Nachos in Exile

I may not know much, but there are certain facts which are incontrovertible. These are the kind of facts which bind the molecules of the universe together, keep people voting along party lines in spite of evidence of folly, ensure that plants grow towards the sun and make a person very certain that "Free" anything is worth less than it costs.

My co-workers make lunch suggestions and because I'm new, I bite back the proper responses to the obvious.

"Let's have Mexican food", when suggested in South Carolina, should be greeted with the response:

"It takes sixteen hours to get to decent Mexican food and I've got a meeting this afternoon. Let's go to the cafeteria."

In Texas, I order the same thing at every Mexican place because I hate surprises. Chicken fajita nachos are the same everywhere. They contain the same ingredients. The presentation may vary slightly (across a range from delicately constructed individual chips formed with creepy attention to detail to massive piles of stuff over a haphazard layer of chips), but the substance consists of core components which are unalterable:

1. Chips (corn or flour)

2. Chicken (grilled)

3. Cheese (maybe shredded, maybe poured)

4. Lettuce and tomato (not a deal breaker) 

5. Guacamole

6. Beans (probably refried, but black sometimes)

7. Sour cream

That's it. Seven ingredients and none of them are surprising or imaginative. If I want surprising and imaginative, I'll eat blindfolded from the dumpster behind a food court.

So I ordered them at the "best" Mexican grill in town earlier this week. I needed comfort following the ketchup-based salsa they had provided the table.

What arrived was unrecognizable. There were chips, to be fair, and some chicken. There may have been cheese, too. The problem was that the whole dish was covered in a thick pile of sliced bell peppers and onions. At that point, it could have been the best food ever -- It still would've been too wrong to be even peripherally involved with.

My Southeastern friends, grilled vegetables are not something one adds to chips. Not even if you really, really hate those chips on a personal level.

It just is not done.

You've been warned. The next time I see that kind of chip-focused hate crime you can expect to be on the receiving end of a hissy fit the likes of which one would only expect from someone from Atlanta, maybe. Or Charleston. And you won't like it, believe me. No one does.