BrutalFoods - Ranking Boston Market Frozen Dinners

I have tried the Chicken Parmesan and thought it was quite good, for what it's worth.

Korean Snack Reviews #5

In the previous segment it was October and I joked that the next time I finished one of these it would be coming out in 2022. Well, the jokes are real. Let's get started...

1.

Translated Name: "Ace"

Additional Text: Ace

Review:

These are crackers, you can see what they look like by the picture on the wrapper. They're crackers that are slightly sweet and fairly buttery. If you want to know what they taste like, they're very similar to Ritz Crackers - they're like Ritz Crackers with 10% less flavor. Very good but Ritz are better.

2.

Translated Name: "Yuja Cheesecake" (spelled phonetically)

Additional Text: Yuja Cheesecake

Review:

The main thing is: they're very good but I want to make it clear that the word "cheesecake" is being abused here. It's a soft, cakey bread cookie with orange-colored fruit filling. "Cheesecake" has nothing to do with anything. 

These have a very close American analogue - they taste almost exactly like Fig Newtons. I kid you not. The filling is orange but I'm telling you that's what they taste like. Pretty good.

3.

Translated Name: "Crown Sando Sweet Milk"

Additional Text: Sweet Milk

Review:

These are vanilla biscuits sandwiching vanilla cream. They're very light, very airy. The biscuits are almost crackers. It's all pleasant but everything is so light and airy that it's hard to have any reaction. Not bad.

4.

Translated Name: "Post" (In French)

Additional Text: Adorable Cracker Sand - Cheese Tarte

Review:

Looks like this:

Where do you get off calling this "adorable?" I see no adorableness anywhere.

In our culture, seeing two crackers like these in a sandwich, you're expecting a Ritz cracker with either peanut butter or cheese in the middle. The wrapper even says "cheese tarte." But the crackers don't taste like Ritz and the cheese doesn't taste like anything. This food review thing is hard. How do you react to things that don't taste like anything? I should review bottled water.

5.

Translated Name: "Butter Waffles"

Additional Text: Have a good time with the Butter Waffles of Crown.

Review:

These are "waffles" and it occurs to me now that "waffle" likely has the same root as "wafer." 

The general theme of all these Korean snacks seems to be "light and airy." And so I went into these "Butter Waffles" with little hope. Fortunately my expectations were subverted - it's a Rian Johnson snack. These are dense and crunchy and have a more obvious sweet flavor. They look like this:

The strong sweet flavor and the texture are a win here. One of the best snacks in this bunch.

And that's it. Next up is Japanese Snacks #5.

Weird Soda Reviews #2

 1) Rocket Fizz - Cotton Candy Soda

Let's start out with the fact that making a soda that tastes like cotton candy is an impossible task. Cotton candy is pretty much all texture and sodas don't do texture. So with that out of the way, what do we got? We got nothing.

There is a certain "softness" here. They did try, I can see what they were going for. The taste is like the Bazooka Joe Gum Soda from #1. Not good, not bad, not recommended.

2) Duff (Soda)

Duff soda is not made to taste like beer, but rather is Orange (titled "A L'Orange"). And so although you don't really feel you're in the world of The Simpsons, it's pretty great.

I couldn't figure out why Orange, but now I see they wanted it to look like beer when poured in a glass.

The taste is almost as good as a Sanpellegrino but lighter. And the lightness can be explained or excused by the fact that it's only 20 calories. They're doing a semi-La-Croix kind of thing. They've also added B-Vitamins for some reason. I would highly recommend it for everyday drinking if it was more widely available.

3) Rocket Fizz - Marshmallow Soda

Most of what I said about Cotton Candy Soda still applies here. Marshmallow is mostly about texture but I will give this one respect in that it's a little closer - I see where they're going with this one even more than the last.

There's a taste of - not raw marshmallow - but slightly burned, roasted marshmallow. That's pretty good. So I give this the edge above the Cotton Candy. This one is not bad, some goodness in there. Still, in the flavor there is somehow a commonality between this, the Cotton Candy and the Bazooka Joe... which is weird.

4) Flaming Moe (Energy Drink)

The main thing I wish to do with this is light it on fire. Realistically, I accept that that's off the table. The second thing I wish is that it would have the taste of cough syrup. That also didn't happen.

So what are we left with? Well, it's an energy drink so I can't drink it. But, I need something to review so I took one or two sips and that was as far as I could safely go. It tastes bad. I don't it's bad at all within context of energy drinks though. I can't be be entirely sure. It's slightly fruity and fizzy but also bitter and way too much caffeine for me. 

I wouldn't recommend it unless you're an energy drink person and then I don't know how it ranks. It's fun for the branding, obviously.

All of these are available at Vat19.com.

Game Grumps - Bad Ben

 

Is "Bad Ben" the greatest game they've ever played?

Watching this, it sounded to me like someone with a Western Pennsylvania accent trying to do a Chicago accent and (being not very good) slipping into a Wisconsin accent. Is there any possibility I'm right? Well, I did some mild research and the guy appears to currently live in New Jersey so I'll take that something approximating a win.

McMathematics

 

At my local McDonald's, the double cheeseburger is cheaper than the single cheeseburger. And the triple cheeseburger is the same price as the single cheeseburger.

Somebody call somebody.

Month #1: Taiwan Snacks

 Yes, the Japanese/Korean Snack series is over a year old and still hasn't completed, what is this nonsense? Well, this year for my birthday I asked for no gifts so obviously I got enrolled in a "snack of the month" club automatically guaranteed to last another year!

And what is the first month's collection? Taiwanese snacks, of course, so here we are. I didn't get what I wanted this year and I'm passing the suffering on to you. Let's get started...

Taiwan is home to 430 unique species of butterflies and is known as "Kingdom of Butterflies." On the first full moon of the year, people in North Taiwan celebrate the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival where they send up paper lanterns into the sky. People in South Taiwan light fireworks in the street and getting hit by a firework is seen as a sign of good luck. 

In Taiwan, each receipt includes a lottery number; it's common for businesses to close for 2-3 hours after lunch to allow for naps; garbage trucks play Beethoven to announce they're in the area and no one gets married in August due to superstition.

1) Soft Yuzu Citrus Cake

Yuzu is a citrus fruit that began in China and spread to the rest of South East Asia.

This tastes a lot like a Fig Newton. It's like a Fig Newton that's bigger, thicker and has a twinge of citrus flavor to it. Not bad.

2) Soy Cracker (Korean Kimchi)

Kimchi is Korean pickled cabbage. And Kimchi is so popular in Taiwan that they made their own version that's less spicy and more sweet and sour.

As you can infer from the bag, these are like the Taiwanese Fritos. Fritos, with a little bit of BBQ, a little spice and some sesame. Not bad.

3) Black Truffle Fries

Point of order: I've never had black truffle. So I don't know what they're going for but I can still assess whether it's good.

As the bag suggests, they're chips shaped like french fries, not unlike your Andy Capp's and what not. And I think they've done well because there is a strong mushroom taste - definitely and powerfully.

And it's at this point, the thought occurs to me, "What if I'm deathly allergic to truffles?" There'd be no way of knowing, it's completely possible and I'm all alone. Is my tongue swelling up? I don't think my throat is closing but then, that's exactly what they want you to believe. Maybe my throat is closing. Maybe it's my imagination? It feels like it is - how do I know if it really is or I'm just panicking?

Living alone is scary. A slip and fall, a knife accident, a toxic truffle and that could be it. It depends on whether you can get to a phone in time, I suppose. I can't bring myself to get up on my roof. Suppose I'm up there and the ladder gets knocked over, then what? I could stay up there indefinitely. Will someone come by? Maybe. Maybe not. And then the alternative is to jump down. I don't want to imagine that but somehow it's hard not to.

Pretty good, overall. A nice salty, potatoey snack.

4) Pop-Smile Popcorn Bubble Tea

Bubble Tea (or Boba Tea) was invented in Taiwan in the 80s. The claim of ownership between Chun Shui Tang Teahouse and Hanlin Teahouse was fought over in the courts for years and eventually thrown out because no one had patented it. In 2019 the bubble tea market reached $2.4 Billion.

I, myself, have never had bubble tea and still don't know what it tastes like. You can think of this popcorn as like 70% of the way to Cracker Jack. The caramel taste is just lighter and there's another taste in there that I can only assume is the bubble tea part but doesn't taste like tea to me so... I don't know. This is the worst food review ever, I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, I don't know what it tastes like and I don't know how to describe it.

5) Taro Classic Wafers

Taro is a Taiwanese root and it's so big there that it has its own festival, the Taro Festival, held in October.

The genre of sugar wafer keeps coming up again and again with these Asian snacks. And here we are again. The look like this:

And they taste pretty much the way you'd expect. They're sugar wafers. Maybe they're less sweet than American sugar wafers but it's been a really long time since I had American ones so I can't say.

6) Taiwan Choco Ball

This one is labeled as containing/being "mochi" - glutinous rice paste. And though we usually associate mochi with Japan, it's apparently very popular in Taiwan.

The literature I have implies that it's the Taiwanese equivalent of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Coming up with the American equivalent is my job, literature. And, not being able to eat chocolate, I had to wrangle guest reviewers to eat it for me, "Mystery Diners," if you will. Here are their reviews:

"It's like gummy chocolate."

"It's not bad, it's just weird."

"It's springy... it's like a superball!"

So there you go. Take that for what it's worth.