As an avid eater of all things delicious, there are three truths I can’t deny:

  • Texture and temperature are crucial food factors
  • Everything on my plate should touch at all times always
  • Make it messy, please

In my twenty-three years of eating, there are plenty of delicious, downright dirty foods that have fit the bill: chili cheese dogs, disco fries, and jalapeño poppers, to name a few. But nothing quite tickles my inner spirit the way dripping, warm, sloppy mountains of nachos do.

I’d be hard pressed to find another dish that does texture and temperature as masterfully as a plate of nachos. The crunch of the tortilla chips, hugged by blankets of golden cheese, peppered with pico, jalapeños, and some kind of protein (steak is my kryptonite), topped with perfect (or not so perfect) scoops of creamy, decadent, and most importantly cold sour cream and guacamole.

To me, a chip with a little of everything—the crisply fried tortilla, the cozy melted queso, the spicy pepper, the relieving chilled guac—is the quintessential perfect bite.

Not only are nachos flawless in every way; they are, in fact, life saving. Consider this piece a dramatic thank you note to nachos themselves for all the times they’ve saved me from myself.

When I Was About to Mess Up Date Night

My boyfriend and I both work a lot, and only have one night mutually free a week. This means we plan Friday night to death for six days until it actually arrives. This particular Friday, we planned on consuming multiple margaritas and orders of nachos at La Hacienda , a Mexican restaurant where the bartenders and the cooks have heavy hands in terms of both tequila and cheese.

I didn’t eat all day because I wanted to stuff as much alcohol and nacho goodness as I could into my gut that night. The entire ride over we were talking about how good the food was going to be, and even Yelping photos of the nachos to know exactly what we should fantasize about.

It just about crushed my heart when there wasn’t a single vacant parking spot in the lot, and people were pouring out of the restaurant from the over-an-hour wait. My boyfriend was disappointed, but I was devastated .

I couldn’t stand to wait ninety more minutes because my stomach was starting to eat itself, so we just got back on the highway and started spit-balling ideas about where to go for nachos. As we discussed, quality became less and less of a concern; we were desperate, to the point that movie nachos would have probably sufficed.

We decided to go to Bennigan’s , a pub food chain a few minutes away. After checking out their nacho pics on Yelp, I decided it would be an unauthentic yet acceptable Hacienda substitute. To my dismay, the Ultimate Nachos on the appetizer menu were covered up with a sticker that read “not available at this location.”

I was about to flip the table. How was this happening to me? Good one, universe. I almost couldn’t look my boyfriend in the face at this point because I was so equally infuriated and heartbroken. If this was setting the tone for our night, it was going to be a rough one.

Luckily for him and everyone remotely close to me, I spotted a happy hour nacho special in the bottom corner of the menu. These nachos were definitely not ultimate; they didn’t even have real cheese. They were a wink away from movie nacho status. But the sour cream was cold, the chips were hot, and there was some sort of beef imitation all over it, so it satisfied me for the time being.

When I Was About to Mess Up My Bathroom

As a bartender and server, the only time I can go out for drinks is after 11:30 or midnight after we close up shop. Some coworkers and I headed to a nearby bar that closed at 1:30, so we still had some time to inhale a few cocktails. I was starving, as per usual; but their kitchen was unfortunately already closed.

Anyone who has ever drunk alcohol before knows about drunk munchies: almost as bad as pot munchies and arguably the most enjoyable kind of smorgasbord, albeit nausea-inducing. By the time I got home around 2am, I was ravenous . After a ten-hour shift and a few whiskey gingers, a girl’s gotta eat.

I was already getting a little woozy from having nothing in my stomach when I remembered there was a dish of homemade buffalo chicken dip in my fridge. I dizzily started preheating my oven and scoured my cabinet for a half-empty bag of tortilla chips. Sure, I could have just scooped the dip with the chips once it was hot and melty again; but I wouldn’t be doing my drunken efficiency justice.

I placed the chips down on a foil-wrapped baking sheet, no doubt making an absolute racket, and slathered the dip onto the pile of chips. I then put the chips in the oven, watching the dip reconfigure itself into melty, cream-cheesy, spicy, gloopy, chickeny splendor.

I nearly inhaled the entire pan myself while watching Hey Arnold! reruns in the dark. It was a pretty sad scene, but it would have been ten times sadder if there had been puking and/or no nachos.

When I Already Messed Up My Wallet

I went to Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, a “city” with the motto “10 square miles surrounded my reality.” It is a super political, hippie-granola, warm little love-nest in the middle of a lot of towns that are the exact opposite. It’s a college town with a ton of delicious, locally sourced food at every turn.

There were a few things in Ithaca that made my time there special, one of them being the entire Ithaca Ale House menu. The Ale House has the best wings and the best burgers that I’ve ever eaten in my twenty-three years of life. THE best. In fact, good wings and burgers that I eat elsewhere are spoiled in my brain because I can’t help but compare them to the Ale House’s.

My boyfriend was visiting me at school, so we fit a trip to the Ale House into our itinerary. On our walk to the restaurant, a woman on the street stopped us to ask for some money, telling us a strange story about her car being broken down. The more she spoke, the clearer it became that the story was a lie—I’ll spare you the details. I knew this, and gave her a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet anyway. I don’t know what came over me or why I went against my gut; the woman—who had been limping when she approached us—disappeared in a matter of seconds after we turned our backs. I got talked out of twenty bucks and I knew it.

Now I needed to get over it and enjoy my time at the Ale House, even though I felt like a garbage idiot piece of crap. I wasn’t up to eating a massive burger and wings this time, so we decided to split wings and nachos.

Let me tell you: the Ithaca Ale House also has the best nachos you will ever have the pleasure of consuming. They’re too good for you, or for anyone. Mere humans are almost not worthy of going near them. People don’t actually know this, but on the eighth day God made Ithaca Ale House nachos and said “damn, nobody mess with that; that’s a winner right there.”

Yeah. It’s like that.

Here’s a photo of me in silent disbelief, and almost anger, that I was actually allowed to eat something so flawless:

My number one nacho pet peeve is when there’s a huge mountain of chips with a single layer of toppings on top of everything. I realize they’re called “toppings,” but get some layering action going on, please. What is the point of having a million chips if you only give me enough good stuff to cover half of them?

The Ithaca Ale House sympathized, and they delivered . Layer after layer after layer.