Crappy Food Critic #08: McDonald's Shakin' Flavor Seasonings

Hey y'all, what's shakin'? Chicken McNuggets, that's what. Those little light brown crispy abominations—you either love them or you hate them. Me, I love them. I'm not super-happy about what that says about me, but it comes from the heart, so my aim is true. Other than containing gradually greater amounts of actual meat, McNuggets haven't changed much since their introduction in 1983. Now, however, in addition to their venerable line of dipping sauces, McDonald's offers a trio of flavor powders, applied to the outer surface of the McNugget via vigorous shaking.

I know right off the bat the above picture is going to upset some people because, yes, you have to apply the powder yourself. That's like when you go to the movies and you order nachos, and you're dreaming of a paper boat full of giant round tortilla chips with neon yellow gold spilling over the sides, but then the concession stand kid gives you a snack-size bag of Fritos (NOT EVEN SCOOPS) and a Dixie cup that doesn't even contain enough radioactive goop to cover a Cheez-It.

Also, you can see that I received only one shake bag for three different flavors. BAD FORM, MCDONALD'S. I am not interested in a zesty chipotle garlic BBQ parmesan ranch Frankennugget. With nothing similar on hand, I got the powder out of the bag the same way I got it in: by shaking it (and also wiping it down with a napkin). It worked well enough, in that I didn't detect any of the previous flavor when I went to try a new one, but I did go to a different McDonald's for this batch than for the other ones I've had, and the other McDonald's all had the good sense to give me a separate paper bag for each flavor. I'm not going to publicly shame the location that did this to me ... this time.

When I'm faced with multiple flavors of a product, as in the case of the Daredevil Loaded Grillers[1], I try them in the order I think I'm going to like them, from most to least. That brought zesty ranch to the plate first. When it comes to shaking objects, my mighty arm can match the paint mixer at Home Depot in power and intensity, so the seasoning got pretty well distributed. (Before and after shaking below.)

The zesty ranch powder has an extremely prominent dairy component, along with equally powerful vibes of garlic and onion. McDonald's must have more in mind than just chicken sandwiches when it comes to their recent commitment to using real buttermilk. I really like this flavor, but my wife had a very visceral negative reaction to it. It is so strong as to potentially set off a distant "fake" alarm in the back of the minds of some, so your tolerance for ranch will likely reliably predict how much you're going to enjoy this flavor.

Next up came parmesan garlic. Of the three flavors available, this one misses the mark by the widest margin. The seasoning tastes almost stale, with too much of the "feet" profile and not enough of whatever it is that offsets that foot taste and makes parmesan palatable and pleasing. You might have had parmesan garlic "hot" wings before: if you have, you know that they're all flavor and no heat, and if you mess up that flavor, you've got nothing.

Chipotle BBQ vindicated my decision to move from most- to least-anticipated, because I had the lowest expectations for it and it turned out the best, so I may have ended up liking it even more than I would have otherwise. The kick I got from the first chipotle BBQ nugget was a huge surprise. Right away, you feel an immediate yet enduring impact. It's very smoky, but also kind of sweet. The only knock against it would be that after four or five of them, the artificiality of that particular flavor becomes more apparent than with the others—that high-fructose ketchupiness that signifies an inferior barbecue sauce. Those intolerant of any level of spice in anything whatsoever will want to avoid it. Their loss, though,

because the chipotle BBQ seasoning totally bowled me over. It's the only flavor of the three I would prefer to the total exclusion of the liquid dipping sauces.

Speaking of the sauces, I can't recommend pairing a powder-laden nugget with any of them. The sauces are an "in your face" kind of proposition, while the seasonings are more earthy and tend to complement the McNugget rather than bury it. McNuggets in the past have been little more than a conduit for sauce consumption; if you're not ready to confront the idea of an unadorned, undipped McNugget, I'd say don't take the plunge until you are. None of the combinations of dust and sauce I've tried up to now have lit me up, though I should also note they didn't drive me to misery either.

Overall, the Shakin' Flavor Seasonings are a motley bunch, achieving wildly varying levels of success, sometimes seeming like a half-hearted and/or glib attempt at a boneless wing, other times shining a faint light on a road to a brand new era of McNugget possibilities. I get the feeling these won't be around forever, though their availability in my area appears to suggest expansion from a few test markets, so they've at least got a foothold. If you enjoy doing things that work on both figurative and literal levels, you should shake things up and expand your McNugget paradigm with one of these flavors. Chipotle BBQ gets my highest recommendation, but zesty ranch runs a not-quite-close second.

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[1] Worst Hardy Boys book ever.

Crappy Food Critic #07: Werther's Originals Soft Caramels

Once in a supermoon, one of the niggling questions of our age awakens from its slumber to haunt us anew: have our children become too soft? For a few days, we all wring our hands and wonder if we are coddling our kids and denying them the gift of manliness by giving them too many participation trophies before life catches up to us once more and we become too busy to worry about it. Who will stand up to this existential kaiju of parental doubt, arising from the seas and terrorizing our waking days and our sleepless nights? WHO, I SAY?!?

Luckily, we have hardy, reliable brands like Werther's Original. Old people, as we all know, are deathly afraid of change, and Werther's Originals have long served as a trusty anchor to those in their twilight years. Those accursed millennials may drink their quinoa kale smoothies and take selfies with their bae and talk about frightening, inscrutable things like gay marriage and gender fluidity right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, but ah, Werther's Originals, with their reassuring solidity. They'll never let the elderly down!

What's that? Oh no, not you too, Werther's!

Yes, even Storck's famous caramel hard candies have traded tradition for pliability. We live in an age of text messages and streaming viral video—who has time to gum even a single hard caramel into a buttery lake of divine nothingness? We're all living in the fast lane. We can't afford to waste time sucking on old-fashioned butter pills! The youth are the ones paving the roadways to the future; time to fall in and align ourselves with the quick-chew zeitgeist.

Now when the bag says soft, it means soft. I pressed on the bag a few times and the level of give made me worried that they had done a fair amount of melting. It also didn't feel like there were a whole lot of them in there (and there aren't), but for only a dollar they don't feel like a ripoff.

Each caramel comes packaged in its own tissuey white wrapper featuring an elegant golden middle with a very alluring deep magenta trim. I can't help but spend a few seconds gazing at it before I open one. The wrapper opens as easily as you'd expect, and the candy, though a bit sticky, comes off the paper without a mess.

Storck was not kidding when they called these caramels soft. Unfortunately, they're also lacking in a couple of the key qualities that makes Werther's such an enduring brand. First off, there's absolutely no resistance to them. These things go way beyond merely chewy. I expected something more akin to a Brach's caramel, demanding yet tender, but it fell far short of that. They're so gooey they remind me of Milk Duds, in that I feel like I have to chew on eggshells, so to speak; one false move and I'll brushing my teeth for an hour trying to get the residue off. But more importantly, they're missing much of the buttery quality that makes a Werther's Original as succulent as you know and love. In the rush to de-harden a classic, something got lost in the translation. "Bland" is not quite the word I am looking for, but unless there's been a recipe change somewhere over the years that I wasn't aware of, something integral to the essence of the Werther's Original has gone AWOL.

That right there is the real crime: they simply don't taste right. Kudos to Storck for trying to mix things up by swinging the pendulum, but they swung it way too hard in the other direction. They just don't taste the way they should, like they did when I was a kid, when gas was $1.50/gallon and I walked around my neighborhood listening to CDs on my Discman and playing my Game Boy and .... say, is that a gray hair?

Crappy Food Critic Hall of Fame: McDonald's Morning Mac

As I'm sure you've heard by now, McDonald's is going to be rolling out all-day breakfast nationwide at all their franchise locations starting October 6 (a day after my birthday, Mickey D's, but a belated gift is better than nothing at all). A lot of people are excited, while some are huffing sighs of relief that McDonald's is finally getting with the program. I for one am optimistic, because thinking about McDonald's breakfast always makes me pine for my favorite McD's menu item ever, and if the fruits of my cursory research are any indication, it could be making a return with the advent of the all-day breaking of the fast.

As America's leading junk-food critic with double-digit readership, it's important that I review items that are currently available and stay in the now. But indulge me for a moment as we return to the world of 2003. I was a senior in high school, and America was still more or less fresh off a brazen terror attack on its own soil and the first ever election of a chimpanzee as president. But in the midst of the geopolitical chaos, the world's largest fast-food burger joint unveiled a twist on a classic breakfast item that was ingenious in its simplicity: the Morning Mac. All a Morning Mac is is a Sausage Egg McMuffin with an extra sausage patty. Doesn't sound revolutionary on the face of it. And yet, adding just a single sausage patty tips the flavor balance of the Sausage Egg McMuffin from simply savory to gloriously divine. If you've never tried it, you really should; it will irrevocably change your outlook on everything for the better, forever.

For many years I thought I had hallucinated the Morning Mac. Google certainly doesn't seem to know much about it, and it doesn't reside among the current offerings on their website. I've continued enjoying it in spirit for over a decade, if not in name, since it's easy enough to achieve the desired effect for a simple dollar upcharge. But when I converted my fond memories to Google action, lo and behold—what should I find but a commercial of very recent vintage for none other than the Morning Mac:

I don't think this ad has aired on television yet. At least, it hasn't to my knowledge. On the Internet, I can only find it at that one YouTube page and some site that appears to catalog commercials. But given the spot above combined with the fact that McDonald's has been holding onto the trademark for Morning Mac this whole time, I'm anxiously awaiting the potential official return of the Morning Mac. This is more exciting than ten McRib reunion tours. And even if it doesn't come back, I exhort you: please get a second sausage patty on your McMuffin sometime, and report back to me when your third eye has opened.

Crappy Food Critic #06: Taco Bell Habanero & Ghost Pepper Daredevil Loaded Grillers

Once again, our sub-culinary travels take us through the Taco Bell drive-thru, but it's not the Cap'n with whom we seek an audience this time.....

The Bell's new Daredevil Loaded Grillers come in three flavors: mild/chipotle, hot/habanero, and fiery/ghost pepper. Each one contains ground beef, crunchy red tortilla strips for texture, and one of three sauces. I didn't bother with mild, because 1) come on, and 2) true daredevils don't waste their time in search of "mild" action. Like heat-seeking missiles, it is heat we, um ... seek. So I went straight for the two spicier variants.

Although the "Triple Threat" poster advertising these items shows them wrapped in shiny color-coded foil, I only received paper wrapping, and as such I wasn't able to tell the two grillers apart by external appearance. I thought I ate the habanero one first, because the sauce reminded me immediately of the habanero ranch dipping sauce McDonald's offers with their McNuggets. Also, I wasn't getting the hiccu-burps that anything approaching ghost pepper heat tends to give me. Now, however, I think it was the ghost pepper griller I ate first, for reasons I'll get to soon enough.

TB's fire sauce is my heart and my everything, but it seemed redundant to go slathering it on something already spicy. I tried it anyway, and surprisingly it paired well with the griller. It's odd to say that fire sauce has or can ever have lightness of any kind, but compared against the sauce in the griller, it was like a split-second sorta-spicy amuse-bouche before the real heat hit. I feel a bit bad that I emasculated trusty old fire sauce like that, but it was in the name of rigorous, frontier-expanding food science, with only good intentions.

Though adequately spicy, the first griller had no build to speak of. It started hot and was easy to acclimate to. As such, toward the end as I was getting used to it, it started losing the punch. It never came close to any territory I would consider "disappointing", though. The spice level was perfect for my tastes, though your mileage may vary.

It was the first bite of the second griller that made me think I'd started at the far end of the spice spectrum rather than the less-hot side. This one did not give off nearly the same burn. In fact, it was hard to tell what was going on at all. Whatever it was, it was very muddled. I finally got some fire in the last few bites, and although it was kind of smoky, it was still uninteresting and overall weak compared to the first griller. However, sometime later, I began to suspect that the lingering heat from the ghost pepper griller may have interfered with the flavor of the habanero griller, giving me a faulty impression of it. 

Since I walked away from the first experience largely confused, I decided to stop by again after work the next day and grab another griller to clear things up. I'm not fishing for sympathy, but I just want you to know that it was over 100 degrees outside, and my car lacks working air conditioning, and the two cars before me in line decided to order the entire left side of the menu, and at one point a cricket sought succor from the heat inside one of my pant legs. Not complaining; just letting you know what I go through in order to bring you pointless information about junk food.

I only ordered one griller the second time around, the ghost pepper one, and it tasted more similar to the first one I had eaten the night before. It was just as tasty the second time around, but I realized later on in good old HD hindsight that I should have gotten the habanero griller so that I could approach it with a clean palate and get the proper impression from it. Facepalm! Science is hard to do.

So for the third time in as many days, I went through the drive-thru, purchasing only the habanero griller on the final run. It still had the same murky flavor on untainted taste buds, as if the same sauce as in the ghost pepper griller was used and they were just somehow tamping it down to get it to a lower heat level. It was about this time it occurred to me that there was nothing especially habanero-ey or ghost peppery about either griller, and that it was possible that Taco Bell had just repurposed a huge load of volcano sauce they had no use for since discontinuing the Volcano menu.

One note, apropos of most of nothing written above: it seems to me that Yum! Brands missed a plum cross-promotion opportunity here, in this case with Netflix. I'm not a hotshot marketing guy, but I wonder why Taco Bell's people didn't get on the phone with Netflix's people and be all like, "Hey, we've got these spicy dollar menu things we're going to roll out and they're going to have 'Daredevil' in the name. If we were to run a slogan like 'For true superheroes only' or 'They're so spicy they'll make you go blind', would you be down for that? Ping us back. Tell the missus we said hi." You know you're selling at least five or six million more of these things if Marvel is attached. They should have at least tried. This is a huge oversight.

"They're Elektra-fying! ... Too soon?"

With or without a superhero's endorsement, Taco Bell's Daredevil Loaded Grillers require little, if any daredevilry to eat. Although the ghost pepper one might upset those of a less tolerant constitution, and it's probable there's nothing even remotely resembling bhut jolokia in it, it is without question the tastiest of the three. Look at the hand in the picture reaching for the ghost pepper griller. That guy knows the score! If these succeed, might I suggest a Carolina Reaper Loaded Griller? Oh well. A boy can dream, anyway.

Crappy Food Critic #05: RaceTrac Italian Pizza Link

When I reach the end of my life and the coroner opens me up for the autopsy, his or her first thought will be: "Dang, that guy really liked gas station roller-grill food."

Although the shabbiness of my diet should come as no surprise to anyone who is caught up on this feature, it doesn't lessen the sting of the admission that the majority of my breakfasts consist of heavily processed tube meat. What can I say? It's on the way to work, it's cheap[1], and this is America.

I buy my putrid meat-like sustenance from a convenience chain called RaceTrac, which is based in Georgia and serves that state as well as Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and my home state, Texas.[2] (I would make a blithe joke about "regional cuisine" here, but I'm sure similar foodstuffs exist in your neck of the woods if you know where to look.) Normally I get jalapeño cheddar sausage links if I'm commuting before or at sunrise, and buffalo chicken roller bites if it's closer to lunchtime. This is a pretty ironclad routine I have, so when something new arrives—like the Italian Pizza Link, which we'll be examining today—I hesitate to deviate from it. Is my trepidation justified, or am I just a lily-livered philistine?

Let's take a look at our specimen.

At first glance, I detected pepperoni of the diced Tony's/Totino's variety, a cheese that could either be mozzarella or provolone (always hard for me to visually tell the difference), black pepper, and ... caraway seeds? Um, okay. And of course, Italian sausage, in clear abundance. That's pizza-ish enough, I suppose. Pizza carries a heavy risk as a general flavor because although it's ubiquitous, the definition of it is far from universal. I admit I consider the lack of any tomato-based ingredients a mystifying omission, but maybe it's best not to kill this thing with overambition before it leaves the concept phase, and if you think I put Heinz ketchup on it, your bags are packed for Crazy Town.

I knew I was in trouble when I picked it up for the first time. Usually I can put the phallic subtext of these things out of mind, but there's no ignoring it here. The Italian Pizza Link is thick and heavy and bows with obeisance to the force of gravity. I kind of wish I had taken a picture of its inability to maintain its horizontality, but I might have ended up on some watch lists. So the obvious visual connotations are all but unavoidable, but the Italian Pizza Link is also a distinct displeasure to touch and hold. From its disgusting appearance to its baffling ingredient profile to the grease you can smell a mile off, everything about this sausage screamed regret, and I hadn't even put it in my mouth yet.

You know when you go to a Mexican restaurant and you can tell the tortilla chips have been fried in old oil? That's not just a feature of the Italian Pizza Link; it's the primary flavor. I was willing to give the first bite the benefit of the doubt because I didn't get any of the inner ingredients in it. Unfortunately, the pepperoni and cheese succumb to the overwhelming aura of the grease. This abomination was doomed before it left the factory. No amount of seasoning or flavor variety had any chance of salvaging it.

Although the deal-based nature of the roller grill lends itself to buying in pairs, I'm really glad I only bought one link, because I only ate half of it before waving the white flag. The Crappy Food Critic is still a fledgling young feature, but this is the first food item I've given up on without finishing, and it is without question the worst one I've subjected myself to yet. That makes it the first inductee into the CFC Hall of Shame, a fate to which I will consign any comestible I fail to consume in its entirety. More effectively than Food, Inc. or Jamie Oliver or any other health-food crusade(r), the Italian Pizza Link made me step back and and wonder just exactly what bilge I'm running through my pipes. It has managed a feat almost no edible object I'm willing to eat has accomplished: it has made me feel ashamed of conspicuous consumption and of being an unrepentant garbage chute. THANKS A LOT, RACETRAC.

One final note: in case I haven't dissuaded you thoroughly enough or you're one of those Sharknado-watching ironists who just has to experience a train wreck firsthand, I recommend doing something that normally only Neanderthals do with pizza: dip it in ranch dressing. You're going to need something to chase that greasy taste. Dr Pepper didn't cut it. But the most sensible thing to do would be to just avoid it at all costs. Italian Pizza Link, I cast thee out!

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[1] though steadily rising. Roller items used to be 2-for-$2, then rose to $2.22 briefly before jumping again to $2.49. I fully expect 2-for-$3 by 2017.

[2] You may also have RaceWay in your state, which is owned by RaceTrac Petroleum, Inc. Whatever the name, it's exclusive to the South, which explains a lot of what you'll read here. (It's unclear to me if RaceWay carries the same items as RaceTrac.)

Crappy Food Critic #04: Pico de Gallo Flavored Lay's

If a new potato chip is sold within a five-mile radius of my job, you can bet your sweet bippy I'm going to notice it. These being an approximation of one of my favorite Tex-Mex condiments, I got doubly excited. So how do they stack up? Well, they're not Pringles, so probably poorly. So how do they stack up figuratively?

Before we talk taste, let us observe the gold stamp that says Flavor Inspired by One of Our Employees, said employee identified as one Samuel Oliveros. All of my theories about what that could possibly mean or how it could be interpreted are deeply cynical, so I won't pop the top on that can o' worms. Instead, let's see what Mr. Oliveros has to say about the creation he inspired:

The vagueness of "my part of the United States" throws up another red flag of cynicism; I'm going to assume it's either California or the South and move on. Also, if chips and salsa are such a classic combination, why would you want to obviate the need for salsa? Less mess? The scientific "coulda, not shoulda" impulse? Chips and salsa aren't broken, Sam; let's not try to fix it.

I also sincerely hope Mr. Oliveros is not naive enough to believe that a mass-produced potato chip will approach anything remotely close to "authenticity"; however, I choose to believe he had good intentions. That's why it's so unfortunate that it only took me one bite to realize that this flavor was probably not chosen for its originality, creativity, brilliance, or even marketability. The first thought that entered my mind when I ate one—aside from "Easy on the lime juice, guys"—was this:

"This tastes familiar."

It took about ten minutes of trying more chips and digging through shelves of memories Inside Out-style, but I finally figured out why they tasted familiar. With the exception of some additional "zhuzh", these are more or less an unaltered rerelease of one of my least favorite Lay's flavors ever: Garden Tomato & Basil. There have been, in my chip-eating experiences, few misfires as far off the mark as GT&B. I barely made it through my first bag before swearing them off for life.

Now, there are some differences that make these more tolerable. Eat enough of them and they leave a semi-lasting sensation somewhere between tang and heat, which admittedly is what the best pico accomplishes. You can ride that taste long enough to cover up most of the worst aspects of the GT&B dust, making this a surprisingly tolerable chip. Though, if "surprisingly tolerable" isn't damning with faint praise, I don't know what is.

As I post this, Lay's has only just today entered the throes of its now-annual Do Us a Flavor contest. Pico de Gallo is actually not one of those flavors—it seems to have been exempted from the pressures of competition by dint of being "inspired" by a Frito-Lay employee. As such, I think it will quietly disappear in whatever kerfuffle the contest manages to kick up, which seems appropriate. Its taste resides at the very baseline minimum of "okay", and other than the added cilantro, lime, and other spice factors, it's a lazy re-rollout of an awful flavor. You can safely pass on these.

Crappy Food Critic #03: Taco Bell Cap'n Crunch Delights

Say what you will about Taco Bell—people certainly do—but plenty of fast-food chains serve total garbage relatively unscathed, yet Taco Bell almost always takes the bullet. McDonald's is the ne plus ultra face of fast food, but they always at least try to act they're making some sort of stride toward improving the amount and range of their healthy options. Carl's Jr makes the news once in a blue moon, when they unveil some behemoth that's less healthy than just straight-out eating a cauldron of lard. Jack-in-the-Box makes fewer bones about advertising directly to stoners. Taco Bell is always the butt of low-hanging hack jokes about diarrhea, although in my experience it's Subway that deserves that crown. Fairly or not, Taco Bell usually winds up playing the patsy.

But no chain has absorbed and internalized not just the meaning, but the spirit of "junk food" and manifested that into innovative offerings as well as Taco Bell. Regardless of how you feel about it, the Doritos Locos Taco is, bar none, the most influential and electrifying fast food item of the last decade. So anything they make in that vein from that point forward should command at least a non-negligible amount of attention.

Previously, Taco Bell has offered the Cinnabon Delight, which is a deep-fried ball, oval in theory but amorphous in practice, filled with a sort of milk-like cream.[1] The Cap'n Crunch Delight is more or less the same thing, but instead of being covered in cinnamon and sugar, it's coated in Crunch Berry dust, of the sort you find at the bottom of the cereal box.

As far as junk cereals, it's hard to beat Cap'n Crunch, if not by taste then at least by reputation. Quaker Oats stopped marketing Cap'n Crunch directly to children in 2011, under pressure from, among other sources, Michelle Obama and her tireless efforts to curb child obesity, though the brand maintains online and social media presences. It spun Crunch Berries off into the all-Berry variant Oops! All Berries. (You think General Mills would ever pull the trigger on an "Oops! All Charms"?) Weirdly enough, considering the subject matter at hand, there's also a Sprinkled Donut Crunch nowadays, in case you happen not to be abreast of the Cap'n's current affairs. They've got their grip on garbage locked down tight. It makes sense for Taco Bell to pursue it as a dessert option.

For me, the biggest obstacle is the milky filling. It doesn't quite taste totally like icing, and it's not entirely convincing as milk, either. It's a strange hybrid. I think I might like it more if it was offered on the side, in a small cup, so that I could dip at my leisure and control the ratio of icing in the ingredient mixture. (Unfortunately, I didn't think about nibbling around it in the initial bites. It seemed like the kind of thing you just go all in on.) 

The taste of the outer portion lives and dies by the freshness of the oil used to fry it. Doubtless you'll pardon me if I'm not going to count on Taco Bell to be on top of their oil game. Getting one from an old batch is an experience not dissimilar to getting chips fried in old oil at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Therefore, strangely enough, for optimal results, I'd bet that the sooner after the breakfast menu closes up, the better time it is to pick up a couple. That seems odd to me, but I also have weird hangups about eating anything even slightly breakfast-y in any time frame other than breakfast, so I won't try to argue that point too hard.

In a strange way, they resemble nothing so much as a super-basic version of Taco Bueno's Cheesecake Chimichangas, which are so much lighter, crispier, cheesecakier, and just all-around better. Luckily, it's only a dollar for two, so it doesn't feel like too much of a rip-off, and you won't feel bad throwing away too much food if you don't like them, which is likely, because they're weird. Not bad, per se, but weird—very weird. Certainly it's not as fruitful a collaboration as with Frito-Lay, but I don't want to dock them too hard for that, because what could be? I won't shed any tears when they fall off the menu, though.

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[1] I've seen numerous comparisons to donut holes, though I haven't cottoned to it; I feel donut holes hold their shape a little better.

Crappy Food Critic #02: Doritos Roulette

After I dropped my wife off at work this morning, I stopped at a gas station for breakfast, because I'm an unbelievably putrid lipizoid nightmare. Anyway, in addition to my typical garbage breakfast of jalapeno cheddar sausages and Dr Pepper, my eyes lighted upon this:

Naturally, I had to check them out.

First, let's look at the two bits of text on this package.

Ahh, my old arch-nemesis: Limited Time Only. Don't think I didn't catch you trying to hide out in the corner up there! This significantly raises my expectations. As I mentioned in a footnote in the previous edition of the C.F.C., I have to temper my excitement when a new foodstuff blows my mind, because that usually means that it won't be hanging around store shelves very long. I'll try to keep myself in check, but I'm already psyched.

The other bit says ATTENTION: Some chips are very hot. I've been told that I have a tendency to underrate the spiciness of foods as compared to the consensus of the rest of the people I'm dining with on how spicy they are. So I'm not entirely convinced that the "very hot" chips are going to be all that hot. These are a mass-market item, after all; I doubt they'll get too crazy.

Judging by the colors of the bag, one might suspect we're going to be getting plain old nacho cheese Doritos for our non-spicy variant. I guessed as much before looking at the copy on the back, which confirms it:

Most chips are the Doritos NACHO CHEESE flavor you love...

But there's a HOT CHIP in every handful! 

 Do you dare eat another and risk getting BURNED?

There's some darker red shading streaking throughout, but Spicy Nacho doesn't seem like the next logical step. Spicy Nacho does have more kick than your basic nacho cheese Dorito, but it's far from setting your mouth on fire. This bag wants me to believe I might hit the caliente jackpot with any bite. We shall see.

Otherwise, graphically, I dig the design. I like the cleanness of the neon "Roulette" font, the way the chips can be more or less arranged in a wheel-type pattern, and the actual roulette wheel at the center, priming me for the flavor gamble of the century. I don't mean to be overconfident, but I'm going all in.

I didn't look in the bag when I pulled a chip out, but I think I hit bingo on the first one. It's a very peppery kind of heat that seems to be released when you crunch the chip. It's far from intolerable, but it's a better kind of heat than, say, Salsa Verde Doritos, which I revisited about a year ago after loving them in my youth only to find them nearly inedible.

Overall, I'd say Doritos Roulette manage to hit an agreeable middle ground between Spicy Nacho and Salsa Verde by cleverly dampening the normally awful Verde heat in a buffer of normal cheese. When you start plowing through and eating handfuls at a time, your mouth begins to take on a more general, sort of all-over warmth. There's no real build to speak of; it reaches its peak and plateaus fairly quickly. I'm at least glad I have a drink on hand, but I wouldn't be suffering if I didn't.

Unless your tolerance for spice is pitifully low, you're not going to be traumatized by Roulette Doritos. I'm impressed that Frito-Lay managed to find some nuance in their spice spectrum. Even the EXTREME component is dialed down a bit—the flames do more of the talking than the text. Sometimes an interesting tweak to a time-honored classic is just as satisfying as pure innovation. I don't think I'll find myself terribly wistful for them years down the line, but for now they comfortably occupy a void I was not heretofore aware existed.

Crappy Food Critic #01: Totino's Bold Ranch Blasted Crust Pepperoni Rolls

Despite being a revolting fleshbag, I haven't consumed pizza rolls on a regular basis in over a decade. In a world of EXTREME flavor, they no longer cut the mustard. Triple cheese? Who do I look like, Kevin McCallister? So it took a not-insignificant amount of deliberation before deciding to take the plunge on these.

I chose the ranch-blasted flavor, but they also come in a cheddar-blasted variety, suggesting that Totino's has taken a cue from Taco Bell and their Doritos Locos Tacos. I'm a big fan of the Dorito taco, and it's good to see that its groundbreaking strides in foundational flavoring are influencing other giants in the junk food realm. The ranch dust also appealed to me because it obviates the need for a combination of items I've long been in the minority (in my neck of the woods, anyway) in finding utterly disgusting: pizza and ranch dressing.

It would appear that the texture of pizza rolls has changed since last I ate them. Time was, they were flaky but otherwise untextured, resembling nothing so much as a pillow with pizza in it. Nowadays, they're ribbed for your mouth's pleasure, making it easier to take multiple bites and stave off the temptation of cramming the whole thing in your mouth at once. More time to savor the flavors, both inside and out. Net change: positive.

I went ahead and plated 11, since even if they weren't as great as I thought they were going to be, I'd have powered through all of them anyway. As it turns out, there was no need to force myself to the finish line: these things are amazing, and I could have easily eaten twice as many as I did, if not the entire bag. Ranching up the crust/dough/outer shell/whatever is such a strong elemental change that I very well may not be able to eat pizza rolls in the future without it.[1]

In fact, they're so good that they may have to go on the list of "foods I have to be really careful with or I'll end up eating the whole package in a single day". They're only $3.49 at Target. If you're not terribly concerned about the solidity of your deuces and you just want to take a Greyhound to Flavor City, Totino's Bold Ranch Blasted Crust Pepperoni Rolls make a good quick fix. Hie thee to a bag today!

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[1] I have to be careful about getting too attached to foods that blow my mind because when they taste too good, they always turn out to be "limited edition" items that won't be around very long. I checked the bag, and there's nothing along those lines on it, so I think as long as it sells okay, I'm safe.