Minutes from the January 10th Meeting: Spirits Bar

Until this meeting, the Nacho Club had met only at night, customarily at 6 P.M. or later. This was the norm for many reasons. Firstly, the requisite hang-overs often do not allow members to eat solid food before nightfall. As evidenced in previous postings, rounding up members is like herding cats, and requires a full day of wrangling. Finally, the club members are such dedicated nacho enthusiasts that when a plate of delectable chips is present to them they often savage said appetizer in a ravenous, blacked-out frenzy, a spectacle comprable to the feeding of blood-thirsty phiranas that is best hidden by the cover of darkness. But there was a game on, so the club met at 1 P.M. at Spirits in Cambridge. The Patriots lost miserably, but the club members drowned their sorrows in beer, nachos, and Buck Hunter Safari.

This club meeting saw the induction of two new official members into the fold, while also introducing two promising new comers. All three founders were present (Laura nearly negated her attendance when she opened her laptop in an attempt at homework. Luckily she was bluffing, and no work was done), and were joined by Kathleen, who made an unprecedented third outing. MacKenzie and Eoin both repeated, thus becoming official members. Nico and Marcos, oft-invited but elusive, rounded out the lineup and made promising debuts. When the nachos arrived, we were ready to celebrate our largest gathering to date. Unfortunately, the nachos themselves could not live up to the expectations of the club.

Scorecards were used in rating the nachos, and unfortunately the innovative tallying technology recorded largely tepid scores. The options for nachos were chili and chicken. The "chili" was really just ground beef and kidney beans soused in wet cumin, giving credence to the long-held prejudice against chili on nachos. The chicken was marginally better, but none of the ingredients wowed the members. The nachos had cheese. The nachos had salsa. The nachos had sour cream. This is all that can be said of the ingredients, and perhaps the nachos themselves: they showed up, perfunctorily. It must be noted, however, that due to the length of the game and scattered arrival times of the members, another plate was ordered later in the afternoon. This plate was enjoyed much more by the club, thanks to the good number of beers drank between servings. Perhaps this is the best recommendation for the Spirits Nachos: like B-movies and late night television, they are best appreciated when drunk. Even inebriated, Spirit Bar scored a 3 out of 5 chips (primarily due to the increasingly troublesome score inflation plaguing club tallies). The wings, touted as being the best in Cambridge, were judged "among the best in Cambridge" by those who tried them. Sadly, the nachos were among the worst.