16 November, 2010

The usual cheese crowd were unable to attend cheese this week, so instead I brought a companion so that I could get my weekly cheese fix. We were seated near the centre of the restaurant by an obviously new member of staff (he was cheerful and friendly). An order for a dish of chili con queso was promptly placed and we waited for the cheese with great anticipation and hunger.

Imagine my delighted surprise to see this!


A return to the old dish used for housing the coveted chili con queso dip.


We also saw a return to liney chips, as described in a previous post. Unlike last time, these chips were not stale, and did not remind me of thin sheets of pasta.


This week's dip was a welcome return to the glory of cheese. After the past few weeks where we have been served sub-par cheese offerings, it was orgasmic to finally consume quality cheese dip.

Let me break down the amazingness.

Consistency: Consistently thick, with no lumps.
Spiciness: Mildly spicy.
Appearance: A little odd. Refer to pictures below for further explanation.
Temperature: Hot! Not tepid, not warm, actually hot!
Flavour: Delicious.
Chips: Weird liney chips, but crisp and inoffensive.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Moderate. There were still a few chips left over after we inhaled the cheese, but it wasn't the greatest discrepancy we've experienced.



The only thing that marred an otherwise perfect offering was the colour of the cheese dip. It actually looked a little grey, which I have tried to capture on camera, and mostly failed.


It didn't stop us from finishing the cheese dip, because it was freaking delicious, but I can't help but wonder why it had that odd grey-ish cast. It's been two days since then, and I haven't dropped dead, so if the colour is the reason for the improved taste and quality I have no real complaints. Will update if the unknown substance causes me to turn into a radioactive cheese woman.

9th November, 2010.

Initially, I hoped last week was a once-off failure, that maybe the head chef had come down with a bad case of cheese lung and needed a few days off.

Alas, it was not to be. Behold: Our cheese dips.

That isn't a trick of the light, it's visibly thinner than last week - The act of putting it down on the table was enough to cause dip to slop wildly over the edges. I've always thought cheesedip as a solid, but that is not certainly not the case here.

Unlike every other time I've been there, the dip did not get thicker as you got lower in the bowl. Maybe the room-temperature serving meant it couldn't thicken as it cooled, maybe they were experimenting with the laws of cheese to give us a more homogeneous meal. My theory is it there was no cheese to sink to the bottom of the mix.

Before I continue, here are some good points:

• The chips were cheap, but enjoyable. no unusual lines, no different coloured ones just for the effect, no stale chips. Plain but effective

• There was a decent amount of spice this time, which made a nice change. I couldn't taste cheese, but the spice helped fill the gap a little.

Now, back to the main event. Let my draw your eye to a very important point:

This is a new type of bowl. Far smaller than any bowl we've eaten from before.  The combination of the tiny bowl and thin dip led to an absolutely horrendous Chip-Dip imbalance. When we finished the dip, there was a huge overstock of remaining chips. I pay these people to deal with the chip-dip ratio so that I don't have to, but they've failed me.

Look at those damn chips, taunting me. I CANT EAT YOU, I HAVE NO MORE DIP TO MAKE YOU DELICOUS.

With all the angry brooding about cheese, I've completely forgotten what the tacos tasted like...so let's break it down into the usual summary:

Consistency: Watery. barely able to stick to the chip
Spiciness: not bad, actually. I'd be happy it they kept this level all the time.
Appearance: The dip itself looked okay, but the bowl left me scared and confused.
Temperature: Well, they haven't started keeping it in the fridge yet.
Flavour: Spicy tastiness, but little actual cheese
Chips: Cheap, wholesome, good. They have my approval.
Chip-to-dip-balance: will leave me traumatised for life.
Summary: They took last weeks dip, watered it down, and added spice.

2 November 2010

Today was a disappointment in cheese-land. Our table tonight consisted of an irregular five, and we made the choice to order two serves of the desirable chili con queso. After eyeballing several waitstaff to no avail and shouting blame at each other, we finally managed to place the order with great anticipation.

The order took a little longer than past visits, especially given the lack of patrons in the restaurant. A waitress asked us twice if we would like to order the mains, however, experience has taught us to avoid this at all cost. There is nothing worse than receiving tacos and chili con queso at the same time. You have to eat the tacos fast before they become soggy, but if you neglect the cheese dip it will 1) go cold; and 2) be eaten by others who would rather sacrifice their tacos to sogginess in order to consume more cheese dip.

Then the two dips arrived.



Dip 1:

Consistency: Thick. Not a bad thing on its own, but the temperature ruined the texture.
Spiciness: Pretty much non-existent.
Appearance: Cheese dip-y.
Temperature: Cool. Highly unacceptable.
Flavour: In the words of my dining colleagues, "creamcheesier than usual".
Chips: WEIRD LINEY CHIPS. Pictures will demonstrate.
Chip-to-dip-balance: More dip than chip. Moderate amount of cheese dip left lining the bowl after consumption of final chip.


Dip 2:

Consistency: Thick and lumpy. The cheese lumps were interesting, but preferably something not to be repeated.
Spiciness: None.
Appearance: See Dip 1.
Temperature: Lukewarm.
Flavour: Creamcheesier and sub-par.
Chips: Again, weird liney chips. These chips have an odd crunchy texture that is more reminiscent of chewing on thin sheets of raw pasta than corn chips. Despite the crunch, they were also oddly stale. Refer to pictures below for evidence of liney-ness.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Significantly more dip than chip. Contemplating ordering an additional serve of chips, but were too cheap to shell out the $3.50.

LINES.

In conclusion, this week quite disappointing. The texture of the cheese dip left a lot to be desired, as did the general taste and temperature. The chips were weird too. On the other hand though, a waitress dropped one of our tacos on the floor and the replacement one was 10x better than the ones served in the first round. Secret to amazing tacos unlocked: just order them one at a time.

26th October 2010

This will be both an everyday cheese-evaluating post, and a brief introduction to how the following posts will work.

I semi-regularly go to Santa Fe Restaurant with some rather questionable acquaintances, entirely for the Chili Con Queso (hereafter referred to as 'delicious cheese dip'). We tend to go on Tuesdays, since they also have budget low-quality tacos...but the real crowd please is and will remain the cheese dip. It's affordable, and sometimes amazing...but the quality and ingredients seem to vary so much from day to day, you're never sure what you're going to get. After a year of debating the various qualities and reasons, we've decided to write the damn things down so we can actually remember when things are awesome.

So here we have it: 26/10/10, cheese dip one.

Given a week has passed, my impressions of this one have faded. For the most part, it seemed a pretty standard dip - fairly thin at first, but thickening towards the bottom. Not very spicy, but it had exactly the right number of chips to balance out the dip. This is actually the first time I've ever seen it happen, as the thickness of the dip and the total number of chips is a careful balance, rarely judged accurately.

So, a brief run down:
Consistency: Varies from too thin to moderately thick, a good balance
Spiciness: Quite low, but they used some in the cooking process. somewhere.
Appearance: Looks like cheese dip to me.
Temperature: Quite acceptable.
Flavour: Quite decent overall. not adventurous, not too boring.
Chips: The cheap, plain yellow ones. Fairly crunchy.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Absolutely perfect. A++ WOULD CHEESE AGAIN.


Really, there's not much more to say about this  - except for one unusual variation they sprung on me.

Beer, served pre-salted and with a lightly-browned lime wedge left over from the day before. It makes it a little hard to pour the beer into the glass when there's half a dozen random condiments stacked on the can.