Category: Reviews

REVIEW: White Castle Castle Bites

Denis 11 Comments

White Castle Castle Bites Bag

What are they?

They are the love children from a White Castle cheeseburger slider and a pizza roll. And there are lots of kids in this 40-ounce party pack, which is also available in a hamburger variety.

How are they?

These are delicious, but with a big asterisk. And that asterisk is because these really don’t taste like White Castle sliders, neither the ones you get from the restaurant nor the frozen ones from the grocery store (and yes, I can confirm there is a difference). Part of the White Castle experience, especially if you get them fresh off the grill, is the pillowy softness of the bun that soaks up that distinctive beefy-onion flavor. That’s what’s missing here, along with the signature White Castle smell. If not for the packaging, I’m not sure I would have associated these with White Castle. But if you are just looking for cheeseburger-flavored pizza rolls, these really hit the spot. The outer shell has a nice crunch, and the filling provides a satisfying cheeseburger flavor with just a hint of onion. My only disappointment was the lack of White Castle smell and taste.

White Castle Castle Bites Plate

White Castle Castle Bites Split

Anyone who’s made pizza rolls knows there is about a 15-second difference between perfect crispness and a crime scene with filling splattered everywhere. These are no different, as evidenced by the pictures, except at least the oozing cheese makes it look less like something from a horror movie. And keep in mind, I’m the guy who turns on the oven light constantly to check on my food’s progress (and also the guy who always ignored my parent’s warnings and pressed my face against the microwave window), so I was watching these with fervent dedication, and I still got the dreaded explosive results.

White Castle Castle Bites Pan

Anything else you need to know?

White Castle Castle Bites Nutrition

It’s generally not a great idea to read the ingredients on Frankenstein-type food products like this, and that’s the case here. The back of the bag raises more questions than it answers, such as, what the heck is “natural grilled hamburger type flavor”? I didn’t expect this to only contain chopped up White Castle sliders, but the long list of ingredients (including chicken fat) probably does explain why these don’t taste how I thought they would. Also among my questions is how water is the first ingredient in these (as a refresher, ingredients are listed in descending weight order).

Conclusion:

White Castle Castle Bites Back Bag

If you don’t go in expecting the signature White Castle flavor and instead are just looking for a tasty and unhealthy snack, then you should enjoy these. And if you don’t want to make the significant financial commitment on a 40-ounce bag, an 18-ounce version is also available.

Purchased Price: $11.49
Size: 40 oz. party pack
Purchased at: Kroger
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (6 bites) 190 calories, 6 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 660 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 8 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Doritos Minis, Cheetos Minis, and Sun Chips Minis

Erin 4 Comments

Doritos Minis Cheetos Minis and Sun Chips Minis Cans

Pringles, beware! The tennis ball manufacturer that cut a deal with you years ago is opening up its doors and Frito-Lay is coming in hot. Flamin’ Hot. It has shrunk several of its popular snacks to bite-size form, encased them in tubes, and the results are…mixed.

Nacho Cheese Doritos

Doritos Minis Nacho Cheese

I started with the classic Nacho Cheese Doritos and had high hopes because it’s hard to go wrong with this chip. I think some of the impetus behind this mini concept is the serving size and cuteness factor. People love Goldfish crackers and you can have 55 of them per serving. Wouldn’t it also be nice to have 55 tiny Doritos? It might be, if you could eat them that way. The serving here is 39 little chips, and this tube was a disaster. The contents looked like I’d just dumped out the remnants from a larger bag. There were some intact chips, but the majority had been broken to crumbs. Instead of being a new or adorable way to consume chips, I was left eating handfuls of shards or pouring them into my mouth from the tube.

Doritos Minis Nacho Cheese Can

Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (39 chips) 150 calories, 8 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 210 milligrams of sodium, 18 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, less than 1 gram of total sugars, and 2 grams of protein.

Cool Ranch Doritos

Doritos Minis Cool Ranch

My Cool Ranch canister fared better. They weren’t all shattered from the start. After tasting some individually and also by the handful, I still found these underwhelming. It didn’t seem like they had enough of the seasoning applied to them. The label claims they have the “same BOLD flavor,” but I found them blander than a standard bag. I had this problem with the Nacho Cheese variety too, but it was overshadowed by the other flaws. So far, I’m not sure I understand this product line.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (39 chips) 150 calories, 8 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 190 milligrams of sodium, 18 grams of total carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, less than 1 gram of total sugars, and 2 grams of protein.

Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips

Sun Chips Minis

Here to confuse things more, are Sun Chips! These come in Harvest Cheddar or Garden Salsa. I like Sun Chips; they’re a welcome addition to the variety packs of lunch-size bags but will never be my first choice for a full-size option. I chose Harvest Cheddar and wondered how Garden Salsa also managed to sneak into the lineup. These mini chips have held their square shape better than the Doritos, although there are quite a few broken ones. They also seem appropriately seasoned and have come the closest so far to true miniatures of their inspiration chip. I think they’re a success, but do we need stamp-sized versions of two chips we only occasionally reach for to begin with?

Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (29 chips) 140 calories, 7 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 18 grams of total carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 2 grams of total sugars, and 2 grams of protein.

Cheddar and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos

Things start to make more (or less?) sense when it comes to the Cheetos. Both Cheddar and Flamin’ Hot are cheese balls and aren’t masquerading as tiny regular Cheetos. On the one hand, a bunch of teeny Cheetos would have been cool, and I imagine they would have looked like a tube of Long John Silver’s crumblies. These two are the best tasting of the bunch though, so they’ve gotten something right there.

Cheetos Flamin Hot Minis

They have a thicker and very satisfying outside crunch that yields to a Cheeto-like interior. More regular Cheeto than puff, they get the texture right without being too airy or weird. There are 63 balls per serving and they fall somewhere between a normal cheese ball and a cocoa puff cereal size-wise. Looking at a bowl of these Flamin’ Hot ones, I can’t help but wonder if they should have put them in a box instead of a cylinder and called them cereal, à la Cinnafuego Toast Crunch. I won’t be surprised if this happens in three months.

Rating: 9 out of 10 (Cheddar), 9 out of 10 (Flamin’ Hot)
Nutrition Facts: (63 pieces) Flamin’ Hot – 160 calories, 10 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 260 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 0 grams of total sugars, and 1 gram of protein. Cheddar – 160 calories, 10 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 330 milligrams of sodium, 15 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 1 gram of total sugars, and 2 grams of protein.

Doritos Minis Cheetos Minis and Sun Chips Minis Sizes

Overall this mini lineup is a mixed bag, or should I say can. There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with them, but there isn’t anything that makes me want to buy them again either.

Purchased Price: $2.79 each
Size: 1 can
Purchased at: Mariano’s

REVIEW: Sonic Steak Butter Bacon Cheeseburger

Brandon 3 Comments

Sonic Steak Butter Bacon Cheeseburger

Taco Bell catches a lot of flak for taking the same three ingredients and turning them into any number of new product offerings. And this is a fair criticism, but it isn’t all that different from what most other fast food purveyors do with their LTOs. I mean, unless you’re Arby’s giving me strange and exotic meats, you’re probably just rearranging the stuff you already had in the kitchen.

And if you’re Sonic, one of your go-to schticks is taking your standard bacon cheeseburger and imbuing it with some sort of butter. In October 2019, we reviewed the Garlic Butter Bacon Burger. In March of 2021, we did their Mesquite Butter Bacon Cheeseburger. And now the fast food chain is back at it with the Steak Butter Bacon Cheeseburger. Aside from the key ingredient — “a rich and creamy butter made with steakhouse seasoning” — this thing has two slices of American cheese, bacon, grilled onions, and mayo.

Sonic Steak Butter Bacon Cheeseburger Whole

Here’s where this burger excels — it proudly and unashamedly assaults your arteries with each bite and forgoes all unnecessarily healthy pleasantries like “lettuce” and “tomato,” aka The Devil’s Burger Toppings. From the greasy, crispy, salty bacon, to the salty, creamy steakhouse butter, from the salty, creamy mayo, to the melty, salty American cheese, this burger is… well, in a word, salty.

Here’s where this burger fails — did you see how many times I used the word salty in the previous paragraph? And honestly, I may’ve been selling it short. This thing was a salt lick. And this is coming from a guy who has an incredibly unhealthy love for all things sodium. But the butter coupled with the bacon and the beef and the cheese is a lot. To be honest, doing away with one of the cheese slices might’ve been a good move; as it stands, the cheese essentially overwhelms everything else.

Additionally, I’m not sure what makes this butter “steakhouse” butter. All the butter does is melt, and you’re left with a shiny, greasy, delicious meat patty. But I didn’t notice anything distinctly “steakhouse” about it.

Sonic Steak Butter Bacon Cheeseburger Split

So, in the end, this is a fine burger. It’s cheesy and greasy and EXTREMELY salty, but sometimes that’s just what you want. It is not, however, groundbreaking or innovative. So if you’re expecting “steakhouse butter” to be something revelatory, disabuse yourself of that notion. Oh, and by the way — ask for extra napkins. The attire-decorative properties of this thing are pretty groundbreaking.

Purchased Price: $5.89
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 980 calories, 39 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 120 milligrams of cholesterol, 1910 milligrams of sodium, 50 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 39 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Mtn Dew Fruit Quake

Marvo 11 Comments

Mtn Dew Fruit Quake Can

The fruitcake is a hot mess of ingredients that somehow became a holiday staple. It’s also one of those things that people either love or instantly throw away when the giver of the fruitcake is not looking.

While I don’t automatically throw away those that I receive, I do treat them like the McRib. I give it a try every year to find out if my taste buds have changed enough that I actually think it’s good, and when I realize nothing has changed, I sigh, gobble the rest up, and then say, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 26 times, WHY HAVEN’T I LEARNED MY LESSON?! AM I A MASOCHIST? DO I NOT CARE ABOUT MY TASTE BUDS? SHOULD I CUT OFF MY TONGUE?”

Mtn Dew Fruit Quake Glass

While an actual fruitcake is a complex recipe containing spices, fruit, nuts, and cake, Mtn Dew Fruit Quake’s fruitcake flavor is simple. It starts with a strong, sweet fruit punch taste that I’ve never experienced when it comes to fruitcake, but it’s something that I’ve tasted a few times when it comes to fruit punch-flavored Mountain Dew. After that fades, some fruitcake spices are noticeable, although barely. The addition of spices makes me wonder if there’s a bit of Gingerbread Snap’d’s recipe in Fruit Quake.

Mtn Dew Fruit Quake Graphics

But that’s it, just fruit punch and a smidge of spices that your taste buds might not even notice. There isn’t any cake flavor here, despite Mtn Dew having experience creating the taste with the brand’s Cake-Smash. And, even though the can’s graphics show nuts, the soda lacks the flavor of nuts. But if it did have it, that would be impressive and a bit odd.

Speaking of weird, the soda’s aroma has an expected intense fruitiness, but at times there’s a little something that reminds me of egg nog that probably comes from whatever spice flavors are included. Perhaps Mtn Dew Egg N’gg will be a future holiday variety? Just throwing it out there, PepsiCo.

With Mtn Dew Fruit Quake, I expected a beverage that’s a bit more unusual tasting, much like last year’s Gingerbread Snap’d flavor. So it’s a little disappointing that it’s a fruit punch Dew with a hint of spices that could be easily missed. With that said, it’s a decent tasting Dew that I wouldn’t throw away when no one is looking.

Purchased Price: More than one should pay on eBay
Size: 12-pack 12 oz cans
Purchased at: eBay
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 can) 160 calories, 0 grams of fat, 55 milligrams of sodium, 43 grams of carbohydrates, 43 grams of sugar (including 43 (including 43 grams of added sugar), 0 grams of protein, and 54 milligrams of caffeine.

REVIEW: Taco Bell Cherry Bliss Freeze

Karen 3 Comments

Taco Bell Cherry Bliss Freeze Cup

What is it?

Taco Bell’s new Cherry Bliss Freeze is for the kind of people who steal all the red Jolly Ranchers out of the bag. You know who you are.

How is it?

As big a sugar fiend as I am, I’m not a huge consumer of sugary drinks. I don’t dislike them, but my reasoning is that if I have a limited calorie allotment for treats, then I’d rather have my fun in the form of cake, or maybe a sundae, as opposed to a liquid. That said, I was excited to try the Cherry Bliss Freeze because it gave me an excuse to do something unusual for me. I also prefer black cherry soda on the rare occasions when I have soda, so I’m already something of a cherry fan.

Circumstances aligned themselves in favor of me liking the CBF: I got it on an unseasonably warm day, and I was feeling pretty thirsty by the time I got it home. It was actually hard to wait long enough to take a photo, because I was that parched.

Taco Bell Cherry Bliss Freeze Top

My first sip, all I could think about was Luden’s Cough Drops. Apparently, they’ve rebranded as Throat Drops because they were never actually cough drops, or something, but you probably know what I’m talking about. The more I sipped, the more it started to taste like fruit punch. Apparently, Taco Bell uses the flavors of strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry in this freeze, so it stands to reason that it would taste like a mix. The final impression it left me with is liquified Cherry Starburst. I think those of us who are into cherry-flavored products will approve of that.

As you would expect, this thing is incredibly sweet. I actually liked it more toward the second half of the drink, as the ice started to melt and the water diluted the flavor a little bit.

Anything else you need to know?

Taco Bell’s promotional images for this depict it as red and purple in color, but what I received was pink. Was this a mistake, or is something else going on here?

Conclusion:

If you like cherry-flavored things, you’re not going to do much better than this.

Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: Small
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 180 calories, 0 grams of fat, 70 milligrams of sodium, 47 grams of carbohydrates, 45 grams of sugar, and 0 grams of protein.