changes to health department regulations now require them to be assembled beforehand in a commercial kitchen.
NIOSA's buñuelos, fried Mexican pastry discs dusted with cinnamon and sugar, are among the foods offered at the event since it began. The booth's first chairwoman, Mary Ashley Culp, served buñuelos in 1938 when NIOSA was still called the Indian Festival.
In the early days, organizers bought buñuelos from a local bakery that could only make 700 for all four days of the event, so they regularly sold out, according to Conservation Society lore. In the late '60s, volunteers began making the buñuelos at Hemisfair by machine. In the booth's heyday, the buñuelo crew could sell as many as 20,000 annually. These days, patrons buy around 1,200 per NIOSA — a result of more sweet treats proliferating at the festival.
Shypoke Eggs aren't actually eggs at all, but they're easily one of the most recognizable NIOSA foods. The bite features pickled jalapeños and melted white and yellow cheeses on a round tortilla chip, stacked to resemble a sunny-side-up egg.
The recipe for Shypoke Eggs didn't originate at NIOSA but at Hipp's Bubble Room, a McCullough Avenue beer joint known for its greasy burgers and festive interior. Owner Loyal D. Hipp approved his tavern's signature app to be served at the festival. Although Hipp's closed in 1980, its crisp-and-cheesy creation lives on in NIOSA's Frontier Town.
Like NIOSA's anticuchos, the festival's Bongo K Bobs — or beef kebabs souped up with the addition of bell pepper and onion — are prepped in the Conservation Society's commercial kitchen. Some 180 volunteers start prepping, cutting and skewering the meat four days before NIOSA begins, according to the Conservation Society. It also takes 240 volunteers to grill and serve the kebabs.
"We have to be really careful because we have a specific recipe for that marinade, so we have to be sure that they follow our recipe," Zaiontz said.
Making the cut
Zaiontz's history with NIOSA includes time serving as both chairwoman and president. NIOSA chairpeople oversee more than 160 food and drink booths and work with committees made up entirely of volunteers who organize all the details that make NIOSA one of the Alamo City's biggest parties.
From banners and booths, to locks and keys, to ice and beer, committees work with NIOSA's three full-time staff members to coordinate logistics for the sprawling event. Food-focused committees also make decisions on what eats should be shelved and which new ones receive a try.
While NIOSA's longtime food favorites impart a sense of nostalgia for revelers, Zaiontz said the Conservation Society always looks for opportunities to shake up the offerings. For example, this year's newbies include funnel cake fries, which will appear in the Louisiana-inspired Froggy Bottom area, along with popcorn and pickles, no-nonsense fair fare served in Clown Alley, a section dedicated to childhood food favorites.
A NIOSA food item typically gets the chop once an ingredient becomes too expensive or difficult to procure.
"Calf fries are my all time favorite, and they are simply too expensive and very hard to acquire these days, because other parts of the world think that's a delicacy," Zaiontz said.
NIOSA staff used to get the calf fries — and, yes, we're talking battered and fried bovine testicles here — directly from a meatpacking plant. Volunteers hand-skinned, peeled and battered the morsels.
That is, until, they got too pricey to make sense as a fundraiser.
"You know, there's only two per steer, so there's a short supply of them, and they're very expensive," Zaiontz said. "There's not a margin of profit with that, so we don't have those anymore."
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