Minutes from the December 27th Meeting: Shay's

This week's meeting was never intended to happen. The founding members agreed that rounding up a sufficient number of participants would be unlikely given the holidays, and many of the club's previous guests were indeed away. Sean, Laura, and Mike were resigned to spending a Sunday evening nacho-less, counting their losses, and to hopefully rallying the troops for the NewYearsNachopalloza schedule for the following weekend. Nacho club would have been postponed, if not for the enthusiasm of one man: Todd Shayler.

Since the club's founding, Todd Shayler has been a vocal advocate of nachos, eating nachos, and rating eaten nachos. Todd spent many a Friday and Saturday night with various members of the group waxing poetic the virtues of the nacho and nacho club. But Todd also spent just as many evenings being regaled by the tales of the club's latest nacho outing, which he had missed, as he was always unavailable on nacho-fueled Sundays. But, with blatant disregard for his previous tradition, Todd expressed unreserved enthusiasm on Sunday the 27th, and so the club quickly scrambled to accommodate. Shay's. which had been on the docket for many meetings but passed over for closer options, was decided as the destination of choice.

Shay's was a surprising crowd-pleaser. Unassuming and kind of dingy, Shay's seemed to be in league with Grendel's Den and Charlies -cheap eateries not know for their food, let alone nachos. However, the nachos exceeded the club's expectations, and resulting in the highest nacho club score to date in a stunning upset victory. While the members agreed that, due to the size of the platter, these were more "snack nachos" that the "meal nachos" we often encounter, the smaller plate packed a big punch. There were plenty of toppings, including plenty of jalapenos, and no noticable dead-zone (thanks in part to the every popular salsa-on-the-side). The chips were of the highest quality to date, earning rave reviews from everyone, even the notoriously chip-particular Laura. The nachos at Shay's offered a chipotle bean option of which the club enthusiastically partook, finding the spicy beans a great accessory to any pile of chips. While no ingerdient was a noticable stand-out, every part was competantly prepared, cohering into a plate of nachos that, taken as a whole, were truely the most satisfying the club had encountered. Scoring two 3.5 and two 4.0 (the highest score thus far), Shay's squeaked past Deadlus to become the champion of Cambridge nachos.