Talking Nachos with Parry Gripp

You may recall (how could you forget) our featured video last week of an iPad song crossed with an old Taco Bell commercial. Once we posted it and spread the love, it’s creator, Parry Gripp, immediately got in touch with us. He loves nachos and wanted the opportunity to talk about them. A founding member of the band Nerd Herder, he been a Parry is a professional musician whose latest claims to fame are his youtube videos which could only be described as pure silliness. Philly (and Mid-Atlantic) residents will recognize his jingles from the Wawa Hoagiefest campaign over the last few years. Parry certainly had a lot to say about nachos, so let’s get right down to it.

For more Parry Gripp, head over to my film blog, the Candler blog, for a podcast with Parry.

Where did the idea for combining the iPad with Nachos come from?
Well, the iPad has been in the news a lot, and I do this thing called the Song of the Week. For that, usually an idea will pop into my head, maybe a little hook or something like that. That iPad hook popped into my head one morning and I thought “oh, I should do this song.” Then I started writing the song and it occurred to me that all of the arguments either for or against the iPad were kinda silly the more I thought about them. So I figured I’ve gotta make this song sorta interesting, so I threw this left turn in about nachos. Plus, I like nachos a lot, so I had to put that in there.

Another great song of the week, almost related to nachos.

How much do you like Nachos? As much as NachosNY?
It’s hard to compete with that as far as liking nachos goes. The thing about nachos is that they’re a well-liked food in general. Most people like them. I think they’re a fairly recent thing. There have probably been chips forever and cheese forever, but you don’t have many historic documents about William Shakespear eating nachos or something. It’s a pretty recent thing where someone said “Hey, why don’t we put this cheese on these chips and we’ll call them nachos.” I guess that’s where likening it to technology comes in.

What are your thoughts on guacamole?
I love guacamole, of course. I’m from a place where they grow a lot of Avocados (Santa Barbara, CA), so I eat guacamole all the time. Although, I have to say I’ll eat guacamole on nachos, but I pretty much like to eat it just with a chip. With nachos, there’s so much going on with the cheese and the chips and the sour cream or something. Guacamole is good on there, but I really prefer it on its own.

Do you like a chunky guac or a creamy guac?
There’s a lot of guacamole out there. I’m literally surrounded by Avocado trees. I like it sort of chunky with a lot of avocado, maybe some onion. There’s usually some lemon or lime juice put in there. Salt. That’s actually the perfect guacamole for me. Sometimes people put jalapenos or tomatoes in there, that’s pretty good too. If someone’s putting mayonnaise in their guacamole though, that’s a real problem.

Mayonnaise?
My wife went to Brown University and while she was back there she made guacamole for a party. Someone came up to her and said “This guacamole is really good. You didn’t put too much mayonnaise in it.” We joke about it all the time. I guess someone somewhere is putting mayonnaise in their guacamole.

Lettuce or no lettuce?
Lettuce on nachos? That’s weird. I’ve never heard of that. You people in New York…that’s crazy! Shredded lettuce?

Yes. I’ve heard some restaurants cut their guac with it.
That’s not very good.

Do you prefer one color chip to another?
When it comes to chips, I’m pretty much color blind. I like the blue ones. I guess I’m a little suspicious of those really bright red ones because they look like they’re super dyed. I’ll eat them though.

Anything else?
I have some things about nachos that I’d like to say. I consider there to be two types on nachos. There are the baked king which you get at restaurants, which is cheese and chips and toppings, and it’s baked so the cheese melts on top. Then there’s the other kind of nachos, where you have like a paper cup type of thing, or a paper bowl with some stale, old chips. Then you get a big can of cheese with a plunger and you push your hand down and blurp on the plunger and cheese squirts on the chips. I like both kinds.

We had an enormous cheese plunger at my high school. Every day we sent one guy up to get a big thing of cheese.
That sounds like a dream high school.

Related posts:

1. Talking Cheese and the Cheesemonger Invitational with Tia Keenan