Food Crazes Are Dumb and The Bob Armstrong Dip Is All The Rage In New York.

According to the New York Post, New York’s hottest dish is the Bob Armstrong.

This dish has it all — molten cheese, peppers, spices, sour cream, beef, guacamole, cilantro, homemade tortilla chips, a tasty 1960s backstory involving the late Austin politician of the same name and a dollop of the increasing suspicion that all food trends are, in fact, bullshit.

Served up at the new Gramercy Tex-Mex restaurant Javelina opened by Dallas native Matt Post, this dish is, per the Post, the “must-have” item at a space that’s been “mobbed” since it opened in March.

The dish is new to New York, but Texans are long familiar with it, of course. Since its invention some 50-plus years ago, the dip has been a mainstay at Matt’s El Rancho in Austin, as well as at that spot’s spinoff Dallas locale, Matt’s Rancho Martinez. It’s also an off-the-menu staple at Mattito’s Tex-Mex, which once bore a connection to those other eateries but no longer does. Mattito’s is an important connection, though: Eating the Bob Armstrong at Mattito’s as ’90s youth is when Post says he first fell in love with the dip, which he in no way invented.

So it’s much to his credit, then, that in the Saturday feature that highlights his restaurant’s dish, Post readily nods to the dish’s history and downplays the overall hubbub, simply stating that the Bob Armstrong is “one of [Javelina’s] most popular items.”

Good on Post for using the dish to win over these naive New Yorkers, though! And good on him for taking advantage of them, too: Javelina’s Bob Armstrong costs $12; at Matt’s Rancho Martinez in Dallas, it costs $6.95 for a small order and $8.95 for a large.

Cover photo of the Bob Armstrong Dip via Javelina’s web site.
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