1712 South 10th
Philadelphia, PA 19148
(215) 339-0175
Duck Molé Nachos
Oaxaca cheese, salsa verde, spicy black beans, house cut tortilla chips
Price: $9.95
As a friend of mine recently pointed out, and I wholeheartedly agree, I need to eat more nachos. More importantly, I need to enjoy more nachos of the local variety. Skip the corporate chain restaurants and re-discover the neighborhood flavors. Armed with a ten-spot, a passion for cheese, and a friend that illegally jams cell phones and is willing to eat a can of pig brains for fun, we ventured over to a local watering hole. Watkins Drinkery, which is just a few short blocks away from my nacho-less apartment, certainly has a claim to fame which made this excursion even more exciting.
Once the Duck Molé Nachos were ordered it only took T-minus half-a-beer for our meals to arrive. Honestly, it seems like it took more time to snap a picture of the nachos (due to the overly dim romantic lighting we were enjoying) than it did for them to materialize. I proceeded to take my first bite - distinctive and delicious! My second bite - tasteful and satisfying. By my third bite - enjoyable yet confusing. Something just wasn't right. Everything worked well enough on it's own, but just wasn't working together as a whole. It was the Westeros of nachos. All the flavors were competing, but there was nothing to bind them together as a single entity. There was the tang of the salsa verde, the cluster of succulent duck, the dribble of warm and mild Oaxaca cheese, the "spicy black beans" distributed around the platter, and the slightly salty tortilla chips. Sounds wonderful, right? Right?
- Presentation: 4
- Assembly: 4
- Uniqueness: 7
- Value:6
- Taste: 6
- Overall: 5.4
Faust's dining companion here.
ReplyDeleteMost nachos have one or more "glue" ingredients that allow other things to stick to the chips. Refried beans, guac, and sour cream are good examples, salsa to a lesser extend. These nachos lacked such a glue. The salsa verde, while delicious, was too thin to act as a glue. The beans were not refried, and thus instead of acting as a glue they acted as ingredients that needed glue. No guac or sour cream. There simply wasn't enough cheese.
If I had a chance to "fix" this dish I would crush the beans into a paste so that they could act as glue, and perhaps add a second layer of cheese further down the chip pile.
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ReplyDeleteduck?! who on god's green earth would mix duck and nachos? it's not right. but i applaud you for trying them.
ReplyDelete-gio
Watkins changes their menu every season, and that includes their nachos. This spring its duck. Before that I think it was venison.
ReplyDelete