It was our last day in Toronto and we decided to take the long ride from our hotel by the airport into town for one last shot at what could be the best plate of nachos in Canada. I wasn't ready to say that the Beertown nachos were the best on our trip or that the Snooty Fox in Fredericton were the best in Canada. I was ready to have my mind blown and when it's your last day in a big city, you have to make it count. I wanted these nachos to be on my mind while we are trying to land in foggy Saint John and then rushing to work immediately after landing with my ears still plugged up from the plane. Plus, who knows when we will be in Toronto again? It's between Toronto or Quebec City for our fall marathon next year. They are doing a battle in my mind. We went to Squirly's because the editor did some research and saw that Squirly's might be good. This restaurant had previously closed their doors after 36 years and recently re-opened to be Squirly's 2.0. How were t...
Berc's Cookhouse is located on Main Street, in Hampton, New Brunswick. They do not have a website, probably because they are a brand new business as of the fall of 2021. We checked out their menu at the door and, lo and behold, there were nachos on the menu. I did not know anything about this business going into the experience and it had never been mentioned anywhere on the Foodie Group on Facebook, so everything about it was new. Was it a good new experience? Let's see!
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| Berc's Cookhouse Beef Nachos - October 2021 |
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| Berc's Cookhouse Beef Nachos - October 2021 |
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| Berc's Cookhouse Beef Nachos (chips leftover) - October 2021 |
The picture above says a lot about the distribution of toppings. We might have, between the two of us, had 6 chips with something on them and then we were left with many plain chips with not a lot of toppings to put on the chips. Sometimes, at least we get enough dip to go with the leftover plain chips... but this was one of the times where we received small dips that ran out quickly.
Quality
The nachos needed to be cooked for ~5 more minutes in order to have a good toast factor. The cheese was not fully melted and did not stick to the chips. There were not many veggies with the nachos and the meat tasted bland - could have used some taco seasoning or something! The chips were tasty, but it felt like it was 90% just plain chips.
Value
The veggie nachos are $13.50. If you add beef, it is $4.00 extra and to add chicken it is $5.00 extra. Although the price is slightly less than average for a plate of nachos, the quality and distribution of toppings were less than average.
Quantity
The quantity was sufficient for a snack with a non-alcoholic beverage because they did not serve alcohol at this restaurant when we went in October 2021.
Conclusion
You can probably guess that I am not going to give Berc's Cookhouse a good grade for our visit in October 2021. When you see a negative review on this blog, keep in mind that we give all our feedback to the server (and sometimes the cook) whether it be positive or negative. I think feedback is very important; although sometimes it has to be negative when there are opportunities for improvement. It's tough to give the feedback because of the worry that it will add on to an already potential bad day for the server... these are stressful times in New Brunswick with the pandemic. With that being said, as a nacho experience, it was not really up to scratch. For now, I am also going to conclude that maybe nachos are not their specialty and that maybe they're more focused on other types of food.
The positive part about this place is that they have good chips, and they're on the right track with the toppings quality. This is a new business and they're probably still learning and tweaking, so hopefully they tweak these nachos to have better distribution, toast factor, and toppings-to-chip ratio.
Nacho Blog Rating: D