Cheesecake Nachos?!
The other day my friend Postal (who will be coming with me on most of my reviews) and I decided to take a stroll near the beach. He supports my Nacho eating love (obsession) and is more than happy to go with me on my quest to taste and grade all possible Nachos I encounter. We ended up getting a bit hungry and I suggested we go to the Cheesecake Factory near there as there were some nice views. Since I started to review Nachos I’ve opened myself to reviewing Nachos from places I wouldn’t normally order them from, like big chains. Not reviewing these places made little sense as the places that are available to most people throughout the country are these particular restaurants. Upon looking on the menu I found under the appetizers section they indeed had Nachos, or “Factory Nachos” to be exact. This name is a little off putting as I’m already getting the idea in my head that they will be generic at best. I guess we’ll find out. With the addition of chicken the total price turned out to be about $9.99, which is kind of high for Nachos in my opinion, but you pay for the atmosphere I guess.
This priceless view is worth about $9.99
Upon arriving, I gave the Factory Nachos a gold star for presentation as they really did look scrumptious. The main components were a scoop of the following: sour cream with chives on top, pico de gallo and guacamole, in that order. Velveeta and jack cheese were melted and spread evenly through all the chips on top as well as the chicken. The dry chips on the bottom must have been bad all year since Santa Claus didn’t bring them anything, not even a hint of flavor. There were also about six slices of jalapeños and maybe five grains of corn, which I’m assuming were thrown in for flavor.
I lied, there’s really 7 ½ slices of jalapeños
When going to “fancy” chain restaurants Nachos are likely to fall under the appetizers section and it’s implied that you’re going to share them, especially when you’re with someone else. Since Postal is on a non Nachos eating food plan that he saw on Oprah, he did not join me. This probably explains the reason I got weird looks from the waitress when I told her they were just for me. She also seemed annoyed when I asked her for some hot sauce, as if I should have been grateful for having even gotten the few jalapeños that were thrown at me. Just as I was about to snap into a z-formation, she brought out enough hot sauce to meet my needs. By enough hot sauce I mean she brought out the party size bottle, which was enough for me and 300 of my closest friends. This was as close as I was going to get to a salsa bar.
Party over here!
I started by tasting the guacamole, which was composed of avocado, onion, cilantro and tomato, and was right away struggling to keep even a small glob of guacamole on my chip. It seemed like someone left work early and forgot to finish mashing the avocado as there were still pretty big chunks of avocado left in the guacamole. It is pretty much impossible to dip the chips into the guacamole in this situation and it’s more of a balancing act trying to get a huge chunk of avocado to stay on the chip. This in turn causes most of the guacamole to be gone right away as you have to put more than the amount you want on your chip, unless you grab a fork and knife and cut the chunks since the chunks are too thick for even a chip to slice through them, which makes sharing a pain. The guacamole was decent enough, but not worth the balancing act you have to go through trying to get some guacamole goodness on your chip. Little did I know my nacho acrobatics were far from over.
Now, on to the cheese. As I mentioned earlier there were two types of cheeses on the Nachos. I am all about the extra cheeses, but please, make sure you get the art of melting one cheese down before you start going crazy and adding more cheeses. You see, there isn’t a wrong way to melt cheese, but depending on how you melt the cheese you will get different results in the end. The best way to melt cheese for Nachos is by using indirect heat. Not doing so causes the chips to get lumpy and cold quicker, and make for a not very fun eating experience. In this case the cheese was congealed as soon as the plate touched my table and it was impossible to dip the chips in anyway.
I have a feeling that the same person that made the guacamole also cooked this cheese.
The final results are huge globs of cheese stuck together, and once again, too thick for a chip to cut through. Along with this, any tiny string of cheese could cause 3 or more chips to stick together. Some chips were completely covered in cheese (I will call these the lucky chips) and there was nothing I could do about it. The chips that were dry (I will call these castaway chips) were going to stay dry unless I grabbed my fork and scrapped some of the cheese off the lucky chips and put them on the castaway chips. The lucky chips were not happy about this (as they are conceited snobs) and it didn’t help that I was too lazy to want to use my fork and knife to cut the cheese (insert childish laugh here) and evenly distribute it among the Nachos. I’m not freaking McGuyver, so I couldn’t use a napkin ring, portable hula hoop and my left shoe string to create a contraption to melt the delicious cheese all over the Nachos the way it should be. The castaway chips were not happy and neither was I.
An orgy with too many uninvited guests
As for the rest of the Nachos, the shredded chicken was marinated in a citric marinate and had some taste to it, but nothing to rave about. The pico de gallo was the typical tomato onion and green peppers, again, nothing special. Sour cream was just what it was supposed to be, and as I had suspected, the five grains of corn didn’t do much of anything. If I seem to be keeping this part brief, it’s because the rest of the Nachos did not make up for the trouble I went through to eat them. Luckily, I was the only one eating them, but if I were sharing them with a group of people it would be a pain for everyone to get the same amount of anything. I threw the chip to topping ratio out of this review as it made no sense to try to rate it and it was also pretty difficult to try to calculate it. Next time you’re at the Cheesecake Factory for a Quinceañera I would recommend you skip the Nachos and get a slice of pie instead (something they’re really good at). Below is the final outcome.
It’s not that they stood a chance, I just got bored
-iwst99
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