A local area icon whose claim to fame was introducing the fajita as a mainstay in Tex-Mex cuisine has died today at the age of 81.
Juan Antonio “Sonny” Falcon was originally from Mercedes, Texas and made his way to Austin in 1959 where he got a job in shipping and receiving at the Austin Meat Market. In 1962 Falcon married Guadalupe Guajardo and soon thereafter became the meat market manager in his wife’s parents’ East Austin neighborhood store, called Guajardo’s Cash Grocery. It was during this time Falcon experimented with an old Rio Grand Valley recipe in which he took beef skirt, cooked it until tender and served it with tortillas. The meat was cut into little strips, thus the name fajitas – fajitas being the Spanish word for little belts.
The normally tough-to-chew beef skirt was never thought of as a prime piece of meat and was usually ground up or sold as scraps, but Falcon had the realization that he could turn this scrap meat into a delicacy that he could promote at the Guajardo family store.
