For folks who love a good low-country boil emptied out across a table for family and friends to enjoy, get ready to kick things up a notch-o. (That was a nacho joke. So sorry.)
On June 23, TikTok user @stefherder shared a video her family’s ingenious dinner: the “nacho table.” Swapping seafood for tortilla chips doused in queso and ground beef, they spread the contents across a long wooden table lined in aluminum foil. At the center, they place bowls of diced onions, lettuce, tomatoes, homemade guacamole, salsa and jalapeños — the works!
The only dinnerware present is spoons for the toppings. No plates, no forks: just foil, hands and (hopefully) a whole lot of napkins. It’s messy, of course, but thanks to the tin foil, cleanup is easy.
When it comes time to “serve” the nachos, everyone surrounds the table and ladles their toppings of choice into the indistinct chip section designated by their table position.
The best part of the video, which now has racked up more than 3 million views, is when the younger child stands at the window and shouts through a megaphone to their family outside, “It’s nacho table time!”
The hands-on dinner party has since taken off on social media with lots of people showing off their favorite nacho recipes. Some went DIY-style with the toppings.
Others went all in with the layers of sour cream, cheese and beans poured over the chips.
Surprisingly, the nacho table did not get as much heat (no pun intended) as another attempt to hop aboard the “grazing table” train, the “pasta table,” which was brought to TikTok on July 18 by user @mike_kachowski_.
A riff on the nacho table, the Italian version with clumps of steamy spaghetti sweating on tin foil didn’t exactly hit the spot for viewers, perhaps because it involved food that clearly requires silverware or because the hashtag #college suggested the meal wasn’t for close family members, but most people thought it was an unsavory way to eat during a pandemic.
“COVID-19 has entered the chat,” one person commented.
Either way, whether it’s pasta or nachos, it’s wise to keep these grazing-style dinners within the people with whom you’re quarantining — and please, for the love of queso, wash your hands for at least 20 seconds before digging in.
