Tex-Mex describes food, music and style that grew up among Mexican-American people in Texas — Mexican roots, but changed by living in the US for generations. It is used as an adjective ('Tex-Mex food', 'a Tex-Mex restaurant') and also as a noun for the food itself ('we had Tex-Mex last night'). In food, it means dishes like nachos, hard-shell tacos, chilli con carne, fajitas and burritos, usually with plenty of yellow cheese, cumin and beef. Many of these are famous around the world as 'Mexican food', but in Mexico people would not recognise them as their own cooking. In music, Tex-Mex (also called Tejano) mixes Mexican songs with the accordion and the polka beat that German and Czech settlers brought to Texas. Here is the part worth knowing: the word started as a mild put-down, a way of saying 'not the real thing'. Then the people it described took it up themselves, and now it is mostly a plain, proud label — a restaurant will happily call itself Tex-Mex. Some cooks still use it to mean 'watered down for American tastes', so the old edge has not completely gone. It is always written with the hyphen and both capitals.