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The "Chili and Cheese" Trick, Brute Force Nachos, and Imposter Buffalo Wings
by Jason Roth
I like cheese on my nachos as much as the next guy. In fact, I'd say the single flaw with most nachos is an insufficient amount of cheese. Instead of smoke and mirrors, it's the old "chili and cheese trick". This is when the top surface of a large pile of totally dry chips is smothered with one measly layer of toppings.
Hey, assholes, who said you had to take the term "topping" so literally? Ice cream sundae toppings drip their way to the bottom of the glass. You're not going to hold some kind of protest against chocolate fudge, for fuck's sake, are you? Then don't give me a pile of dry nachos chips. I want cheese covering every goddamn chip, I don't care how many layers or how many chips. And I don't want one tiny dollop of sour cream and guacamole. Screw dollops. I want a big, disgusting pile of both, along with twice as much salsa. Don't worry about getting the chips mushy. Nachos are messy, we understand that. Nachos are not a difficult concept to grasp.
Other than the chili and cheese trick, I have run into another, less common problem with some bars' and restaurants' nachos. I call them "brute force nachos". Brute force nachos substitute large amounts of cheese, and usually a big pile of shitty, canned beef chili, for decent ingredients. If you're lucky, you get cheddar or jack cheese (just one or the other), though sometimes you just get that liquid Velveeta shit. Either way, you feel like you're chowing down on something a college frat boy could have done a better job with. Instead of giving you good nacho toppings, and a decent variety of them (sour cream, guacamole, etc.), they think they can brute-force their way into your stomach.
Note that both the chili and cheese trick and brute force nachos are not just incompetently made nachos. They're incompetently made, but with effort spent at covering up the incompetence. This must be the hallmark of our culture. Here's an idea. How about just making me some goddamn nachos?
There's only one thing that bothers me more than half-assed nachos. It's imposter buffalo wings. These are chicken wings described by the menu as "buffalo wings", but are really covered with barbecue sauce, or even worse, are just plain, fried wings. Attention line cooks and bar and restaurant owners: buffalo wings aren't clipped off of buffaloes. There's another reason the word "buffalo" is in the name, and it also ain't because the white, feathered animal known as the "chicken" originated in the city of Buffalo. It's the style of seasoning the wings. A crust is not a pizza, and a chicken wing is not a buffalo wing without the hot sauce. (Louisiana hot sauce, ironically enough.) Get that straight, or go back to serving your frozen mozzarella sticks. Outburst over.
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