[Pointedly ignoring the long delay in posting]
For today, we have the World's Best Diet Sodas, ranked by said bestness:
(5) Fanta Orange Zero. The best of the pure "orange" diet sodas. Suitably tangy but with that unnatural "orange" flavor that tastes nothing like an orange but instead like fake orange-flavored things that we grew up with. I am highly disappointed that their advertising agency seems to have forced them to move away from The Fantanas in favor of some crappy group-sourced 2004 Wii avatar nonsense.
(4) Vernor's Diet Ginger Ale. The only diet ginger ale with a true ginger bite to it. Mixes perfectly with many varieties of Jack Daniels.* I am also fond of how the linked website spends several paragraphs describing the brand's history of strong quality control due to family ownership, then notes at the end that it was acquired and is now owned by Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Inc.
* Still making my way through last June's mammoth shipment of JD specialty brands from bargechasers and lockoutass. Thanks again!
(3) Diet Dr. Pepper. The original gateway drug for me and so many others into the fabulous world of Diet Soda. Unlike most diet sodas,* especially those of the earlier days of the mid-90s, DDP actually had taste. And not just any taste, but one remarkably similar to that of actual Dr. Pepper, making it remarkably simple to just slide right over.
* For example, Diet Coke, which as far as I can tell tastes like unsweetened battery acid.
(2) Stewart's Diet Orange 'N Cream.* The diet soda version of the universe's best frozen treat. Totally different from the standard orange soda. It's not really a cream soda with orange flavor added but really is a creamsicle in diet soda form. Not quite as good as the creamsicle milkshakes that we used to get at the milk stand in Waban,**** but still highly excellent and refreshing.
* As great as the soda is, it always bugs the crap out of me that they can't get the apostrophe correct. The "N" is substituting for "and," meaning that both the "a" and "d" are being deleted, and thus both need to be replaced with an apostrophe. 'N' is correct. 'N is not, unless they are suggesting that it's Diet Orange An Cream. Which they are not.**
** And you should listen to me, because I'm an expert.***
*** Seriously, I co-edited a book on the subject. That can't really be too much of a surprise, can it?
**** OMFG, I totally recognize that building. Wow. Memories. Love the old 'hood. Sad that the bakery appears to be gone though.
(1) Boylan's Diet Black Cherry. Nectar of the gods. Long had I quested for the best of the diet black cherry sodas, and one day I wandered into a random bodega in New York to obtain lunch after a scintillating morning of document review in some faceless nameless conference room* and happened upon Boylan's. It has the perfect mix of sweetness and cherry tart - so many overdo the sweet and just throw in a generic Red-Flavor instead of the real black cherry. I spent years trying to track this stuff down locally** before finally convincing a kind-hearted order clerk at Specs to put in a regular order of several cases for me.
* Thanks to the Dark Gods that I have people to do those sorts of things for me now.
** Of course, you can order it from Amazon and the like, but the shipping costs for bottles of soda are a little too ridiculous, even for me.
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
List #15: Arizona Eats
After taking a well-deserved* week-long** hiatus, I'm back! I know you had all assumed that I had already lost interest and moved on to other passing interests. Ha! I bet I can keep at this for at least another week or two before giving up. So there!
* Hey, I've been doing this for like three weeks now! I need a break! One man can only do so much!!
** Plus a day. Hey, you know that first day back from vacation is always a bitch, right? Besides, maybe I'm going with a Tuesday/Thursday publishing schedule now, huh? You don't know. You think you know, but you don't. Thppppt.
Today's list is the best food I had while in Arizona last week with a bunch of people that you've all never met, ranked by....um.....how much I liked the meal?
(5) Garlic Knots at Salt River Fields by Talking Stick. Simply put, you cannot go wrong with garlic knots. You particularly cannot go wrong with eating garlic knots 8 rows from the field on a beautiful day in the shade. While these knots were nice and garlicky, I have to acknowledge that their placement on the list over the also-yummy garlic fries at the Peoria Sports Complex is likely due to the feeling of accomplishment at actually entering Salt River Fields after a series of comical mishaps that resulted in a certain stoat and myself lingering outside the park with non-functional tickets for an extended period.
(4) Tonto Bar & Grill. Excellent onion-crusted walleye. Apparently, walleye is a highly-respected culinary fish, and not some kind of scroungy bottom-feeder as I had previously thought. I love living in the future - it used to be that if you had a question about something on the menu you had to actually (gasp) ask the wait staff. In 2011 there is no need to interact with other pesky humans - just pull out your portable supercomputer and look it up on the intertubes.
(3) Chino Bandito. Shockingly low placement on the list for my old friend, but the top two were just that good. Regardless, Chino would unquestionably be my top recommendation to someone coming to Phoenix for the first time. The unholy fusion of Tex-Mex and Chinese was as excellent as ever (mmmmmm, Jade Red Chicken Quesadillas), and the snickerdoodles fresh and gooey. Great, great stuff.
(2) Cowboy Ciao. Excellent food, topped off by remarkable bacon caramel corn.* While my salmon was yummy, in retrospect we should've stuck with just ordering plate after plate of appetizers, as the dungeness crab enchiladas were the best thing I tasted and the buffalo carpaccio and wild boar meatballs were also exquisite.
(1) Culinary Dropout. A little trendier than I'm used to, but easily made up for by, well, everything else about the place. The drink menu alone would've made it a highlight,* but the food was also well above expectations. Nothing particularly outrageous in concept, but exceptionally well done semi-hoity versions of pub food. Of special note, the soft pretzels with provolone fondue were a big hit at the table, disappearing almost before the plate hit the table. The restaurant's remarkable talent level was also remarked on more than once, which always helps.
* Really, you can't go wrong with a Dirty Schoolgirl,** but Eric's Blue Ribbon Rhubarb was my favorite.
** I was then, am now, and will always be bitterly disappointed that Papa Funk didn't order a Virgin Dirty Schoolgirl.
* Hey, I've been doing this for like three weeks now! I need a break! One man can only do so much!!
** Plus a day. Hey, you know that first day back from vacation is always a bitch, right? Besides, maybe I'm going with a Tuesday/Thursday publishing schedule now, huh? You don't know. You think you know, but you don't. Thppppt.
Today's list is the best food I had while in Arizona last week with a bunch of people that you've all never met, ranked by....um.....how much I liked the meal?
(5) Garlic Knots at Salt River Fields by Talking Stick. Simply put, you cannot go wrong with garlic knots. You particularly cannot go wrong with eating garlic knots 8 rows from the field on a beautiful day in the shade. While these knots were nice and garlicky, I have to acknowledge that their placement on the list over the also-yummy garlic fries at the Peoria Sports Complex is likely due to the feeling of accomplishment at actually entering Salt River Fields after a series of comical mishaps that resulted in a certain stoat and myself lingering outside the park with non-functional tickets for an extended period.
(4) Tonto Bar & Grill. Excellent onion-crusted walleye. Apparently, walleye is a highly-respected culinary fish, and not some kind of scroungy bottom-feeder as I had previously thought. I love living in the future - it used to be that if you had a question about something on the menu you had to actually (gasp) ask the wait staff. In 2011 there is no need to interact with other pesky humans - just pull out your portable supercomputer and look it up on the intertubes.
(3) Chino Bandito. Shockingly low placement on the list for my old friend, but the top two were just that good. Regardless, Chino would unquestionably be my top recommendation to someone coming to Phoenix for the first time. The unholy fusion of Tex-Mex and Chinese was as excellent as ever (mmmmmm, Jade Red Chicken Quesadillas), and the snickerdoodles fresh and gooey. Great, great stuff.
(2) Cowboy Ciao. Excellent food, topped off by remarkable bacon caramel corn.* While my salmon was yummy, in retrospect we should've stuck with just ordering plate after plate of appetizers, as the dungeness crab enchiladas were the best thing I tasted and the buffalo carpaccio and wild boar meatballs were also exquisite.
(1) Culinary Dropout. A little trendier than I'm used to, but easily made up for by, well, everything else about the place. The drink menu alone would've made it a highlight,* but the food was also well above expectations. Nothing particularly outrageous in concept, but exceptionally well done semi-hoity versions of pub food. Of special note, the soft pretzels with provolone fondue were a big hit at the table, disappearing almost before the plate hit the table. The restaurant's remarkable talent level was also remarked on more than once, which always helps.
* Really, you can't go wrong with a Dirty Schoolgirl,** but Eric's Blue Ribbon Rhubarb was my favorite.
** I was then, am now, and will always be bitterly disappointed that Papa Funk didn't order a Virgin Dirty Schoolgirl.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
List #14: Candy (Non-Chocolate)
Favorite candy, not including anything using chocolate,* ranked by how much I want to eat a pound of it right now.
* Obviously, ranking both sugar-based and chocolate-based candy on the same list would be crossing the steams. And we cannot have that.
(8) Spearmints. Classic hard candy with a bite to it. Vastly superior to crappy Peppermints. Only the finest restaurants have a bowl of spearmints at the ready for exiting customers. I try not to embarrass myself by grabbing 10 of these on the way out....but am only occasionally successful.
(7) Candy Pumpkins. The bastard cousin of the significantly more popular candy corn, the candy pumpkin is in fact far superior due to its higher chewy-center to waxlike-skin ratio. The downside is that one can get incredibly sick after stuffing one's face with 50 of these little bombs. Not that I would know from personal experience or anything.
(6) Eyes of Terror. I admit, these largely make the list due to the awesome concept. Some marketing genius had to think "Gee, what else has the same shape as a gumball....I know - eyes!" And then they put the death-skull in the center and drew in alot of ruptured blood veins. Really, the execution on these is just incredible. As for the actual candy execution? Hey, it's a gumball. If it's not stale, it provides 5-10 minutes of chewing satisfaction. If it's stale, it's tile grout.
(5) Skittles. I have absolute faith that I have reams of information that I could tell you about skittles that you not only don't already know, but that you would be incredibly interested in learning. I'm just not ready to share that with you at this time.
(4) Spree. The rare candy where both the original suck-on-this form and the newer chewable are of equal value. I used to pop these suckers like....um....candy throughout high school.
(3) Sweet Tart Jelly Beans and Ducks and Chicks. The weird thing is, I actively dislike normal Sweet Tarts. But the mixture of the tartness into chewy jellybean form is wonderful, and they're individually small enough that the overall taste isn't too overwhelming. I have no explanation for why I like the ducks and chicks. They're somewhat more calcified than normal Sweet Tarts, but really it's the same substance. Maybe my psyche just likes the idea of biting heads off pastel-colored innocent duckies and chickies? Maybe it's best to not examine that any further.
(2) Chewy Runts and Chewy Gobstoppers. Ranked together because for all intents and purposes they're the same candy. Thin flavored-sugar outer coating over an addictive chewy center than is made from a substance that fell to Earth from space. These are also small enough that you can think nothing of shoveling twenty or more of them into your mouth over a couple of minutes, leading to the joyful tingling of hyperglycemic shock.*
* Note: Hyperglycemic shock is not actually funny.
(1) Bottle Caps. OMFG, these are the best thing in the history of ever. Mild but distinctive taste, sugary but not that sweet, just the right combination of chrunch/chew hardness. And they even have the added benefit of having some antacid features, so if you are prone to minor bouts of heartburn these are essentially the best flavor of tums ever!
Okay, I'm not doing a good job of selling y'all on the Bottle Caps, am I? But seriously, they're great. Would I lie to you?
* Obviously, ranking both sugar-based and chocolate-based candy on the same list would be crossing the steams. And we cannot have that.
(8) Spearmints. Classic hard candy with a bite to it. Vastly superior to crappy Peppermints. Only the finest restaurants have a bowl of spearmints at the ready for exiting customers. I try not to embarrass myself by grabbing 10 of these on the way out....but am only occasionally successful.
(7) Candy Pumpkins. The bastard cousin of the significantly more popular candy corn, the candy pumpkin is in fact far superior due to its higher chewy-center to waxlike-skin ratio. The downside is that one can get incredibly sick after stuffing one's face with 50 of these little bombs. Not that I would know from personal experience or anything.
(6) Eyes of Terror. I admit, these largely make the list due to the awesome concept. Some marketing genius had to think "Gee, what else has the same shape as a gumball....I know - eyes!" And then they put the death-skull in the center and drew in alot of ruptured blood veins. Really, the execution on these is just incredible. As for the actual candy execution? Hey, it's a gumball. If it's not stale, it provides 5-10 minutes of chewing satisfaction. If it's stale, it's tile grout.
(5) Skittles. I have absolute faith that I have reams of information that I could tell you about skittles that you not only don't already know, but that you would be incredibly interested in learning. I'm just not ready to share that with you at this time.
(4) Spree. The rare candy where both the original suck-on-this form and the newer chewable are of equal value. I used to pop these suckers like....um....candy throughout high school.
(3) Sweet Tart Jelly Beans and Ducks and Chicks. The weird thing is, I actively dislike normal Sweet Tarts. But the mixture of the tartness into chewy jellybean form is wonderful, and they're individually small enough that the overall taste isn't too overwhelming. I have no explanation for why I like the ducks and chicks. They're somewhat more calcified than normal Sweet Tarts, but really it's the same substance. Maybe my psyche just likes the idea of biting heads off pastel-colored innocent duckies and chickies? Maybe it's best to not examine that any further.
(2) Chewy Runts and Chewy Gobstoppers. Ranked together because for all intents and purposes they're the same candy. Thin flavored-sugar outer coating over an addictive chewy center than is made from a substance that fell to Earth from space. These are also small enough that you can think nothing of shoveling twenty or more of them into your mouth over a couple of minutes, leading to the joyful tingling of hyperglycemic shock.*
* Note: Hyperglycemic shock is not actually funny.
(1) Bottle Caps. OMFG, these are the best thing in the history of ever. Mild but distinctive taste, sugary but not that sweet, just the right combination of chrunch/chew hardness. And they even have the added benefit of having some antacid features, so if you are prone to minor bouts of heartburn these are essentially the best flavor of tums ever!
Okay, I'm not doing a good job of selling y'all on the Bottle Caps, am I? But seriously, they're great. Would I lie to you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)