Nachoquest: Annabel Lee Tavern (Part 1?)

Nestled on the very, very northeastern edge of Canton (Realtors breath a sigh of relief) Annabel Lee Tavern (601 S Clinton St.) has always been a pretty good and vibrant place to hang out, one of those good old fashioned bar restaurants that isn’t trying to be “upscale casual” or “your source for craft beer” or “any of that crap,” and since the inception of Nachoquest folks have been laying it on pretty thick that I should check out Annabel Lee’s barbeque chicken (and applewood smoked bacon) nachos ($12.95).

The picture pretty much says it all. Cheddar, chips, a mountain of BBQ chicken and some bacon mixed all up in there, I think I saw tiny bits of some kind of vegetable matter but my mouth didn’t really recognize the presence of anything “vegetable” on this plate. It wouldn’t be prudent to talk about these nachos without a comparison to Harborque’s Carolina Pulled Pork Nachos, so here’s a paragraph about that:

As opposed to Harborque’s, the nachos are thoroughly baked and the cheese is melted like a boss. No naked chips, a despite the fact that BBQ pulled pork is naturally superior (evolution, duh) to BBQ chicken, the addition of bacon to the mix really adds that smokey awesomeness that can only be achieved by nature’s perfect food (bacon). Harborque ups the ante by adding jalapenos, which really would have made this pile of nachos really amazing, but there was a definite lack of spice with the chicken nachos – especially considering their regular nachos ($7.95) do feature jalapenos, it would have been nice as an option. I guess I’ll have to try out their regular nachos at some point as well, coz the oven baked goodness and slightly-burnt crispiness of the actual chips was pretty great and would love to try them in a more traditional nacho sense.

But the bottom line is this: one person cannot finish these nachos alone, and in fact there were two of us when we tried these and we couldn’t finish them between the two of us. We were again thrown into a meat-induced spirit quest as with Harborque, waking in the gutter a few blocks away in Highlandtown the next morning with our pants around our ankles and socks inexplicably missing, drooling softly into the trash soaked pavement.

So while they’re not traditional, they’re worth eating:
One Golden Donkey (just like Harborque) out of five golden chips