Tag: cheese dip

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Adios to the Pancho’s Man?

CREDIT: Pancho's/Tiwtter

Pancho’s/Tiwtter

Pancho’s Cheese Dips dropped some serious stuff on Twitter Thursday with one phrase, “get ready to meet the new Pancho.”

The smiling, mustachioed, and sombrero-ed Pancho has graced the lid of the famous cheese dip for years. The figure is an easily recognizable Memphis icon.

Pancho’s/Twitter

“Pancho Man” was created by the restaurant’s founder, according to a Flyer cover story covering all aspect of cheese dip and our city’s love affair with it.

Justin Fox Burks

Clemmie and Morris Berger opened the first Pancho’s Mexican restaurant in 1956 in West Memphis. Brenda O’Brien, Morris Berger’s daughter, says her father was also the creator of “Pancho Man.” O’Brien says she was with him when he made the first drawing. “Daddy wanted to get a mascot for the restaurant. Daddy could draw really well.”

Pancho’s tweeted the change at around 2 p.m. But, with only five likes on the post so far, it hasn’t made much noise yet. The tweet was unclear as to just when we’ll meet the new Pancho Man only to say, “he’s almost here.”
 

Adios to the Pancho’s Man?

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

About that Tom’s Tiny Kitchen Cheese Dip

Do you think the folks at Tom’s Tiny Kitchen will pay for my therapy?

The peddlers of some excellent pimento cheese recently expanded with a new line of cheese dip: Classic White, chipotle bacon, and Not So Spicy Thai. I’m into it. A bit too into it.

The company sent us some samples last week and we had it then and also the next day. To kick off the week, I had some more yesterday and today it served as a side with a peanut butter sandwich and the only reason I’m not having any now is that I’ve run out of chips. 🙁

So why has Tom’s Tiny Kitchen expanded now?

“We’re late,” says Tom Flournoy, the Tom of Tom’s Tiny Kitchen.

Flournoy says they’re always thinking of new products, and when it came to the cheese dip, they thought it was pretty much a no-brainer.

“We thought there was a need for innovative cheese dips,” he says.

What they hadn’t considered was how long it would take to perfect the dip. Jill, Tom’s wife, was in charge of creating the dip. It took a month or so.

“We wanted a dip that tasted good,” Flournoy says. “We came up with three.”

Each dip starts with the same cheese base, and the flavors are added in. One thing Flournoy says they wanted was heat (such as in the chipotle bacon).

The dips, like the pimento cheese, are carried by Kroger’s Delta division, which translates into about 120 stores. Kroger will donate 15 cents for every tub sold of the dip to area food banks through May 16th.

The dips are also sold at locally owned grocery stores, SuperLo, Miss Cordelia’s, and High Point.

Flournoy says they’re pretty pleased with how the dips came out. “Taste is the single most important thing to us,” he says.