Not feeling in the mood to cook, we wandered over to Marathon on The Square for some early dinner. If anyone from Providence is reading, Marathon is very much like Paragon, on Thayer Street. The food is good and pretty cheap, and all of the wait staff wear black. One noticeable difference is that Marathon does not serve fried calamari. Tonight we were in the mood for calamari and thus were a bit disappointed to find it missing from the menu. We scanned the rest of the menu thinking that we would just as readily settle for some other fried treat. The closest thing they had was nachos; not exactly "fried", but similar.

Some so-called "nachos" aren't really much to write home about: a pile of chips barely sprinkled with a few bits of cheese. You may find others that seem to have an appropriate amount to toppings, but once you get through that first layer, the chips are as bare as when they came out of the bag. If you want them done right, you're probably better off making them yourself. The nachos at Marathon, however, were really quite good. The cheese was spread evenly and generously through the whole pile of chips without seeming to smother them. There was a healthy dose of chunkies including tomatoes, corn, black beans and jalapeños, as well as a good dollop of sour cream on top. We ended up being very satisfied with our choice of nachos, perhaps even inspired to recreate them at home. I think the only thing that could have made them better would have been guacamole, but then I'm a sucker for avocados.