All posts by Kelley

Fast Food

Burger King Summer Menu: Bacon Sundae

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Did you know Burger King has a summer menu? I did not, until now. I have been writing reviews for almost three years now and, while I do have the memory of a goldfish, I don’t think I’d ever heard of it. What a shitty food reviewer.

But I know about it now, and I sure am glad I do, because that means I get to eat and write about the Bacon Sundae. I think history will show that there’s nothing better than throwing bacon onto or into someplace it shouldn’t be. Did I say better? I meant nauseating and traumatic. Why do they keep doing this to me? Oh, right. The hype.

Burger King describes their sundae as “Sweet and savory made with cool, creamy and velvety vanilla soft serve, chocolate fudge and smooth caramel, made to order with our new thick hardwood smoked bacon.”

I have to say, I’m relieved they went with caramel over the bacon-flavored syrup that Jack in the Box uses in their Bacon Shake. My unease would have gone from “eh, I can do this” to “please don’t make me vomit, seriously guys, I can’t take this anymore”.

The official description glosses over the actual function of the bacon in the sundae, but it’s basically a chocolate and caramel sundae sprinkled with pieces of bacon and garnished with a somewhat disturbing-looking full strip of bacon. It’s not often that I’m disturbed by garnishes. Piece of parsley on the edge of my plate? Kind of a waste of vegetation if you ask me, but completely normal. Celery in my Bloody Mary? Cumbersome, but good for stirring, at least. Sundaes need cherries on top. Not bacon.

I didn’t realize the bacon “garnish” would be a full strip of bacon. When I went to pull it out, thanks to the stickiness of the caramel and chocolate, half the sundae came with it and I almost lost half my ice cream treat on the kitchen counter. Most of the blob fell back in the cup, fortunately, and what you see here is the full glory of my bacon garnish. Looks delicious.

I actually tried the garnish strip first, thinking that it would either assuage my fears or prepare me to steel my stomach for the upcoming horror.

To my surprise, it did the former. The bacon was indeed thick, crunchy, and smoky; it far exceeded the quality of the side of limp bacon you’d get at Denny’s or the sad, flavorless bacon strips that come on most fast food bacon cheeseburgers. Even the part with the vanilla ice cream on it was not unpleasant, which was encouraging.

The vanilla ice cream was your typical soft serve, and the chocolate was thick and rich, much like you’d find in a typical sundae. The caramel was also thick, although I found that much of it had found its way to the bottom of my cup. In fact, it would have made a perfectly enjoyable chocolate caramel sundae in and of itself.

But this is not a typical sundae. It’s a Bacon Sundae.

I was surprised to find that I got at least a few bits of bacon in each bite of my sundae. I don’t know if there were bits hiding underneath the surface, or if the King has some sort of bacon magic, but it seemed like there were more pieces of bacon in the cup than appeared on the surface. Bacon magic.

It was obvious that they used the same bacon for the crumbles as was used for the garnish, because it was just as thick and smoky, and even stayed crisp in the ice cream, which is no small feat. I tried to get bacon, ice cream, chocolate and caramel in each bite, and I have to say, I was not repulsed!

Somehow, the vanilla and the bacon worked well together, creating that sweet and savory sensation as promised by BK. The chocolate was so rich that it actually overwhelmed most of the bacon taste, but the crunch combined with the chocolate was a great combo.

Conversely, it was the bacon that swallowed up a lot of the caramel flavor. It almost seemed like there was a disconnect; first I’d taste the bacon, then the caramel, but no real caramel-bacon taste. Having conquered vanilla-bacon and chocolate-bacon already, I was disappointed that the two didn’t want to be friends. It’s hard to believe I just said that. I wanted to taste caramel-bacon. What is happening to me?

I ate the entire sundae, which left me plum surprised. I went into Burger King’s Bacon Sundae with expectations of revulsion, but found myself actually kind of enjoying it. The quality of the bacon was fantastic and stayed crunchy even when drenched in ice cream, it somehow worked with the flavor of the vanilla soft serve, and even though the richness of the chocolate swallowed up the taste of the bacon, it still made a fun chocolatey crunch. The bacon and the caramel didn’t meld, but I was still able to enjoy their individual flavors.

Since I ate the whole thing, you may be wondering, would I buy it again? Well, the simple answer is…probably not. While I found much of the Bacon Sundae shockingly inoffensive, there’s something about having bacon in my ice cream that just doesn’t sit well with me. Call it mouth instinct – while I was able to judge the bacon and its interaction with the sundae’s various components objectively, overall, I just didn’t feel right eating it. Plus, that bacon garnish just creeps me out.

I believe Burger King’s motto is still “Have It Your Way”. If that’s really true, I just might roll up to the tinny speaker of BK’s drive-thru and order a Bacon Sundae with the bacon on the side, minus the crumbles, plus a few extra bacon strips. It’s a solid sundae, and I can’t get over how great the quality of the bacon is. I would love to enjoy them…separately.

Maybe I’ll get some weird looks at the window, but I don’t care. Don’t judge me, Burger King employee! You are compelled to make it MY WAY. Plus, it would be fun to watch the person struggle to figure out which buttons to push to make my order happen. Sweet, salty revenge.

There’s obviously more to Burger King’s Summer Menu than the Bacon Sundae, so keep a look out in the days to come, as I plan on reviewing some of the other highlights (well, we’ll see about that) on BK’s seasonal menu.

(The Impulsive Buy, So Good, Brand Eating and GrubGrade also weighed in on the Bacon Sundae.)

Burger King Summer Menu: Bacon Sundae

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 magic bacon crumbles
  • Price: $2.59
  • Size: Uh…Burger King sundae-sized? There’s no size provided on BK’s website.
  • Purchased at: Burger King #17145
  • Nutritional Quirks: Goddamn that bacon was good. Talk about a quirk – who would have expected great bacon from a fast food joint?
Fast Food, News

News: Popeye’s Rip’n Chick’n Returns; Still Prefers Apostrophes Over Vowels

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I first wrote about Popeye’s Rip’n Chick’n back in July of last year; I never got around to reviewing it, probably because of time or real life or something stupid like that. Well, now it’s back! Here’s the official description:

“Rip’n Chick’n is a boneless chicken breast marinated with a blend of spicy peppers, then hand-battered, breaded and cooked. The chicken breast is sliced into pull-apart strips that are easy to rip and dip. This portable treat is served with cool buttermilk ranch dipping sauce for $3.99 and available as a combo with Cajun fries and a biscuit for just $1 more.”

I’m not an angry person, but if I need to take out some aggression, I think I’d rather do it on food as opposed to, say, my bathroom mirror. It also sounds a lot more tasty and a lot less painful.

GrubGrade actually reviewed Rip’n Chick’n last year, and while it’s hard to tell from the promo photo above, apparently it looks eerily like a monster hand, which makes it all the better. Who doesn’t want to rip off and then consume monster fingers? If you don’t, something is wrong with you.

Rip’n Chick’n is only back for a limited time, so if you want the chance to rip and dip (as opposed to grip and sip, which is a very different thing), head over to Popeye’s soon.

Junk Food

Birthday Cake Oreo Limited Edition

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Happy 100th birthday, Oreos! Well, actually, that was on March 6th. Please accept this store-bought card with a funny “belated birthday” joke in it. It also has a joke about you being old, because you are!

That said, Oreo is celebrating their birthday with the very appropriately named Birthday Cake Oreos. LOVE the packaging, first of all. It’s like somebody got a cake from the Kroger bakery, then took the time to buy 12 different alphabet candles to spell out “BIRTHDAY CAKE”, which I would find an odd thing if it were on my birthday cake, but hell, at 100 years old, Oreo can do whatever it wants.

There’s also a bow wrapped around the package (well, not literally, but printed on the- you know what, I’m sure you can figure it out), completing this impromptu birthday party by letting you know this package of Oreos is Nabisco’s gift to you. I don’t usually give other people gifts on my birthday, but I’m a selfish bitch like that.

Attached to the bow is a tag, which reads in font so small even with my eyeballs two inches from the actual package can barely make out, “Oreo 100th birthday celebrate the kid inside Limited Edition 1912 – 2012”.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think you need to access your inner child to celebrate Oreos. Adults like Oreos. Besides, for some people, accessing their kid inside might result in some repressed memories coming forward and lots of tears. It’s no fun to be eating Oreos while you’re crying into your milk because Uncle Dan touched you in bad places and you’d pushed that memory down for 20 years.

Let’s get back to happier topics. Like Birthday Cake Oreos!

Look at that! It’s straight Oreo logo on the other side, but this side gets a special “Oreo 100” with an adorable little birthday candle on top. I love this kind of attention to detail.

The first thing that hit me when I opened the package was a very strong odor of, shockingly, birthday cake. Well, birthday cake, general sugar, and a bit of Oreo cookie. But the birthday cake smell surprised me. I know they’re called Birthday Cake Oreos, but I’ve learned not to trust what packaging tells me the product inside is going to taste like.

I, of course, immediately twisted the top off of one of the cookies, because that’s what you do when you have an Oreo in your hand. The packaging hinted at the prospect of sprinkles inside the signature creamy filling, and there were indeed sprinkles. Not a bad assortment, either! Almost all of ROY G. BIV was represented, and not very sparse. Adorable.

All signs have pointed to birthday cake, so far. But what about the taste?

First of all, if you live in Idon’tknowwhereistan and don’t know what the outside of an Oreo tastes like, a.) you’re probably not reading this, and b.) it’s a crunchy, crumbly chocolate cookie. The end.

The filling really does taste like birthday cake! Or, at the very least, birthday cake frosting. I wish the sprinkles had been crunchy little bits, which would have been fun, but they seem to be there mostly for decoration. It’s sweeter than normal Oreo filling – actually a little too sweet for my taste, but someone with a sweeter tooth would definitely enjoy it. You can still taste the traditional flavor of Oreo filling, but the cake taste is a surprisingly accurate addition.

I call Birthday Cake Oreos a success. The packaging is festive, the design on the cookie is a nice touch, the sprinkles are super cute, and they really did make the filling taste like cake frosting. My only complaint is that they are too sweet for my taste. Birthday Cake Oreos are a limited edition, so celebrate their 100th birthday while you can!

Birthday Cake Oreo Limited Edition

  • Score: 4 out of 5 alphabet birthday candles
  • Price: $2.99 (on sale; regularly priced $3.69)
  • Size: 10.5 oz. package
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Sugar is the very first ingredient listed. Cavities ahoy!
Junk Food

Screaming Yellow Zonkers!

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SNEAK PREVIEW ALERT! Screaming Yellow Zonkers will not be in stores until May 15, so don’t run out looking for them until that date!

Screaming Yellow Zonkers! Popcorn is something I seem to remember from my childhood (like Pop Qwiz), but don’t recall ever trying (probably because I was too busy eating Pop Qwiz). According to Wikipedia, which is the only real source of information I could find, so take all this with a grain of salt, Zonkers (I am dropping the exclamation point from now on since it’s annoying to have every word after that get auto-capitalized) were first introduced in the late 1960s. According to me, that was a run-on sentence.

For what seems like an innocuous snack food, Zonkers has quite the interesting history. Instead of pasting the entire Wikipedia article here, get off your Internet ass and read it yourself.

It seems they always had a sense of humor, and it seems they’ve kept that tradition alive, which just tickles my knickers. These days, food packaging is either THIS IS HEALTHY AND A SERIOUS MATTER or THIS PRODUCT IS SO FUCKING EXXTREEEEEME IT WILL LITERALLY BLOW YOUR MIND STRAIGHT OUT THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD. A little tongue-in-cheek is refreshing. Enjoy these commercials from the 1970s(?) and 1980s(?)  I especially like the latter; when was the last time you saw someone convulsing on the ground to advertise for a product?

Case in point: the top of my box says, “open here, but don’t get mouthy with me!” Get it? MOUTHY? Man, I’m the only one who appreciates a good pun anymore.

Zonkers were discontinued in 2007, but now they’re making a comeback! Which is obvious, since I am reviewing them. In true Zonkers fashion, on the side of the box they explain their absence:

“You may have noticed that have BEEN GONE for a while, and you can blame Bill for that one. He’s one of those bottom of the box KERNELS that’s missing some of his BUTTERY GLAZE, if you know what I mean. He decided that we needed to get out of this box and go on a trip to ‘FIND OURSELVES’. It was somewhere between here and there we had our A-HA MOMENT. We had it good, really good, so we came SCREAMING BACK to the good life!”

Damn that Bill. I bet there wasn’t a kernel of truth to his entire story. I hope they popped him right in the face.

Sorry, I’m being really corny.

Now that’s how you rock some puns.

ANYWAYS. Zonkers came back in four limited edition retro-looking boxes, and here they are! (You can see an example of an old school box on the Wikipedia page I referred to earlier that none of you clicked on.)

I wound up with limited edition box #3.

I’m happy with my box. I think it’s the most sinister-sounding. I imagine my box of Zonkers hovering around my house for days. I catch glimpses of it in the window, but think my eyes are playing tricks on me. Then, late at night, as I’m watching a rerun of Golden Girls, it suddenly bursts through my front door, eyes wild. “Did you MISS ME, baby?” It says, right before it violently stabs me 17 times, laughing maniacally the whole time.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers should be happy I’m not on their marketing team.

I should probably get to the actual product at some point. Given that “Screaming Yellow Zonkers” gives you zero clue as to what the actual product is, the box goes on to describe the product as “crispy butter-glazed popcorn snack!” Zonkers loves exclamation marks.

I’m not sure exactly what a Zonker is, but these little guys are certainly Screaming Yellow. This is not a color that occurs in nature. The glaze just adds to the unnaturalness. I feel like I should be repulsed, but I’m really not. I’ve eaten blue popcorn before. How many times am I going to reference Pop Qwiz in this review?

Considering I hadn’t viewed those commercials before I ate Zonkers for the first time, I was surprised to find that there was quite a bit of sweetness to them. I suppose I shouldn’t have been, but I’m dumb, whatever. It’s impossible to not immediately think of Cracker Jacks when you eat them. They feel exactly the same in your hand – glazed and a little sticky.

They also taste remarkably similar; take out the nuts and exchange caramel coating for butter coating, and there you have it. There’s really no better way to describe them.

The taste combination of butter and sugar is disconcerting at first, and yet I found that I kept eating them. After my mouth accepted the combination, I actually started liking them, until my sugar limits kicked in. The glaze also gives them a nice crunch, which I liked. It feels like one of those snacks you sit down with in front of the tv, and before you know it, you’ve eaten the entire box and consumed 360 calories.

Would I buy again? (Or in this case, use my own money to acquire.) Probably not. I like popcorn, and I like butter, but I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers are pretty damn sweet. While I accepted the combination of butter and sugar surprisingly easily, I can see how it would not sit well with others. I wish they could have been butter-glazed without the sugar, but I’m pretty sure you can’t glaze anything without using sugar, so I guess I’ll just have to wait for some sort of futuristic non-sugar-glaze technology.

While I didn’t like the sugar, I have to give props to the Zonkers marketing team for their excellent sense of humor. It’s not going to make me like the popcorn any more than I did, but I appreciate their efforts nonetheless.

If you like sugar and you’ve always wished Cracker Jacks had no nuts and tasted like butter, then you’ll like Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a surprise toy. I only ate Cracker Jacks as a child because I was hoping for some temporary tattoos.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers will be available exclusively at Walgreen’s nationwide, so don’t search your local grocery stores fruitlessly, because you’ll only be met with heartbreak.

Required disclosure: my box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers was provided to me as a free sample by ConAgra Foods. As always, I remain objective and often insulting.)

Screaming Yellow Zonkers!

  • Score: 3.5 out of 5 sticky fingers. I hate having sticky fingers.
  • Price: Free sample, but you can score a box for $1.00
  • Size: 3 oz. box
  • Purchased at: Sent to me, but you can find them exclusively at Walgreen’s nationwide
  • Nutritional Quirks: That shade of yellow does not occur in nature.
Fast Food

Carl’s Jr. Southwest Patty Melt

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By now, you’ve probably heard about the new Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s Southwest Patty Melt. Or maybe you haven’t, because you were too busy watching Kate Upton have sex with it. Carl’s obviously knows how to generate press: the news was all aflutter about the commercial; some called it sexy, some called it disgusting. I call it fodder for a review, because while I was actually rather excited to try something I’m reviewing (for once), let’s face it: the commercial is more interesting than the burger.

Let’s have some fun and examine all the different ways Kate Upton has sex with the Southwest Patty Melt!

Kate is sitting at a movie drive-in, in what looks like an already sexy classic convertible. He date is a Happy Star bag. The idea that Kate Upton couldn’t get a date to quietly have under-blanket sex with during the movie is almost as improbable as the idea that she found a drive-in movie lot that still exists.

But Kate doesn’t want to bonk a dude; she wants to eat a Southwest Patty Melt. Her first position is oral; she bites into the sandwich, practically having to unhinge her jaw like a snake in the process, creating a sound that’s more like someone stepping on a slug than eating a burger.

She lets her hair down like a sexy librarian; sweat beads up on her chest and she takes her sweater off, making for a completely obvious but really who cares about that tit shot.

Kate Upton is suddenly transported to the back seat of the vehicle, where she is sitting on top of the seats with the Happy Star Bag between her legs. It is a very unladylike position, as her legs are spread quite far apart and she is wearing a dress. I guess the Happy Star bag is going down on her? Perhaps they are performing the sexual act known as the Leg Lock. I have a friend to thank for going out on the Internet and finding the actual name of that position. I also now know the names of 77 different sexual positions, and I think I’m going to have to take up yoga.

Up next, Kate Upton is eating her burger while laying down in the backseat of the convertible, which I would not recommend as it seems that would present quite the choking hazard. Her legs are resting on the top of the door and the Happy Star is once again between her legs. I would call this missionary style, which is so pedestrian, but hey, sometimes you gotta get back to the basics.

At the end of the commercial, she’s just kind of sitting in a sexy model pose, and takes another slow, juicy bite out of the sandwich. I am assuming this is her version of the post-coital cigarette.

Oh, we’re not done. There’s another commercial on Carl’s Jr.’s website that I’d like to touch on briefly, much like how many of you would like to touch on Kate Upton. Or yourselves, after watching that commercial. Ugh I just grossed myself out.

I can’t identify the woman in this commercial, but she also appears to be able to unhinge her jaw, and porn music plays while some audio geek in the studio steps on another poor slug as we get a close-up of her biting into the giant Southwest Patty Melt. She makes her best O-face, then bites into a jalapeño and does that thing with her hands that you do when something is too hot, while her mouth does a weird thing like she’s about to suck on…you know what, this review is already incredibly raunchy, so I’ll let you readers finish that sentence.

Then some text comes up that says…JALAPEN-O-FACE?! Oh my god, I made the same joke that Carl’s Jr. did, but they made it even better by throwing in a pun. I am shamed.

Well, it can only go upward from here, folks. Let’s just talk about the burger.

I figured I would enjoy the Southwest Patty Melt from the moment I heard about it. I already enjoy Carl’s Jalapeno Burger, and I prefer sourdough bread over a hamburger bun, so I was pretty psyched.

Never change, Carsl's.

 

And the Southwest Patty Melt delivers, for the most part. Carl’s describes it as “A charbroiled beef patty, with sliced jalapeños, grilled onions, pepper-Jack cheese and spicy Santa Fe sauce, all on grilled sourdough bread.” The bread was a little smushed, which is to be expected in fast food, but it was sufficiently toasted. The sauce was plentiful and tasty, but more tangy than spicy. The cheese was melty, and paired well with the sauce.

The grilled onions didn’t really add much flavor; there also wasn’t very much of them. The most important omission, however, were the jalapeños. As you can see in the picture, mine came with only three, and one of those was a small end piece. In a sandwich, and a commercial, that puts emphasis on a certain ingredient, having a serious lack of that ingredient is a big misstep.

All in all, I enjoyed the Southwest Patty Melt. I liked the bread, Carl’s always delivers a decent burger, and the cheese and the sauce combined were creamy and added a little heat. While I actually didn’t mind the lacking/flavorlessness of the grilled onions, the lack of jalapeños was the really disappointing part. Like with any fast food, I could order it again and get a ton of them, but I can only go off of my experience, and three jalapeños just ain’t cutting it.

In conclusion, I’d like to apologize to my mom for what is probably the raunchiest review I’ve ever written. I blame Carl’s Jr for turning a burger into a sex act.

Carl’s Jr. Southwest Patty Melt

  • Score: 4 out of 5 Kate Upton-on-burger sex acts
  • Price: $3.49 (for the single patty version)
  • Size: 1 burger
  • Purchased at: Carl’s Jr. #828
  • Nutritional Quirks: Have some water handy, because the single patty Southwest Patty Melt contains 1,460 mg of sodium. The Six Dollar version contains a whopping 1,970 mg.

So Good also reviewed the Southwest Patty Melt (and got 17 jalapeño slices!), as did GrubGrade, Brand Eating and An Immovable Feast.

Fast Food

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread Spinach & Feta and Bacon & Jalapeno

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If you’ve watched any television at all over the past few years, you’re probably aware that Domino’s Pizza has been completely revamping their pizza and desperately wants you to know about it. They’ve relished in showing (allegedly) real people complaining about how much their pizza sucks, which is designed to be a ballsy move from their marketing department.

“But wait!” They’ve responded, looking earnest like a puppy that just destroyed all your throw pillows. “After listening to you, we’ve realized our pizza blows. We changed everything from the dough to the sauce to the toppings, determined to get you to stop ordering from Pizza Hut or one of those mom ‘n’ pop joints down the street. Seriously, we don’t suck now!”

Cue the previously (supposed) real people trying the new and improved Domino’s Pizza. “Well, shit! This doesn’t taste like cardboard anymore! SOLD!”

Okay, so I may be embellishing a little. And, to be honest, I have tried their new pizza, and it does taste better than their old pizza. In fact, I’d put Domino’s at the top of the big pizza delivery players now. (But I still order from the mom ‘n’ pop joint down the street.)

Not to rest on the laurels they awarded themselves, Domino’s decided to revamp their cheesy bread. Sticking with the self-effacing formula that brought their new pizza a fair amount of publicity, the commercial for their new cheesy bread shows them ordering cheesy bread from other pizza places, admitting that “we were one of the worst offenders” and making comments like, “the undercheesing is rampant”.

Oh, dear gods! THE UNDERCHEESING! I am so adding that to my vernacular. Watch out, guy at the Olive Garden who carries around the Parmesan grater. I will not be undercheesed.

Not satisfied with just improving the quality or quantity of the cheese on their cheesy bread, Domino’s went ahead and decided to stuff the fuck out of some unsuspecting breadsticks. Having lived in a world where it’s normal to have cheese inside the crust of your pizza, you may be unimpressed. However, Domino’s claims that their new Stuffed Cheesy bread has as much cheese in it as a medium pizza.

That is a lot of cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that the commercial states that they would like people to jump rope with their cheese.

I will not be doing that, but feel free to picture that outrageous and somewhat disturbing concept.

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread comes in three varieties: Cheese, Bacon & Jalapeno and Spinach & Feta. I chose the latter two, figuring that after eating the cheese volume of two medium pizzas, I’d have a pretty good idea of what was going on without adding a third medium pizza’s worth of cheese.

While the Cheesy Breads come with different fillings, the fundamentals of Stuffed Cheesy Bread remain the same, so I’ll get to that before I discuss the different goodies inside.

The cheese inside was, as promised, very plentiful, gooey and stretchy. Each piece of Cheesy Bread delivered a bounty of cheesy goodness. It was, indeed, stuffed. I didn’t get all scientific and weigh the cheese on a medium pizza versus the cheese in the Cheesy Bread, but my mouth would call it a fair comparison.

Through some sort of magic, they managed cram an ample amount of both the cheese and the other ingredients into each stick, and the filling went all the way to the edge on the sticks.

Well, almost all the sticks. Some of the end pieces had hardly any filling in them at all.

Lucky for Domino’s, even though the end pieces lacked stuffing, the bread they used was soft and chewy without being tough, and the extra cheese baked in on top added crunch and even more cheesy flavor, so they weren’t a total loss. I’ve always required that my breadsticks come with dip, but with the Stuffed Cheesy Bread, there was so much packed into the middle sticks that the only time I felt the desire for a dip was with the end pieces.

With all that stuffing and the cheese that had been baked on top, I found it difficult to actually separate the bread into stick form. I was sometimes left with a cheesy, bready mess. Perhaps that’s why Domino’s went with Stuffed Cheesy Bread and not Stuffed Cheesy Breadsticks. This is not a food I would recommend on a first date. Then again, if you’re eating at Domino’s on a first date, there may be some more fundamental problems to worry about. If your date starts jump roping with the cheese, it may be time to go “powder your nose” and escape out the bathroom window.

Now then, on to the individual fillings.

Spinach & Feta

I loves me some spinach and feta, and Domino’s actually delivered on this one. There was a healthy amount of both spinach and feta. The spinach added a nice crunch and texture, and the feta crumbles were noticeable in each bite, adding that feta twang and upping the cheese factor even more.

Bacon & Jalapeno

The bacon and jalapeno fillings were less successful. I enjoyed the jalapenos, which added a nice heat and crunch, but the bacon was…off. It was torn into small pieces that were spread fairly evenly throughout the Cheesy Bread, but it was limp and seemed undercooked. There was little crunch or smoky taste. It almost tasted more like ham than bacon. I take my bacon pretty seriously, and this was some disappointing bacon.

I still like my mom ‘n’ pop pizza, but I would forgo them every once in a while to order Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread again. The Bacon & Jalapeno fell short, but the Spinach & Feta hit just the right flavor combo, and I bet the plain Cheese variety could even hold its own. I was disappointed that some of the end pieces lacked stuffing, but the rest was chock full of cheesy filling, the bread was just the right consistency, the cheese baked on top was crunchy, and the messiness was worth sacrificing a few napkins. Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread is worth ordering on its own, even if you don’t get a pizza, and that’s something I don’t think I could say about any other pizza joint’s breadsticks.

Domino’s Stuffed Cheesy Bread Spinach & Feta and Bacon & Jalapeno

  • Score (Spinach & Feta): 4.5 out of 5 Olive Garden employees about to get UNDERCHEESED
  • Score (Bacon & Jalapeno): 3 out of 5 jump ropes made of cheese
  • Price: $5.99 each
  • Size: 8 sticks (if you can break them into that without mangling everything)
  • Purchased at: Domino’s Pizza
  • Nutritional Quirks: We’ll go with stuffing an entire pizza’s worth of cheese into some breadsticks, but I’ll change that once someone shows me a YouTube video of someone jump roping with cheese.
Fast Food, News

News: Papa John’s Wants to Make Your Party a Total Sausage Fest with Their New Five Sausage Pizza

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Just can’t get enough sausage? Are you insatiable when it comes to long, thick tubes of meat? Well, Papa John’s has what you need with their new Five Sausage Pizza. That’s right, I said five sausages. Can you handle that much sausage in your mouth?

Let’s run them all down: it starts with just “sausage”, which is obviously pedestrian, but then moves on to both mild and spicy Italian sausage. Whew, it’s getting a little warm in here! But we’re not done yet. There’s also smoked sausage, which, as everyone knows, is the most sultry of all the sausages.

Most interesting to me, however, is the last sausage – chorizo! Chorizo is typically a spicy, crumbly sausage, for those of you not living close to our friends south of the border who may be unfamiliar with it. I live in the southwest, and I’ve never seen chorizo available as a pizza topping, even from local joints that have some pretty exotic topping choices.

You can currently get all five of Papa John’s sausages in your mouth on a large pizza for the promotional price of $9.99.

Source: Papa John’s

Junk Food

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio Tortilla Chips

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I’ve become quite accustomed to Doritos coming out with crazy new flavors. It’s kind of their thing; it’s what they do.

However, last year they went in the opposite direction and introduced a blast from the past: Taco Flavor Doritos. This flavor originated in 1967 and persisted at least into the late 1970s, but was eventually retired.

The re-introduction of the Taco Doritos was an instant hit. Originally packaged as a limited edition, Doritos almost immediately announced that they would be keeping it on store shelves, and to this day I still see that alluring retro bag as I walk down the chip aisle.

The Taco Doritos did not come without controversy, however. Billed as the original flavor, the comments section of my review blew up. Battle lines were drawn. Some loved them, said they tasted just like the original, and expressed nostalgia as they remembered eating them ask kids.

Others were not so pleased. “These taste nothing like the original!” They shouted angrily from the rooftops of their Internets. “There’s sour cream in these! There was no sour cream in the original Taco flavor!”

It was a tortilla chip nation divided. However, to Doritos, it was money in the bank. Going off the business model that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, they’ve recently released two new/old limited edition retro flavors: Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio, complete with retro packaging. I swear, the packaging is the real allure. Even I cannot resist its siren song.

Sadly, like Taco Flavor Doritos, I never had the opportunity to try either of these flavors, so I’m flying blind as far as their authenticity when compared to the originals. And again, like the Taco Flavor, I ask you, the reader, to tell me in the comments section if they got it right or not. I am looking forward to it. Imagine I just said that in a Mr. Burns voice with my fingers steepled. Muahahahaha.

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion

Those who so hated the addition of sour cream to the Taco Doritos won’t have a leg to stand on here. Personally, I had some trepidations about this flavor. I don’t know why, but it just seems like sour cream and onion should stick to potato chips and leave the tortillas out of it.

It must just be me, though, because there’s an entire Facebook page devoted to bringing them back. Congratulations to the 511 people who Liked this page! You succeeded! Or it was just a coincidence. Either way, now your page is USELESS.

From what I can tell on the Internet, these were introduced in the late 70s and were discontinued in the early 80s. Because of this, I can legitimately say that I never had a chance to experience the original Sour Cream & Onion Doritos, unless I had an irresponsible mother who fed me Doritos as a baby. From what I know, that did not happen.

As a fun treat, I found this delightful old commercial for Sour Cream & Onion Doritos, wherein a Gene Shalit lookalike (I’m sure he gets lots of work) knocks over a table and causes a butler to faint with the power of Doritos crunch. You’re welcome.

Like the Taco flavor, I can tell from several websites even beyond Facebook that there are people passionate about these Doritos and they must all be over the moon that they’ve been re-released. I’m sorry that I can’t give you a comparison, but I can give you my opinion. And pictures of chips.

I’m happy to report that sour cream and onion isn’t weird at all on a tortilla chip. At least, not the way Doritos makes them. Unfortunately, they taste almost indistinguishable from Cool Ranch Doritos. Honestly, if I were blindfolded and forced to eat these chips, first of all, I’d be terrified and confused, and second, I would immediately guess Cool Ranch. If a gun were to my head, I would be dead. Over Doritos.

If I really stretch it, I guess there’s a little bit more of an onion flavor than in Cool Ranch. I was pleased to see some heavily powdered chips in the bunch. There’s something about seeing a Dorito loaded with little flavor bits that makes me happy. But…what’s that? Red? What’s red doing on a sour cream and onion chip? Is the onion red? Ah well, who cares. Slightly more oniony Cool Ranch. You could do worse.

Limited Edition Doritos Salsa Rio

There’s also a big following for Salsa Rio on the Internet. I should probably just stop mentioning that, because I’m beginning to think that every discontinued junk food has about 500 “BRING IT BACK” websites and petitions. Some of these people sound almost desperate. It’s creepy.

Salsa Rio apparently had a short run from the late 80s to early 90s, which means I technically could have tried the original, but I was still young enough that I have the excuse that I had no idea they existed. My dad did all the shopping, and once I expressed an interest in a certain junk food, he would always make sure I had it. Forever. I think it took me three years to get him to realize I was tired of Cool Ranch. God bless him for trying.

I have no awesome Gene Shalit-related videos for Salsa Rio, but I like the fatass tomato on the front of the bag and the name itself. Salsa Rio. River of Salsa. It evokes Willy Wonka-esque visions in my mind of salsa rivers running through fields of flowers made of tortilla chips. The grass is luscious, fragrant cilantro. There’s wallpaper that tastes like onions and garlic when you lick it.

I should probably just stop there.

Man, these chips look muy caliente! This bright red is usually reserved for something like a Tapatio or Flamin’ variety of chip. What really hits you first, though, is the tomato flavor. That may not sound appealing, but there was a strong backup team of onion, garlic, and a variety of spices that I couldn’t identify but knew were participating.

There actually is a bit of heat, although nowhere near the mouth-blistering heat that the eye-searing color might indicate. There’s no substitute for a real, quality salsa, but Salsa Rio does its best to replicate it in powder form. All the flavors blended really nicely, and I found myself reaching into the bag more than I thought I would.

There’s nothing wrong with Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion; I just can’t get over how similar they taste to Cool Ranch Doritos. Maybe it was those three years it took to convince my dad to buy a different flavor of Doritos for me, but my mouth got bored with Sour Cream & Onion pretty quickly. I’m sure the bag won’t go to waste, but they just didn’t bring anything new to the table.

There are many flavors of Doritos that I haven’t had in a few years, but I found Limited Edition Doritos Salsa Rio to be a refreshing change of pace from the usual recycled flavors that Doritos spits out. The flavors were bold, the powder was plentiful, and all the different salsa-like elements worked well together. That little kick of heat was like icing on the cake.

Sour Cream & Onion could remain limited and I wouldn’t mind that, but I’d actually like to see Doritos go the Taco Flavor route and keep Salsa Rio around. At least until my Junk Food Betty and the Salsa Factory fantasy comes true.

Limited Edition Doritos Sour Cream & Onion and Salsa Rio Tortilla Chips

  • Score (Sour Cream & Onion): 3 out of 5 Cool Ranch rip-offs
  • Score (Salsa Rio): 4.5 out of 5 giant tomatoes
  • Price: $4.29
  • Size: 11 oz. bag
  • Purchased at: Fry’s Foods
  • Nutritional Quirks: Despite neither Sour Cream & Onion or Salsa Rio having cheese as detectible flavors, both list cheddar and Romano cheeses as key ingredients.  Doritos makes lactose intolerant consumers sad.
Fast Food, News

News: You Cannot Stop It: The Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Is Coming

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Taco Bell is finally unleashing the monster.

Way back in April of last year, the news broke that Taco Bell was releasing the Doritos Locos Taco in test markets. Unfortunately, I didn’t live anywhere near one of them. But on March 8, they will be making this…thing available nationwide.

What is the Doritos Locos Taco? Well, basically it’s a regular Taco Bell taco with one ridiculous addition – a taco shell made out of Nacho Cheese Doritos. You can also get a Supreme Taco, which basically just adds chopped tomatoes and sour cream to a regular taco. With a Doritos shell

If you can’t wait to find out what a Dorito and a taco taste like together, Doritos is doing a “Hometown Tweet-Off”, wherein the person who gets the most retweets by Tweeting using the hashtags #DoritosLocosTacos and #Contest will get a visit from the Taco Bell Truck, which will give out Doritos Locos Tacos to the winner and their probably bewildered neighbors.

Sources: GrubGrade, Fast Food Maven

Fast Food

Jack in the Box Bacon Shake

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I’m sure we can all agree that this bacon thing has gotten out of control. Bacon has become an Internet meme, putting it right up there with cat breading. Don’t know what cat breading is? Look it up. You won’t thank me.

What does this have to do with absolutely goddamn anything? Jack in the Box has a new BLT Cheeseburger. That’s fucking boring. You know what other companies call that? A bacon cheeseburger with toppings. However, there’s more to this story. So much more.

Jack in the Box has made a special website encouraging you to marry bacon. I know some gay couples who might believe Jack has his priorities a little out of order, but we’ll leave that hot button topic alone.

Political portion of this post now over, let’s take a look at this website. First off, there’s a video of a man marrying a BLT Cheeseburger, ending with the line, “You may now eat the bride.” There are jokes here ranging from generically unsettling to just plain crass, so I’ll let you choose which way you want to go on that one.

There’s also a section of bacon-related .gifs called “Wedding Gifts” with the “t” crossed out (get it? GET IT?!) and a Tumblr site, both containing items either boring or disturbing, the latter being a .gif of a woman eating a piece of bacon and then presumably devouring the face of the man next to her like a praying mantis that has just copulated.

Impossibly, things get even more disturbing with the “Make a Bacon Baby!” feature. You get a pretty clear idea of what this entails with the picture on the website, which looks like a female version of the Elephant Man’s face if she’d also been in a terrible fire and then had her head stuck on the body of a baby.

As if this weren’t horrible enough, Jack gives you the opportunity to make your own Bacon Baby. I’ve written seven paragraphs without mentioning what I’m actually reviewing, but since the title of the post is a jerk and always gives it away, you already know that all of this is really about Jack in the Box’s Bacon Shake.

I’ve had a previous experience with a bacon-flavored beverage, namely Jones Bacon Soda. To this day, it ranks #1 on the list of most horrible things I’ve ingested for Junk Food Betty, and quite possibly the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. And I have made some serious mistakes with expiration dates.

I knew right away who would be my Bacon Baby: Jones Bacon Soda Creepy Pig-Nose Girl.

Appropriately terrifying.

The Bacon Shake itself looked surprisingly innocent, a light pink color with whipped cream and a cherry on top. One could walk around with it and no one would know you’re holding a complete abomination. Not even any bacon sprinkles on top. Although now that I think about it, it does mimic the skin tone of a pig pretty accurately. Ugh.

It actually took a little sucking up to, well, suck it up. I stood in my kitchen, taking deep breaths, while flashbacks of the Jones Bacon Soda experience ran through my head like I was a Vietnam vet on the 4th of July. It occurred to me that I have food PTSD. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.

I finally got up the nerve and took the plunge. The first few sips through my straw were not unpleasant; the shake was thick and creamy, a little bit less sweet than your usual shake. As I got further in, however, the porcine flavor started to come through. It was like tasting a pork belly that had been smoked to preserve it on a olde tyme boat making a venture to the New World, but made more subtle, and then mixed with vanilla ice cream. A little smoky, a little bacon-y, but not overwhelming and not very salty.

I didn’t throw up, so that’s always a plus.

Honestly, the Bacon Shake was not the horrorshow I thought it would be. The smoky bacon flavor is subdued enough that it almost works with the vanilla flavor of the shake. Almost. The shake isn’t made with actual pig; Jack in the Box uses Torani Bacon Syrup to flavor it, which is scary in and of itself, because Torani syrups are the flavors you’ll often see behind the counter at your local coffee shop, which means…well, we can all see the terrible possibilities there.

The worst part of the Bacon Shake was that it had a lingering ham flavor that stuck in my mouth long after I’d finished dumping most of it down the drain. A lingering ham mixed with ice cream flavor. I did not appreciate it.

Jack in the Box’s Bacon Shake didn’t give me PTSD, but it did make me rinse my mouth out afterwards, and I can think of about 700 other flavors I’d like in a shake besides bacon. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, bacon does not belong in everything, and I can now put milkshakes in that category. At the very least, I can say that the smoky flavor was subtle enough that it wasn’t completely discordant with the ice cream. Hell, if you like the combination of smoky, sweet and hammy, you may even enjoy the Bacon Shake. You may also have a bad palate.

Jack in the Box Bacon Shake

  • Score: 1.5 out of 5 Creepy Pig-Nose Girl Bacon Babies
  • Price: $2.79
  • Size: Regular (16 oz.) cup
  • Purchased at: Jack in the Box #161
  • Nutritional Quirks: Bacon syrup. It exists. Enough said.

The Impulsive Buy also reviewed the Bacon Shake, unfortunately for them.