2nd August 2011

We took a few weeks off after our last Santa Fe experience to let the excitement wear off, and came back refreshed and ready for anything.

It started off on a good note: A type 1 bowl (we haven't seen one since march) filled with surprisingly tasty-looking dip.

Note that we managed to find the magical tilting table again, which they save for their favourite customers.

The chips were on the stale side, but that was balanced out by the luscious thickness of the dip. It also had two distinguishing features that are best illustrated via illustration.

As you've no doubt guessed, the first feature is a slug which somehow made it into my bowl and frantically latched onto my chip in an effort to scape. I overcame it after a brief struggle and it was surprisingly tasty.

The second is the sheer heat of this dip. If you look closely at the pictures (Go on, click on them for the larger version - treat yourself) you can see that there's an unusual number of red chunks. These red lumps consist of pure fire which explains why the slug was eager to get out.

Final note: Given how thick the dip was, they did a commendable job of estimating the correct chip quantities.

The Breakdown:

Consistency: Thick, with intermittent wildlife

Spiciness: I was literally on fire after eating this.

Appearance: Type 1 bowl, tasteful arrangement of cornchips.

Temperature: Varied wildly between bowls

Flavour: Who can tell? there may have been some.

Chips: Stale.

Chip-to-dip balance: They've clearly been retraining their Chip Arrangement Technician and it shows.

12 July, 2011

OK, so this post is kinda late. As a result of my tardy posting, I have mostly forgotten what the cheese experience was like. However, I did take an abnormally high number of photos on the 12th, so I will allow the pictures to tell the story of that cheesy night.

We were seated once again at table 1, and after the obligatory calculation of how much cheese was required for the night, we noticed this drawer next to us.

So of course we opened it. I won't lie, we were expecting some sort of cheesy treasure.

Instead, we found these order booklets. Unfortunately Santa Fe uses an electronic ordering system now, otherwise we would have filled out our own orders for the next month.

We ordered two cheese dishes, please ogle these delightful pictures.

As you can see, we received type 2 dishes, which as always is a great source of sorrow. I'm pretty sure that one of my cupped hands has a greater cheese storage capacity than a type 2 dish.

The chips were wonderfully crisp. However, they were also salty enough to remind Bacon Sandwich of other hard and pointy things that he has put in his mouth.

I believe that this picture was taken to illustrate how runny the dip was. That, or I just wanted to capture how bad we are at eating.

Halfway through our cheese consumption, we noticed this picture right next to us. We stared at it for a good five minutes wondering who the couple are, before realising that the cheese was getting cold. We welcome any suggestions on who the elusive cheese people are.

Thanks to the runny consistency of the dip, the dip to chip ratio was miraculously good for a type 2 dish. That being said, Santa Fe, fucking give us a type 1 dish already.

Here is a picture of a mutant chip for your viewing pleasure.

Here is a picture of our angry cheese colleague fingering a menu hole, which may or may not provide you with viewing pleasure.

The final surprise of a very eventful cheese night was not one, but two cakes provided by another cheese colleague, who also enjoys all things viscous, salty and cheesy.

As you can see, the cakes were quite lovely.

After we were finished with them, they looked like this:

This is a very accurate rendition of what came out of my mouth the last time I had tequila at Bacon Sandwich's house.

The Breakdown

Consistency: I've already mentioned that it was runny, but it's worth mentioning that I wrote in my notes 'thin runny'

Spiciness: Spicy

Appearance: We were too busy admiring the portrait of what I hope was the first cheese couple.

Temperature: Hot

Flavour: Cream cheesy

Chips: Crisp, moderately mutated and salty.

Chip-to-dip balance: The best we've ever seen with a type 2 bowl.

5th July 2011

Our hiatus has ended, and to celebrate Santa Fe gave us a brand new treat - We were seated at table number 1.

 As befits a table of such high stature, We were confronted with decoration of such sumptous elegance it took my breath away.

It appears to be a drawing of a surly lady with a monobrow, and a rug depicting an 8-bit game. I'm not sure why the birds have an extra wing on their chest, nor why the backdrop for the lady is a tree being swallowed alive by a giant sponge. I never did understand high art.

Now, onto the Cheesedip: At first glance, it looked worryingly delicious.

 It was warm, the chips seemed crisp, and the bowl was type 3. Then we deftly tried to sample the dip.

Even buffalo bill would skip this skin.

It was just a facade. The delicious looking cheese - tastefully patterned with spice - came off in a swipe, leaving a light brown bowl of sludgy material.
It was hard to get past the emotional turmoil invoked by this. I manned up, fought through the pain and betrayal, and got eating.

Success.

The dip was intensely spicy, blanketing out all other flavours - The texture indicated that it might be cream-cheesy, but occasional glimpses seemed to imply that there might be genuine flavour lurking down there. I guess we'll never know.

Santa fe seems to have worked through their old chip staleness problems, but delight in coming up with surprising new ways for the chips to scare me. Today we had GIANT CHIPS swarming everywhere.

They burned the chips for added authenticity

I'd also like to include a rare taco supplement: the magical hovering taco meat! They've hired some foodgineers to apply the 'meat pie with no filling' trick to tacos - if you manage to wedge the meat high up in the shell, it looks like there's more food. Brilliant!

I swear it looked less like horseshit at the time

The breakdown:
Consistency: Moderately thick
Spiciness: I couldn't taste for days afterwards.
Appearance: Type 3 with fakecheese layer for aesthetic appeal
Temperature: Warmish, quickly cooling
Flavour: Probably nice?
Chips: GIANT AND BURNED but otherwise quite nice.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Fairly accurate. We had to break our last chip into subchips to get maximum use, but it worked out well.

21st June 2011

Santa Fe was, for the first time ever, booked out when we called. They willfully denied us a table, claiming there was absolutely nowhere we could sit. This is a dramatic re-creation of my dinner that night.

On the 21st of June, 7 people were killed in the Syrian uprisings. In Yemen, 2000 people had to be evacuated. 20 were killed in a bombing in iraq, Australian flights were cancelled because of volcanic ash, and an emperor penguin was seen on the beaches of New Zealand.

Coincidence? I think not. Warning signs from an angry and vengeful lord? Perhaps.

I dread to think what will happen if it happens again. Please, Santa Fe, don't think of us - think of how much damage and pain this is causing around the world.

7 June, 2011

It seemed that the cheese chef had set himself a challenge for this cheese outing: how dissimilar could he make three servings of cheese ordered for the same table?




On appearances alone, he did a good job. As you can see, the chef was flexing his artistic muscles when he added the paprika powder, it's possible that this week we might get actual pictures.

The disparities did not stop there. All three bowls of cheese had incredibly different consistencies, with all three spanning the range from runny and thin to gloopy and semi-solid.

Temperatures also ranged, with some enjoying a hot bowl of cheese and some lamenting a lukewarm offering.

The different consistencies across bowls made for some interesting results when it came to the final chip-to-dip ratios. These pictures will illustrate what I mean:




The breakdown:
Consistency: Varied.
Spiciness: The only consistent thing, all three bowls were deliciously spicy.
Appearance: A pleasing type 3 bowl.
Temperature: Varied.
Flavour: Spicy.
Chips: Varied.
Chip-to-dip-balance:Varied. Seriously, the chef must know about this blog and served us three different bowls just to fuck up the breakdown.

31 May, 2011

The two pictures below do not appear to suggest much about the cheese dip we received on this particular outing. We have a pitiful Type 2 bowl (more on that later), chips verging on the sparse side, and powder that the chef has obviously just thrown up in the air in the hopes that it will land somewhere close to the bowl.



However, have a look at this SKIN:


That thing actually had its own cheese casing. It was nuts. It was also apparently very tasty. I was too busy taking pictures for this blog, so I did not experience the cheese skin. The things I do for my work.

As you can see in the following picture, the dip was also remarkably gluggy. It reminded us of the glue inflicted upon school children, when making paper-maches.



The ratio was quite good, as we inhaled both chips and dip with neither amount terribly outstanding.


There is one thing to note about this cheese outing that I am still fuming over. As you can see in the pictures, we received type 2 bowls. We have been receiving type 2 bowls for the past few weeks now, so we erroneously believed that they were no longer serving the other types of bowls. We were mistaken. After we had consumed our dip we saw another table receive their own dip with TYPE 1 BOWLS. We can't even remember that last time we had type 1 bowls. The insult of it all made us sulk for the rest of the night.

The breakdown:
Consistency: Gluggy, lumpy, paste-like. Cheese-flavoured glue.
Spiciness: Spicy.
Appearance: An insulting type 2 bowl.
Temperature: I wrote "hotttttttt" in my notes. It was obviously quite high in temperature.
Flavour: Cheesy.
Chips: For the most part fresh, with the occasional experience-marring stale specimen.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Refer to the picture where we have licked clean both the bowl and the plate.

24th May 2011

Today our visit to Santa Fe started with a friendly neighbourhood abortion rally.

They were wandering along from subiaco towards the city in dead silence. I can't really tell from their signs whether they were for or against abortions, but they seemed quite polite.

They also seemed to have the entire population of perth behind them, since they continued walking past the restaurant until well into our first course. My theory: They were just walking around the block repeatedly. Subiaco on a Tuesday night is really strange place to hold a rally, and they seemed a bit lost.

The dip arrived in a type 2 bowl with some stylish racing stripes in the dip.

It also arrived freezing cold. So, back to the kitchen it went for some warming.

When it came back it was nice and hot, and they took the chance to pour on extra spice while it was in the kitchen. It also had a new attribute: Incredibly Thick Skin.

It may look like old custard, but it tasted of pure burnination - this dip was so spicy it was difficult to eat. I have no idea what the actual flavour was like, because it was impossible to taste underneath all the pure chilli.

We ate it, though.

Consistency: Thick before heating, still moderately thick afterwards. The skin was an adventure.
Spiciness: OH GOD THE PAIN
Appearance: Type 2 bowl, with bonus racing stripes.
Temperature: Started cold, got hotter, got colder.
Flavour: No idea whatsoever, it was swamped by the spice.
Chips: Awesome. All nice, crisp chips.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Almost perfect.