Tostitos Salsa Con Queso Medium

That's a big jar.  Cheez.

If there's one thing Japan is not quite clear on, it's Mexican food.  Not even Tex-Mex style Mexican food.  In the mind of Japan, Mexican food = "tacos."  Not even ONE taco.  It's always plural.  "Tacos."  There's also Okinawan "taco rice," which people either don't know is pseudo-Mexican food or don't know is Okinawan.

Oh sure, there are a few Mexican restaurants here and there.  There are some El Torito outlets about and a few independent restaurants.  But what I miss are nachos.  Not just nachos, but nachos with neon orange cheese goo.  I found a couple of jars and cans of goo, but they were either not very good or contained ingredients I couldn't eat.

I turned to my friends at Foreign Buyers Club to see what they had.  They didn't have much.  A giant tub of something that would be impossible to store.  Six jars of Mrs. Renfro's, which either was not very good (according to someone on the internet) or fine (wishful thinking).  And Tostitos brand.  I know Tostitos brand is edible for people like me, and it was something I'm sure I'd had in the past and was edible enough.  It would do.

I bought some salt-free tortilla chips and waited for my jars of cheesiness to arrive at my door.

Now, the Tostitos cheese goo isn't terrible.  It's just not very good either.  (Desperate times call for desperate measures.)

I don't generally prefer medium heat, but that was the only one available.  And it was delightfully medium.  It isn't too spicy and it isn't unspicy.  So that's accurate.  And there sure is salsa in there to make it salsa con queso.  There are bits of peppers and things that you can see and eat and everything.  Great.  But I have a slight quibble with the queso part.  Yes, it looks like cheese.  And it tastes almost like cheese too.  But very watered down cheese.  When I want orange goo I want a thick, rich, cheddar cheese flavor.  This has a mild, bland, timid cheese flavor that seems to want to avoid upstaging the salsa element, but didn't realize that the salsa was going to be about 10 minutes late.  Whoops.

So what else can I say about Tostitos's salsa con queso?  It does the job, I guess.  I didn't have much of a choice.  It went well with my salt-free tortilla chips (as well as bland cheese product can) and it won't make me ill, at least from a wheat/gluten standpoint.  But if you can choose something else I would definitely recommend it.  Tostitos should be a last resort or a next-to-last resort.  If you can't eat gluten, it's a safe choice, but surely something else must be safe too.  Perhaps you could add a little cheese to it and make it taste more like what it's supposed to be.  Like I had to do with the Ragu cheese sauce.