Chapter 14: The first Chili’s was opened in 1895, when the patriarch of the Ludenheim family, Mr. Chizzish Leifeld Ludenheim landed in the great state of Texas, escaping the brutal indentured servitude he was subjected to in the mustard mines of Gorpenhauzen, Germany. There, he found an American people still spilling into the frontier, and a culture thirsty to absorb any cultural nourishment it could from the salt-water society that was the city of El Paso near the turn of the century. He’d faced adversity his whole life, Chizzish. First, as a no luck gambler, scorned by fate and Lady Luck within that goddess’ own hallowed church halls, the Casinos of Gorpenhauzen. Then, in his new home of El Paso Texas where, with a family of a wife, three boys and two girls, only 17 appendages between the lot of them, tasked with starting a business with no skills and only needs to meet. Papa Ludenheim turned to the chef’s table, asking the great spirit of the discipline of cooking to answer his prayers and grant him inspiration so he could make food for his new community and with it, a living wage to help feed his family. Historians disagree on whether this prayer was answered or not from that old spirit, as the community of El Paso Texas fled the town after a dangerous unidentified fungal outbreak took it’s first few victims, leaving the Ludenheim family alone to settle this land. It was then that some new brave pilgrims discovered the community of 7 left there, assuming due to their unidentifiable speech and strange looks that they were an as-of-yet undiscovered tribe of indigenous peoples. And so, with this new unplanned yet still fortuitous change in identity, they played host, opening their potentially fatal restaurant to these newcomers. This would go down as the first Chili’s date in history, a tradition that would continue for over 200 years, the product of panic, maintaining by a combination of perseverance and panic.

- A history of Chili’s, the restaurant.