I-10 Nachos from the Crescent Ballroom

I was going through some recent Instagrams of mine while avoiding my todo list of debugging Google Apps email issues and my taxes (seriously I still have like 8 days left, not worried about it), and I came across the above photo of some delish nachos. I had these in December at The Crescent Ballroom, a music venue in downtown Phoenix that opened it October 2011.

Their kitchen opened shortly after that and they contain this little diddy called the I-10 Nachos (great nachos, terrible interstate). Not too badly priced (especially for a music venue) at $7, I decided to add the beef for $2 more (had a long soul-searching internal discussion about the pork, but I’m a beef man, what can I say).

They came out a little slow, but the place was packed so I can’t fault them too much for that. The chips were crispy and the the whole thing was piping hot. As you can see, the portion of beef was generous which satisfied a pet peeve of mine. You know what I’m taking about: the “add this meat for $X more” where they take their ordinary nachos and throw a few tiny pieces of meat on at the last second. Their multiple kinds of cheese (cheddar and oaxaca) get multiple thumbs up from me, and your 3 amigos of sour cream/guacamole/salsa were all above average. Maybe there could have been a few more pinto beans but with the generous supply of beef, I wasn’t complaining.

Anyway, not much to knock on these nachos. This review is definitely skewed because it’s coming 3 months after the fact and all I can remember is skipping dinner to get to the show since it was Jimmy Eat World playing a much smaller venue than they normally do. So I had to talk myself out of ordering 2 (alright it was 3) plates of these nachos, so there was no way I wasn’t going to enjoy them. But if my memory serves me, which it never does except for with food, these were delicious and filling.

Word on the street (and their website) is that they are now open for lunch, so if the nighttime bar/music venue scene isn’t for you, I’d still recommend getting these for an appetizer (and another for the main course).

I was diagnosed with Celiac disease in March of 2010. That means no gluten (found in wheat, barely and rye) which cuts out a lot of foods. But one food that is almost always gluten free is nachos. So a friend of mine (who embraced the gluten free lifestyle with me) and I began to eat a lot of nachos. We’d make nachos at home, go out to eat to try nachos at new places, go to the same restaurant multiple times in a week just to eat their nachos, and even go on $50 grocery shopping trips only for the explicit task of buying nacho supplies.

So back to the pub. We’re combing through the menu and we come across nachos. So we order them, duh. When they arrive at the table, they are glorious. A heaping mound of chips, covered in black beans, cheese and chicken. But not an unproportional amount of chips. You know those nachos where the chips are piled so high that the layer of cheese and other toppings are only touching about 10% of the chips? Not these nachos. They even layered some of the toppings so the bottom chips, the fucking foundation of every nacho plate, wouldn’t feel left out. So when you made your way through most of the toppings and the top layer of chips attached to them, you were greeted with more toppings, not bare chips that would be better suited for a bowl at a crappy Mexican restaurant chain next to some bland salsa. It had most of the necessary tertiary toppings: sour cream, guacamole, salsa, olives and possibly some other. These toppings are normally relegated to bowls on the side of the plate, or they’re haphazardly thrown atop the nachos so that some chips are guacamole central while others will never even touch that delicious avocado based heaven. No, these nachos were made by an artist. Every topping was strategically placed, like how you would place your pieces in a game of Risk, where the stakes were some piping hot nachos. Every chip when picked up had the perfect ratio of each ingredient. And don’t even get me started on the cheese. These nachos were close to perfection.

As we were experiencing this nachectasy, one of us began the conversation:

“We eat a lot of nachos.”

“We sure do.”

As you can see, the intellectual prowess on display here was destined for nothing but greatness.

Side note: it’s possible that no words were actually said out loud and everything in this conversation was communicated telepathically due to the fear that the other person would scope out the best nachos and consume them while the other person was talking. I tend to have this effect on people while eating with them, since my eating style is best described using adjectives normally reserved for tornados and garbage disposals.

“We should start a nacho blog!” The words left my mouth narrowly avoiding the fistful of nachos hurtling towards my face.

“But what would we call it?” We had almost definitely started talking out loud at this point, since the pace of eating had slowed down a bit. We both knew we were at the doorstep of something big.

It was definitely my friend who suggested the name “Nachos for Breakfast”. I purchased the domain name while melted cheese slowly hardened in my beard.

The name wholly captured our attitude toward nachos. Do we always eat nachos for breakfast? No. Do we believe nachos are such a perfect food that they can be consumed during all hours of the day, even for breakfast? Abso-fucking-lutely.

So that’s the story of how this little baby was born. Expect reviews of nachos at restaurants, crazy nacho recipes, and if you’re lucky, videos of me consuming nachos at a rapid pace and then pounding my chest because it burns, but it burns oh-so-good.

See you over some melted cheese.