Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas

The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Arkansas’s claim to cheese dip. In response, many Texas news outlets ran stories insisting that chile con queso (called “queso” for short), a melted cheese appetizer typically served in Mexican restaurants, is of Texan origin. Defenders of Arkansas’s centrality in the world of cheese dip pointed to the difference of consistency between cheese dip and traditional queso, as well as the larger role that cheese dip plays in Arkansas culture when compared with queso in Texas. Arkansas’s U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, challenged their Texas counterparts, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, to a blind taste test in which Arkansas cheese dip, represented by Heights Taco & Tamale in Little Rock (Pulaski County), won.