Nachos are probably my favourite pub food. I wouldn't pretense to call myself a connoisseur, but I've had a lot of nachos and have many fine memories of some of the best like my friend Jeremy's multi-layered Super Bowl nachos or The Gem Bar & Grill's refried bean dip covered nachos. I also have bad memories of the worst nachos I've ever had: at a crappy place on St. Clair Street that will go unnamed. Even though I didn't know that International Day of the Nacho was last wednesday, I ended up having quite a few nachos last week. First up, I made myself some bareboned nachos in the hotel room using nacho chips, cheese and salsa. There wasn't a grater, so I sliced the cheese up with a sharp knife. They were okay, but they didn't have the wide range of toppings that the professionally done nachos I had at two different restaurants:
Christie's Carriage House Pub
Christie's had an impressive number of beers on tap, including the awesomely titled "Back Hand of God Stout". It was a tough choice, but I ended up going with Phillips Blue Buck, a local Victoria beer.
The name came from a contest after a lawsuit was threatened over their previous name "Blue Truck" (it was alleged as being too similar to a Vancouver craftbeer named Red Truck). While Christie's had a fair number of vegetarian options, I decided to go with the nachos:
I liked the nachos, but they had a central flaw: the cheese was baked in. Now, I'm all about baking nachos, but I think that nacho cheese should have a gooey consistency. This was the opposite, the cheese was embedded into the chip. In one way though, the picture doesn't do them justice as you can't see the jalapeños and tomatoes that were in the dish. Still, definitely not the best nachos I've had.
Ein-Stein's
'Stein's does not have the range of beer that Christie's has. Indeed they are the "local drinking hole" I mentioned here that prompted me to give up cheap beer. One thing that 'Stein's does very well though is pub food. Naturally, we had to order the nachos:
They were amazing. The cheese was perfectly melted. This was no accident, such is the dedication to detail of the chef that after baking he runs the nachos through a microwave to get that desired consistency. There was a good selection of toppings such as jalapeños and olives and they were well distributed. At some places after a while you start just getting plain nacho chips. At 'Stein's there is an abundance of cheese and toppings and no chip is left behind. We ended up ordering another, bigger, plate of nachos later in the evening. Traditionally, if my friends and I are ordering pub food at 'Stein's we get the party platter but I think that nachos should be the new paradigm. They are excellent.
Christie's Carriage House Pub
1739 Fort Street, Victoria, British Columbia
Ein-Stein Café and Pub
229 College Street, Toronto, Ontario
Posts
Cheap beer:
ReplyDeleteI did read your earlier post about giving up cheap beer and thought that you wouldn't do well here in the So Ko. Whereas in Canada the price differential between bad beer and good beer is roughly 1:1.75 in bottles and 1:1.4 at a bar, here in Seoul it's about 1:2.5 just about anywhere. So cheap beer is cheaper and expensive beer is more expensive. I say Seoul because you aren't likely to find imported beer anywhere outside of Seoul.
There are two brands of cheap beer. Cass and Hite (whose full name may be The Hite.) The expat saying is Cass is ass and Hite is shite. While I agree, Hite is a blight, Cass has class. Some argue there's no difference, but I was forced to drink a Hite last Saturday (no Cass here, but hey, maybe it won't be so bad) and it's hyper-carbonation and vaguely synthetic taste reared their ugly heads in full view. Ne'er again, Hite.
Price differential in mind, non-cheap beer has been really rare so far. It's worked well, as Cass is a good summer beer / spicy food beer. When winter rolls in and I need a darker brew, I fear paying a fortune.
As to nachos, man! In Seoul it's perfectly acceptable to sell someone a plate of plain tortilla chips with a bit of salsa from a can and call it nachos and charge $11 for it. The catch is, most pubs make you order food to get a drink and most times the food is overpriced and terrible, but then the draft beer is really cheap.
Is this your first post from Singapore? The Toronto nachos looked awesome. Keep eating
ReplyDeletemeej
I suspect that I would probably bite the bullet and drink the cheap stuff in South Korea. I mean, I was drinking the Blonde at "Stein's so I'm still not drinking the good stuff. Also we're talking relative here, right? Isn't Korean beer still very cheap?
ReplyDeleteIs there a premium on "nachos" because they're Western, and expats will pay for a "taste" of home (quotation marks cause they sound clearly inferior) or a general premium on food with the food-in-lieu-of-cover paradigm?
Korean beer is very cheap, but a pint of Erdinger, say, will cost as much or more than it wold in Toronto.
ReplyDeleteIt's a general over charging on food for the right to drink cheap darft beer policy that exists across the board. Also, a way to encourage the over-drinking for which this country is famous ("well, I've already paid -essentially - the cover").
There is a general over-charging on Western food, but it's not (mainly) to milk the Westerners, it's to milk young Koreans who think western food is le cool.
The few drinking joints that are known for drawing a strong or predominantly Western crowd are places that do things like they do back home - no obligation to order (overpriced) food, but we'll charge whatever the hell we want on drinks.
There are also a couple of Western bars no Westerner would ever set foot in. The most shocking was Jacksonville, whose photos of fusion food should be labelled a culturecrime.