21st December, 2010

The 21st was a surprising day for cheese everywhere. Generally, Santa Fe likes to spring about one unexpected change on us per visit, but today they pretty much declared war.

First off, The beer they served me came in a stylish new way: Please note the lime wedge exactly where your nose is going, but no salt this time.

I guessed they wanted me to smell the lime as I taste the beer, as some kind of multi-sensory cocktail...maybe it works for people with smaller noses, but I just found it hard to breathe.

Now, when the dip arrive, we had SHOCK NUMBER TWO:

 That, my friend, is a Type 3 bowl. I've never seen that bowl before in my life. It's like some crazy variation that sits between bowl types 1 and 2 - holds more than #2, but less than #1. We've just been thrown headfirst into a whole new era of cheesedip.

Not content with this, they broke out a third, more subtle shock.
Look at these chips. They look perfectly normal, don't they?

But then when you lift one up, you find...

BAM. SURPRISE SALT. About one in every eight chips turned out to be pure salt masquerading as corn. I have no idea how they'd have managed this without specifically hiring a guy to oversalt a fraction of the chips, and the saltiness completely overpowered any other flavours.
(Note: I've come up with a new theory since then. a lot of the very-salty chips were stale, so perhaps they were oversalted to try to draw some moisture out of the chip and render it deliciously firm again? Discuss.)


So, I guess I should mention the dip itself.

It wasn't that bad, actually. It was thick, it was warmish, and the chip to dip ratio was perfectly judged. It did, however, fall down a bit in the flavour and spice, which made it a bit too creamcheesy for our liking. Couple that with the overpowering salt, and I was just left with a thick and salty residue in my mouth that brought back so many memories.


The breakdown:
Consistency: Incredibly thick. Impossibly awesomely thick.
Spiciness: I don't really recall any spice.
Appearance: BOWL NUMBER THREE. Presentation was nice aside from that.
Temperature: average.
Flavour: Nonexistent, quite creamcheesy.
Chips: A completely mixed bag again, liney ones, unliney ones, and surprise salt sensations.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Spot on. There's no way they could do it better.