Carl's Jr. Charbroiled Steak Sandwich

Much like reality television, it seems this fast-food steak phenomenon isn't going away any time soon. You've got Angus, you've got Sirloin, and I'm sure somewhere in someone's R&D department, will be the Porterhouse Burger. But in the meantime we have Carl's latest incarnation, the Charbroiled Steak *Sandwich*. They wisely made sure to include that last word to let us know this is not in the burger vein, as it features a long, hoagie style roll. This would indicate we're probably going to be looking at an elongated steak patty as our main attraction, and I must say, it came off tasty enough...for having tomatoes and mayonnaise underneath it! That was a first for me, in all the steak'wiches I've had. Usually it's A-1 with some onions or something. Though they did wisely include some onion rings (natch) which gave it a good balance. And the steak had that perfect toughness that you really have to gnash through. But, alas, (even sans the mayo and tomato additions), the biggest thing that will keep me from requesting another one of these at the speakerbox: the price. $4.69 for something as filling as a Famous Star?? Steak, sure, but it better be the size of a Six Dollar monster for that amount of dead presidents. And flavor-wise for that price...well, let's just say the $5.69 for a Guacamole Six Dollar Burger is justified.

Phoood rating:

Golden Grahams

I have a few trusty breakfast cereals that I always eat, but recently I got adventurous and bought a box of Golden Grahams. I don’t recall having ever eaten it, but it looked like a cereal that I would enjoy. I was not impressed by the taste of the cereal, having expected a stronger graham flavor and more sweetness. I also found that the cereal got soggy in the milk too quickly. Just to be confident in my conclusions, I also tried it my second favorite way of eating breakfast cereal – straight out of the box. Again, I didn’t like it all that much. Soggy, mediocre-tasting cereal makes a poor breakfast (or lunch, or dinner…), so I guess I’ll have to continue looking for a new cereal to add to my cupboard.

Phoood rating:

Land O’ Lakes Spreadable Butter

A while back, I decided to switch from margarine to real butter for using on bread, toast, waffles, etc. I figured that I didn’t really eat that much of it (at least not as much as Homer Simpson) and it probably wouldn’t kill me if I enjoyed real, creamy, butter. I quickly realized that margarine has one advantage over butter – spreadability. Straight out of the refrigerator, the butter was too hard to spread, resulting in mangled waffles, ripped pancakes, and much frustration. One day, I noticed an item in the supermarket that I previously hadn’t paid much attention to: spreadable butter. My dilemma had been solved! Land O’ Lakes adds a little bit of canola oil to their butter, which makes it easy to spread right out of the refrigerator. If the canola oil adds any flavor to the butter, I really can’t taste it. There are other brands of spreadable butter out there, but be careful. I tried a competing brand that was much too soft and melted quickly when out of the refrigerator.

Phoood rating:

Doritos Collisions Pizza Cravers and Ranch

I’ve met some people who like to dip their pizza in ranch dressing. Although I love both pizza and ranch dressing, I tried the combination one time and didn’t really like the result. Doritos thinks that pizza and ranch make a good combination and have brought the idea to their line of Doritos Collisions, which combines Pizza Cravers and Ranch-flavored tortilla chips. Doritos Ranch have been around for years, but I don’t remember ever seeing Pizza Cravers. I realize that it is probably very difficult to put all the flavor of pizza onto a tortilla chip, but Doritos just didn’t do a very good job with Pizza Cravers. The flavor is unremarkable and generic and doesn’t really taste much like pizza. To me, it tasted more like a taco flavor. I can’t recommend Collisions Pizza Cravers and Ranch, but luckily there are many other great Doritos flavors to satisfy your chip cravings.

Phoood rating:

Carl’s Jr. Big Country Breakfast Burrito

Carl’s Jr. has done a pretty good job of making hearty breakfast food, and their latest attempt is the Big Country Breakfast Burrito. It sounds delicious, even heavenly, on paper: eggs, sausage, ham, bacon, hash brown nuggets, shredded jack and cheddar cheeses, and sausage gravy in a flour tortilla. It reality, the burrito is much too small to contain all of these ingredients effectively. What I tasted was mostly eggs and gravy with some added saltiness from the sausage/ham/bacon. The hash brown nuggets were hard to detect (and they had become very soggy), and if there was any cheese in my burrito, I sure couldn’t see or taste it. If you want a good breakfast at Carl’s Jr., I recommend the much superior Monster Breakfast Sandwich.

As an aside, the Big Country Breakfast Burrito is perhaps the most blatant example that I have seen of the actual product having almost no resemblance to the company’s advertising image. This is nothing new and I’ve always been turned off by it, but the Big Country Burrito takes it to a new level. If a company can’t show a reasonably realistic image of their product, this should be a concern to them. Alas, it doesn’t seem to be.

Phoood rating:

Kit Kat Extra Crispy

I like Kit Kat candy bars so much that I named one of my cats Kit Kat. I’ve always thought that the best part of the Kit Kat candy bar is the crispy wafers. They are what make the candy bar so delicious and are a perfect complement to the milk chocolate coating. I was in heaven when I recently ate a Kit Kat Extra Crispy, because it has twice the number of crispy wafers. The wafers themselves aren’t more crispy (now there’s a new product idea, Hershey. You’re welcome…), there are just more of them to enjoy. The additional wafers make this candy bar even better than the original Kit Kat, in my opinion. Kit Kat lovers like me may find this Wikipedia entry interesting, as it lists dozens of Kit Kat varieties sold around the world, including delicious flavors like azuki bean, wa guri, and hascapp.

Phoood rating: