Now that the world is opening up we are finally able to venture out into restaurants and eat food amongst humans again, for better or worse. Better in that you can almost be tricked into thinking that things are back to normal, but worse in that you haven’t gone out in so long you’ve forgotten that menus will lie to you. And nothing is worse than when they lie to you about nachos.
Bistro Eighty Ates is located in Webster Massachusetts, which you could care less about other than the fact that the town contains Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, the longest name of any geographic feature in all of the United States. Ethel Merman even wrote a song about it in the 1950’s, and let’s just say it’s good she didn’t survive to these cancel culture times because it is something alright. Anyhow, the restaurant is located in the plaza for Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, or rather right now a tent in the parking lot of the plaza that is. Not totally back to normal you see.
I had to use Google Maps because I didn’t have a wide enough mode on my camera.
When I look at a menu and see “Nachos Neapolitan” I first comedically think that it’s going to be a pile of chips with strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream on top. Then I settle down and get much more boring as they are probably just nachos made by someone from Naples, Italy. What showed up certainly wasn’t the first, and if it was the latter Italians need to learn the other word for “Nachos Neapolitan”: Mexican Pizza. Wait… maybe this makes total sense…
What showed up was a deep fried tortilla, on top of which was a layer of nacho cheese sauce, then another deep fried tortilla, then all the rest of your nacho toppings. It was divided into quarters, as though it was a pizza and not an order of nachos. You had to eat it like a slice of pizza, or a loaded deep fried quesadilla, and not an order of nachos. Basically other than the nachos ingredients it was composed of, it was not very “Nachos” and was instead very “Mexican Pizza”. But is that on me for misinterpreting the name?
Naples was the birthplace of pizza in the late 900’s, so when these nachos are referred to as “Neapolitan” am I supposed to automatically assume that what is going to show up is actually pizza and not nachos? Technically the name fits, so I must concede that it’s not false advertising, so is this now on me? I mean they did come on a goddamn pizza tray, what am I supposed to make of that? What I can say however is that if you’re going to put a dish with “nachos” in its name in the appetizer section of your menu you need to write a little more explanation that you aren’t getting “standard” nachos. This goes doubly true when there is also a whole section for pizza on the menu where this would fit in much more accurately.
Calling this “Mexican Pizza” a “Nachos Neapolitan” is the equivalent of the “Patagonian Toothfish” being called a “Chilean Sea Bass.” I see what you’re doing Eighty Ates, I see what you’re doing. You fooled me once, but never again. That said, this was still much closer to nachos than the all time misleading winner “Rail Trail Garnachas” that they tried to pass off as “Street Corn Nachos”, so there is that. Restaurants, stop being ashamed of your nachos. Make them good and make them proud and you will sleep the sleep of the just all the rest of your days. Seriously, start doing that, because what you are doing now is worse than this: