What it means
A chimichanga is a burrito that has been deep-fried: a large flour tortilla wrapped around a filling, folded shut, lowered into hot oil until the outside blisters and goes gold, then plated with sour cream and guacamole, or smothered in sauce and cheese for people who want it that way. The filling is traditionally machaca, the dried shredded beef of Sonoran cooking, though chicken, pork and bean versions are everywhere. Locals shorten it to “chimi,” and a menu offering “mini chimis” means appetizer-sized ones.
The word carries weight in Arizona because it is the one Mexican-American dish the state claims to have invented. You will hear it argued over at dinner the way other states argue about barbecue: Tucson or Phoenix, El Charro or Macayo’s, accident or intent. Nobody has a document. Everybody has an opinion.
Scottsdale has no claim in the fight, and the site’s what-to-eat guide stays out of it. What Scottsdale has is a very good place to eat one: Los Olivos, the Corral family’s adobe restaurant on 2nd Street, which has made chimichangas part of its Sonoran plate since the late 1940s.
Where you’ll meet it
On every Arizona Mexican menu, from Old Town cantinas to the Spotted Donkey under the boulders in Carefree, in the “Arizona Mexican” label that Carlos O’Brien’s used for its chicken chimi under jalapeño cream cheese, and in any conversation where a Tucsonan and a Phoenician are both present.
Where the word came from
The best-known story belongs to El Charro Café in Tucson, which Monica Flin opened in 1922 and which bills itself as the oldest Mexican restaurant in the country run continuously by the same family. In the family telling, Flin was frying late at night when a young niece bumped her, a burrito went into the oil, and she started a Spanish profanity, caught herself in front of the child, and finished with “chimichanga,” a nonsense word, roughly “thingamajig.” When this happened depends on the teller: some versions put it in the restaurant’s first years, while a Los Angeles Times account cited by Tasting Table puts the invention in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
The Phoenix claim belongs to Macayo’s. Its founder, Woody Johnson, said he came up with the dish in 1946 by experimenting with burritos in the deep fryer at his first restaurant, Woody’s El Nido; by 1952, when the place became Macayo’s, the chimichanga was a main menu item. Macayo’s still dates itself to 1946 and has sold the dish for seven decades. Two more Tucson-area restaurants, Micha’s and Club 21, also say they invented it. None of the four has a dated menu, photograph or newspaper clipping that settles the matter, and the stories all share the same shape: a burrito, a fryer, a surprise.
The word itself may be older than any of them. Wikipedia cites Francisco J. Santamaría’s 1959 Diccionario de Mejicanismos, which records “chivichanga” as a regional term from Tabasco for a trinket or something unimportant. Another reading breaks the word into “chimi,” from chamuscado, singed, and “changa,” related to a mild insult for the unexpected. Either way, the name probably came north with Mexican speech and attached itself to the dish, rather than being born at the fryer.
What it is not
A chimichanga is not a burrito, though it starts as one, and it is not a flauta or taquito, which are rolled corn tortillas fried thin. It is also not Tex-Mex: the big flour tortilla and the machaca filling mark it as Sonoran through and through.
The fine print
Why the argument matters is simpler than the argument itself. Arizona’s food is mostly Sonora’s food, borrowed and lightly adapted, and the chimichanga is the rare dish the state can plausibly say it made. Tucson, which the United Nations named a City of Gastronomy, treats El Charro’s version as civic property. Phoenix has Macayo’s, a chain that grew from Woody’s El Nido into a Valley institution. The dispute is friendly, well rehearsed, and unresolvable, which is what makes it durable.
A reasonable reading of the record: deep-frying a filled flour tortilla was probably happening in more than one Sonoran-Arizona kitchen in the 1940s, and the restaurants that survived got to tell the story. Flin’s tale has the better punchline; Johnson’s has a specific year. The 1959 dictionary entry undercuts both, since a word that already meant “trifle” in southern Mexico did not need a startled cook to invent it.
For the eater, the practical questions are different. A good chimichanga is fried fast at high heat so the tortilla crisps without soaking, and the filling is machaca or shredded beef, not ground. Ask for sour cream and guacamole on the side rather than a full smother; sauce turns the shell soft in minutes. Order one for the table rather than one each, and pair it with a cheese crisp if you want the full Arizona experience. The Mexican restaurant guide names the rooms, and sends first-timers to Los Olivos to decide for themselves.