McGreevy's

Since today's review comes to us from the archives, let me bring you up to speed. The date is April 6th, 2013. The occasion: Syracuse University is playing University of Miss-again in the Final Four. Pour House is packed, and sort of sucks anyway, so we take refuge at McGreevy's to watch the game.

As is my custom when I plan on getting very drunk while watching sporting events, I open up a document in my iPhone notes and start recording everything that happens around me every few minutes. It is an insurance plan to make sure that when I wake up the next morning, I remember everything that happened the night before.

The results are, unsurprisingly, very inarticulate and overly punctuated.

Despite my alcohol fulled typing, we have these notes to be thankful for as I can now warn you against ever visiting McGreevy's to eat their nachos.

After having circled a table like hungry sharks for about an hour and a half we finally sat down and began the annoying process of hailing a waitress so we could put in our order. If my life was a horror movie, this would be the part where I would start to suspect that I was a ghost the whole time because waitress after waitress kept passing our group like we were invisible. We finally got a hold of someone, put in an order of 'chos, and waited...and waited...and waited some more before we finally realize that our nachos were not coming. Eventually another waitress passes by, we beg her to take our money and bring us some food, and she does - shockingly. We cry, we thank her, and she leaves.

So yes, the service is horrible. But this is a big game and there are a lot of people here. It's rude, but somewhat understandable. The nachos themselves, however, could not be overlooked. From here, I'll be quoting my notes so as not to let my bias mind retrospectively influence my overall impressions. I'll also be removing most of the obscenities, spelling and grammar mistakes for the sake of professionalism because if this nacho hate post is anything, it's classy.

 
My initial impressions of our sad nacho plate were, "What the f*** is this?! I thought I ordered nachos, who ordered this piece of avant garde modern art?!" The presentation was sloppy, unkempt and overall just pathetic. All the sour cream, guacamole and salsa were on the side, leaving the chips very dry and very salty. Is McGreevy's trying to increase their beer sales by serving us food with the taste of sand and salt. I can't be sure and will leave it up to you to decide.

As I started eating the chips I encountered something that I've never seen before while eating nachos. Quote: "Why is the cheese so gooey and hard at the same time? It's like what would happen if Gumby and Pokey took acid acid together". And it's true. The texture was gooey and elestic-like and then burnt in some other parts. Was it left under a lamp for too long, did it hit a cloud of radioactive space dust giving it Fantastic Four elastic powers? Your guess is as good as mine.

As for the toppings, it was all just a mess. Cubed, dry tomatoes were dumped atop the cheese-chip pile haphazardly. I type in my notes, "These diced tomatoes are falling all over each other. Go home toppings, your drunk!". And again, "There is no scoop-ability. Scoop Jardine was a good player. I bet he'd hate these nachos".

All in all, it's hard to give a fair rating here. Despite our neglectful service, dry-salty food and Syracuse eventually loosing to Michagan (I'm going to go ahead and blame this on McGreevys as well) it is hard to go back and rate food you had months ago when you were drunk. But I'll give it a go and say...

Overall: 2/10

Being drunk and hungry is suppose to make bad food taste better, not worse.

Over and Out,
Mr. Jalapeno

Gypsy Café - Lincoln, NH

Friends, if you've found yourself visiting this site, you are, essentially, one of us. What do I mean by 'one of us'?  It's quite simple actually, you're a nacho fanatic. As a nacho fanatic, you don’t like to settle on eating average nachos. And for this, we commend you, the reader, or as I like to call you, the fanatic.

It is our intention, nay, or duty, to seek out and help expose the world to the best nachos available near you. In order to do that, we have taken the task upon ourselves to indulge ourselves and dive deep into the nacho world of Boston and surrounding areas of New England. It's been a difficult journey, scarfing our faces with a combination of tortilla chips, guacamole, sour cream, jalapenos, olives, corn, beans, varieties of cheese as well as some other creative additives.

Yes, I know what you're thinking, how on earth do they do it? Its hard work and we suck it the fuck up. That's how.

This review comes to you from Lincoln, NH at a small little café called gypsy café. Now, as far as décor—this place is spot on if you're a packrat who enjoys seeing random knickknacks and tchotchkes all over the place. Don’t know what I mean by tchotchkes? Google it and learn my friend because it's a great word describing well, for lack of a better term, tchotchkes!The paintings on the wall are, to say it kindly, amateur, but they do provide some down to earth wholesome value that I think is the entire purpose of this place.

Overall, the vibe in there is nothing short of great.

After being seated at the table, we explore the menu in order to enrich our minds and more importantly, our bellies with the evenings eating possibilities.Our eyes glance the menu and quickly see their option of nachos served in three varieties. Classic, chicken or meat. We decide to order the Classic (no meat) and sit back, sip our beverages and await the upcoming nacho fiesta scarf session that’s about to take place.

OK—enough suspense. Let's get to the spicy savoury review of the nachos themselves.

The plate of nachos arrives to our table from the kitchen and it’s a dizzying experience. The nachos appear to be layered properly, as is most essential to nachos (but you already know that) They also do a good job of making the nachos appear to be a favourable amount, which they are, but the appearance of this being so is mostly due to their addition of one ingredient, cheese.

The first thing about this plate that anyone within a 10 block radius would notice is the amount of cheese they pour on top of this plate. My first response, naturally, was "holy shit-balls that's a lot of cheese". Now, you might be saying to yourself, how on earth could there be too much cheese on a plate of nachos? Is this really possible?

The short answer is yes, it certainly is. Especially when all of the cheese isn’t fully melted.

Fail. 

Other than that, the plate was garnished with a fair amount of black olives, jalapenos, and topped with diced tomatoes (nice touch) Yeah, that’s pretty much all they put in there. Excuse me, where's the guacamole?

The nachos did also have sour cream but not nearly enough to serve as a potential balancing factor to the amount of cheese on the plate.

All in all, the nachos were good, considering I do love cheese but the restaurant needs to work on their ratios and consider adding a few more veggies in order to create a well-balanced, delicious nacho experience.

Overall: 6.5/10

-Fiery Ignacio