29th March 2011

So, I'm a bit behind. This is due to extreme laziness and the fact I lost my notes, so I have no idea what the meal was like. Therefore, WE WILL RECONSTRUCT THE MEAL FROM PHOTOS ALONE. This is something never before attempted in the Cheese Dip Blogging Community, so hold onto your pants.

A good start - a type 1 bowl, for a change. it definitely looks like cheese in that bowl, and the red stuff on top could well be spice. There are two colours of chips, which is a nice multicultural touch. We've put out the tealight as it represents a fire hazard, a risk Santa Fe forces you to take every time you dine.

Actually, I'm kind of intrigued by the patterns the cheese skin and the spice are making there. Like tectonic plates, it was presumably a cohesive whole when it first formed and has been steadily fracturing, drifting and reforming since then. I theorise that if we left it for a few hours we'd start to get tiny mountain ranges and canyons forming composed entirely of spicy cheese.

It looks like I was on the right track, the skin came off in one giant lump. I'd have loved to try some (maybe I did? Is that my hand?), but cheese skin isn't a food to share.
Sidenote: In the second picture, the cheese skin looks like a swan to me. It should look like a swan to you too.

And here we have the end. The chip to dip ration wasn't horrible, but wasn't quite perfect. It looks like the cheese was on the thin side, or else we were just pouring it over the table with wild abandon.

So on to the very accurate summary:
Consistency: Quite thin, it was hard to keep it on the chips
Spiciness: there are visible lumps of spice, but was it only on the surface?
Appearance: Type 1. awesome.
Temperature: probably warmish. it often is.
Flavour: Oh...about average.
Chips: Two different colours!
Chip-to-dip-balance: Reasonably accurate, I'll give them that.

22 March, 2011

YES I KNOW THIS POST IS LATE SO SUE ME.

So our cheese outing on the 22nd started with this surprise:


No, your eyes do not deceive you, those are new drinking glasses. Drinking glasses that don't look like they have been in use for 30+ years.

Cheese was delivered in a type 2 bowl. This never fails to disappoint us. Not only were type 2 bowls utilised, but Santa Fe skimped even further on the cheese levels, as the pictures below illustrate.



The chips were also a surprise, in that they were consistently crisp. No surprise stales, no smatterings of salt, just good, fresh chips.


The dip was hot, thick and spicy, though the texture left us wishing that we had strainers to put the dip through. The picture below is an understatement of how lumpy it was. It's not the worse thing in the world to have lumps of cheese exploding cheese flavour in your mouth, but it can hijack the experience a bit.



Undoubtedly the biggest let-down this week was the dip-to-chip ratio. We've had problems before when being served with thick dip in a type 2 bowl, and this case was no exception. As you can see from the picture, there were numerous leftover chips, and this made us cry a little.


A special mention needs to go out to how we mopped up our tears: with dessert quesadillas. I'd post more pictures of how amazing they looked, but they only survived for 30 seconds, give or take a few nanoseconds.


The breakdown:

Consistency: Thick and lumpy.
Spiciness: Sufficient.
Appearance: The very disappointing type 2 bowl.
Temperature: Hot.
Flavour: Lumpily cheesy.
Chips: Wonderfully crisp.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Horrendous. We could have built our tacos out of the leftover chips.

15th March 2011

So we ordered dip, which arrived in a type 3 bowl, and we discovered the distinguishing feature about this weeks cheese:

It's incredibly thick. Look at that thing, it peaks a full centimetre above the bowl and the surface tension is holding it with ease. I'm pretty sure we could have held the bowl upside down without risking our precious dip.

After staring in shock for  a while, we tasted it...it was delicious, spicy, and the chips were mostly crispier than normal. But the distinguishing factor is the thickness. Let's have a few progress shots.

It took a lot of effort to hack through the skin so we left it alone after that. The cheese dip refused to deform even slightly as we ate it, to the point that I'm not sure you could call it a liquid at all. It might have just been a spicy block of cheese.

And now, to the rundown:

Consistency: Rock solid but slightly soft to the touch.
Spiciness: Deliciously Spicy
Appearance: Type 3 bowls, which it was GROWING OUT OF.
Temperature: Hot.
Flavour: Delectable
Chips: Mostly crisp and recent, they must have just topped up the chip barrel.
Chip-to-dip-balance:Really quite accurate.

In conclusion: I'm starting to worry that Santa Fe might have come to grips with the idea of 'cheese dip', and we'll have a lot less to write about in future.

8th March, 2011

This week saw only three of us dine at Santa Fe. The hard question was whether to get one serving of cheese dip between three or two serves between three.

We went for two serves.



As you can see from the pictures the cheese chef decided to fancy up the chilli powder. Rather than the usual line, this week we were graced with crosses.


Onto the dip. This week it was hot, spicy, and incredibly thick. This would normally be a cause for celebration, but note that this week we were served with a Type 2 bowl, which holds about three spoonfuls of cheese dip. This was a huge disappointment after seeing other tables served with Type 1 bowls.

In direct contrast to last week, this week we had too many chips. The thickness of the dip and the Type 2 bowl resulted in a significant discrepancy in the chip-to-dip ratio.



We didn't have a repeat of last week with chips that were possibly older than the collective age of the table, however, there were a large number of semi-stale chips. This is further proof of our Chip-Barrel Theory.

The breakdown:

Consistency: Thick, like your mum.
Spiciness: Quite spicy.
Appearance: Type 2 bowls, with fancy chilli crosses.
Temperature: Hot.
Flavour: Tasty.
Chips: Similar to a lucky dip where you have a 50/50 chance of getting something good.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Too many chips. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GET IT RIGHT SANTA FE?

To finish, please observe the tacos we received after the dip. It appears that we are now expected to arrange the filling ourselves, as the taco chef clearly doesn't understand that lettuce and tomato are not meant to be served in separate tacos.

1st March 2011

As you can probably tell, we've been on cheese hiatus for a month. I'm not going to make excuses, but I would like to say IT IS NOT MY FAULT I BLAME THE REST OF THEM COMPLETELY.

It seems that when Santa Fe is deprived of our constructive reviews, their cheesologist starts phoning it in. Our three rounds of Cheese arrived in a type 3 bowl with the usual mismatched array of chips.

The dip itself was Spicy, on the thin side, a good temperature and with a skin so thick I had to break through it with an icepick. The distinguishing feature this week was the chips. They conformed to The Chip-Barrel Theory remarkably well, with some fresh and crunchy and some chewier than week old bacon.

Look at that thing. That's a chip so stale it was impossible to chew. I'm so disgusted by the sight I'd put it behind a cut if anybody actually read this.


Next up came the tacos. Aside from their usual quirk of serving food before the drinks, the tacos deserve special mention today...because they weren't really tacos. There was a tiny spoonful of something possibly meat in the bottom, and then half a lettuce leaf on top of that.

That's not a trick of perspective, my thumb really is bigger than the filling in the taco. I know they're only two dollars, but I can get at least two empty taco shells to the dollar from Coles next door.

I hope their taco chef is crying himself to sleep right now.


Getting back on topic:
Consistency: Slightly thin
Spiciness: Very nice
Appearance: Average, and type two bowl
Temperature: Quite good
Flavour: Decent
Chips: I can't think of an analogy to describe how stale some were. I mean, I eat Biltong and even that isn't in the same class of chewiness as this.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Too few chips due to thin dip.

1 February 2011 - The Return to Awesomeness

There are many words, few pictures and many orgasmic noises to describe our last cheese outing.

Let us begin with the pictures first.



The pictures fail to adequately convey the cheese experience we enjoyed. I would have taken more pictures, but I was too busy shovelling chips laden with cheesy goodness into my mouth. This week saw a return to the old glory days of cheese, a time before we saw the need for a blog to record the week-to-week inconsistencies. The dip was thick, spicy, hot and brimming with perfectly balanced cheese-tastic flavour. A type 1 dish was used, ensuring a wonderful amount of cheese, and the chips had minimal salt. The only smudge on what would have been an otherwise perfect cheese offering were the few stale chips, set aside in the following picture.


However, that did not stop us from consuming every drop of the wondrous dip. As you can see, the chip to dip ratio was also miraculous.


Consistency: Perfect.
Spiciness: Perfect.
Appearance: Perfect.
Temperature: Perfect.
Flavour: Perfect.
Chips: Almost perfect.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Perfect.

I'm both scared and excited about going to Santa Fe this week. It seems impossible for them to serve us amazing dip twice in a row, but a part of me is praying they achieve this feat.

As a side note, the tacos were also amazing. Just FYI.

18th January, 2011

This week we had the experience of eating what was quite possibly the runniest cheese dip in the world. Halfway through the meal there was cheese all over the table, and by the end of the meal it looked like we had been throwing cheese at each other (which we would never do, it's a waste of delicious cheese).

The cheese dip before the mess started:


Note the return to a type 1 bowl, which houses the largest quantity of cheese (and is thus our favourite).


Trying to show how runny the cheese was, and failing.

The combination of the super runny cheese and type 1 bowl meant that we ended up with a huge discrepancy in the cheese to dip ratio. It seemed like not matter how much cheese we tried to pile onto our chips, we couldn't make any significant dents on the amount of cheese.




As you can see from the pictures, both bowls had a significant amount of cheese leftover that no amount of chiplet scraping could finish. So we ordered another serving of chips.


As the pictures show, I got cheese in my water glass, and Bacon Sandwich dripped cheese into a candle.

For the usual breakdown:

Consistency: Very very thin. It was pretty much cheese water.
Spiciness: Noticeable spice, approval from all involved.
Appearance: Neat at the beginning, cheese warzone by the end. Also, a welcome return to bowl 1.
Temperature: Hot.
Flavour: A little cream-cheesy, but spicy enough to create a good balance.
Chips: What is becoming the usual assortment of mixed chips. Also, very little salt this week.
Chip-to-dip-balance: Disastrous. We had enough leftover cheese in the end to drink.