Sometimes we take a bit of a break from what we normally do so that we can give you Mary Przywara’s The Nacho Report. Hockey and nachos seem to go together. Here is her first installment for this year.
———————————————————————–
Welcome back nacho lovers!
We are about to embark on the 5th season of The Nacho Report!
Wow, what a quick summer. It seems like just last week I was saying good-bye and announcing the winner. And here we are already!
Ashok and I will once again be crossing the continent, eating nachos as we go and with any luck, actually reporting on them this time. We’ll be checking out a handful of new arenas, revisiting some old favorites, giving 2nd (and 3rd and 4th) chances to some we found repugnant, popping into a minor league city or two, and looking to equal last year’s talent pool of 12 contestants. Scheduling promises that San Jose will be passing the Golden Nacho Trophy onto a new winner, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the tasting!
The contestant: New Jersey, Prudential Center
Eaten on: October 8 @ Devils vs. Flyers
Grade: B-
TNR so often gets its start here at The Rock. I wish I could say that this usually means that both hockey season and the Nacho Report get off in rip-roaring fashion, but the Devils are 1-4 in home openers in the new building and the nachos aren’t doing any better. I think the best year was the one in which we gave them a ‘bye’ to start.
In any case, we headed out after the 1st period and visited our usual nacho stand outside of section 11. This was also where we met up with our friends Val and John, and we were excited to have guest judges for the very first report of the season. Val wasn’t up to it, having spent the night on “Long Island” ;), but John- a longtime reader- was game. He’s a self-proclaimed non-nacho guy, but his impression was that they were really good. “Fresh chip, nice crispness to it”, he analyzed. “I like the cheese”. Overall, he thought they weren’t bad, and he dipped a couple more chips while the 4 of us stood around catching up.
Ashok and I made it to our seats right as the puck was dropping for the 2nd, and then the real scrutiny began. I have to say, The Rock has some of the weirdest chips. They’re very flat and grainy and sort of heavy. There’s no air, no fluff. You almost get the impression that they’re stale, but I don’t think they were. What they were was too salty. But at least none of my teeth suffered any damage, an improvement over the finale of last season.
We were optimistic about the cheese since it wasn’t cold this time, but there wasn’t much of a kick. I had noticed one when we started eating, but Ashok found it lacking. Then he changed his mind, but I, too, changed mine. How could one little pool of cheese sometimes have flavor and sometimes not? Very puzzling.
Grading these wasn’t easy; the first of the season never is. Compared to some of the nachos we’ve had at Pru Center, these were pretty decent. But Ashok wanted to go as far down as a C-, citing too many problems: one pool of weak cheese, odd chips that were mostly broken pieces instead of nice circles. But I felt that with cheese at an appropriate temperature- something hard to come by- and John’s non-nacho-guy testimony, these had to be deserving of a higher mark. So I was able to convince him that a B- was better, with the option to bump that down to a C+ depending on how the season progresses. Or regresses. Whichever.
I’m wishing we had gotten nachos at the Devils-Rangers preseason game in Albany; then the Nacho Report may have gotten off to a good start since the little-minor-league-team-that-could took 2nd place last season. Having dissected their schedule, I’m not sure we’ll get a chance to visit the ol’ Knickerbocker Arena this year. But I digress. And with that digression, the 2011-12 hockey season and Nacho Report are officially underway! The next installment will be coming from our first brand new contestant of the season; Nashville beckons, and we have answered the call. Will the nachos have a country twang and be served in a cowboy hat? We’ll find out soon enough! Yeehaw!
