Gross Week #5: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Grilled Cheese Explosion

Ugh, I just had a grilled cheese explosion all over my sweatpants. Too much? Perhaps. One might even call it...wait for it...cheesy. I'd personally call it a gloopy, room temperature mess. Welcome to our fifth day of Gross Week, readers. Here's the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Grilled Cheese Explosion, brought to you by bewildered kittens! Hold your horses, adult baby fetishizers- this is so easy you won't have to have your aging mom make it for you.
How many different ways can companies try to shuffle around cheese, anyway? Seeing asiago Cheetos and camembert Easy Cheez just bothers me. It all tastes like the basic, vaguely tangy saltfest we all know and love. I'm not quite eager to whip out a bag of ten-year old vintage Ritz Bits with aged cheddar, if you know what I mean. So the Kraft Grilled Cheese Explosion, now with 100% more splooging on the package, eschews the familiar elbow macaroni format for little ditalini noodles. All the better to hold you with, I suppose. These looked appetizing dry but took on a translucent, slippery quality unlike any pasta I've had recently. It definitely wasn't how I remembered eating it as a child.The directions for Kraft's mac and cheese have also changed, in no part due to their stellar legal team fighting the obesity crisis. What used to be the "light" instructions in small print on the bottom of the box has now replaced the classic preparation and has cut the butter and milk in half. Of course, this doesn't hinder you from adding a half stick of butter rather than a half tablespoon as I did as a child, but does try to detract and sort of screws with the ratios of the proper sauce mixture. When mixed, the entire pot of pasta seizes up unpleasantly instead of melting into a nice sauce, and the cheese powder never quite loses its grainy texture. I was surprised at how large the individual grains of powder were- they were more corrugated and crystallized than the fine powder of yore but surprisingly flavorless.
Despite smelling sharp, like actual cheddar, the only noticeable flavor was incredibly offputting, reeking of salt and butter, and not just the butter I added. It had more of a fake butter quality to it, making it more appropriately flavored as "$9 movie theatre popcorn" and had a clumpy, weirdly thick texture. Even after adding more than the recommended amount of milk, the sauce separated in some parts and seized in others, leaving each spoonful half-full of milky, runny sauce and half-full of chunks of undissolved powder.
As much as I love macaroni and cheese, this was inedible. Add its poor flavor to the confusing fact that there are two more of these "cheese explosion" varieties and you have a god-awful tasting menu. I don't understand how Kraft's menu team translated grilled cheese to a butter-on-butter sleazefest, but there you have it. Even piling a bit on top of a homemade nugget with some hot sauce like a cheap wedding appetizer didn't help it. It was a veritable onslaught of hypertension crammed into small tubes.

Gross Food Week #3: Jeff's Chocolate Soda

Guys, I just discovered instagram. And you know what else I discovered? Jeff's Chocolate Soda. And you know what else I just discovered, today? The futility of mankind and the heartbreaking realization that we're all doomed, man, you know? Probably as a result of this soda's existence. All three are connected. Come, let's take a journey.
Jeff's Chocolate Soda, found in a Stop and Stop but easily purchased at www.getcreamed.net, the only non-porn website on the planet with an extremely porn-like name, is the end of mankind. Nowhere else can a label entice you with 50's style clip art graphics and brutally pervert you with a singular message. Get creamed. And by all means, the package warns you, do not shake this beverage. Why that is is not explicitly stated, but I think we can all figure out the rest.
The chocolate soda is 97% fat free and 99% flavor free, too, and allows you to get your daily recommended value of authentic Tootsie Roll flavor without compromising your lack of dignity. The soda smells like marshmallow cream and is a little salty, a scent that, combined with its visual euphemisms, makes this feel like an episode of dirty Blue's Clues. Luckily, this off scent disappears quickly after opening the bottle and does not translate to the drink's flavor. It has a thick texture that straddles a line between saliva and whipping cream- not quite solid, but nearing dangerous levels of mucus. It comes out of the bottle matte brown with a few runny bubbles on its surface. It's not a very appealing beverage for this and many other reasons.
I will give it this; for a soda containing one gram of fat, it certainly packs an enjoyable and authentic Dutch chocolate flavor. It is fair, simple, and immediately chocolatey- again, much like a Tootsie Roll. That's presumably also where the 48 grams of sugar (per 12 ounces) come in. With a soda like that, who needs enemies? This is a scant 5 grams of sugar away from beating out Sunkist as the world's worst soda, according to Men's Health. If poor Paula Deen wasn't already diagnosed with Type II Diabetes, one or two of these would have easily done the trick.
Unfortunately, I can't say I'm impressed. This soda's future is bleak if the company thinks it can ride with the big boys successfully on sugar and catcalls alone. For the sake of my health and my sense of humor, Miss Love and I will be sticking with something lighter and will likely find a more satisfying way to get creamed without all that fluff.

Marley's Mellow Mood Relaxation Drink

Believe it or not, this drink wasn't created or endorsed by John Grogan's loveable yellow laborador. I know, I was disappointed, too. For those of you who are into Marley, though, the Bob one, this drink might come as a pleasant surprise. Marley's Mellow Mood Relaxation boasts yet another way to get your sleep on. Because nothing relaxes you like a tie-dyed assault of colors, and 29 grams of sugar per can, right? Jah, mon, and that's all you'll hear from me.
The can boasts a lofty goal of considering this a dietary supplement, like a Flintstones multi-vitamin. While I'm sure there's at least one person out there who is actively making this a part of their day-to-day routine, the vast majority of you can stop holding your breath. There are better relaxation supplements out there, and I doubt any of them taste like home-fermented fruit leather. The drink says it's berry flavored, but tastes more like berries that have been sun-dried with every intent of being made into macro granola but were sadly forgotten in a head shop for a few months. There's a raisiny note to this, and it's fairly strong, persistent flavor that lingers throughout each sip. I'm no stranger to slightly medicinal flavors in energy or relaxation drinks, but this gave the beverage a synthetic and creepy edge that inspired me to go through my Stranger Danger checklist one more time. It tastes like bottled mall incense, the kind that comes packaged with a free angry warrior statue.
It's lightly carbonated and has a watery, floral flavor with a medicinal bite against the fermented berries scent, but holds very little appeal for me as it lacks the fresh flavors of most fruit-flavored sodas. Its flavor does mirror its mission statement in that it is a fairly murky, lazy soda, but unfortunately, that translates to a dismal drink. Color me affected by my own childhood, but drinking it left me with unpleasant memories of taking cherry Robutussin when I was sick. I immediately regretted the two sips I took, as I wasn't so much relaxed as I was sluggish after trying a little of this and aching from the sugar. Every time you drink this beverage, a dentist earns a $20,000 bonus. This might work if you've had a tough day playing Ultimate and need a break, but nevermore, Tuff Gong, nevermore. I may have got the beverage, but I didn't get no ecstasy, not in the slightest.

Nestle Nutrition Chocolate Nutrament Nutrition Drink

Where else but the dogmatic structure of a university can adults pay to be legally forced to churn out work like underage sweatshop employees, spending countless sleepless nights toiling on assignments that lead to...more school and more work? Seriously, I'm about to send a press release to the World Human Organization and Amnesty International. I'm more marveling than complaining. I like working on papers. I strive to enter a career that revolves around research and arguments. But I can't help but be impressed at the marketing behind higher education.
As you can see by my incoherent and loosely structured rant, I'm knee-deep in the sludge of college finals. I have a gorgeously written paper due tomorrow, two final exams to study for, and a film about bugs to watch and take notes on. Needless to say, I'm locked in my dormitory awaiting execution by homework. It's going to be a long two days. I stocked up on energy drinks and protein shakes to keep me alert and unencumbered by things like "food" and "bathroom breaks."
Seriously, this drink looks like something you'd hand out to African refugee children suffering from ascites. Or college students. Same difference. I can't tell if the label on this is a misguided jab at hipness from the 60-year old WordArt certified graphic designers on this account or just incredibly outdated and cheap. My guess is the latter. This is the only nutrition or protein drink I've seen that can be bought for $2. And your soul.
With 360 calories and your apparently daily recommended value of sugar, 49 grams, not a whole lot about this is screaming "nutritious." The store only carried chocolate, but I must say I feel a little jilted that my area wasn't privy to the more eclectic flavors this comes in like banana, coconut, and dulce de leche. And this barely passes as chocolate. Hell, canola oil surpasses cocoa in the ingredient list. Nestle, do you mean to tell me that one of the primary energy supplements in this is canola oil? Holy hell, this is worse than I anticipated. The can tells me to "just chill the can + shake vigorously to release the inner power." I'm guessing that's a roundabout way of saying there's an asston of sediment at the bottom or a subliminal advertisement for masturbating.
This tastes like a distillation of chocolate Necco wafers and Flintstones vitamins, down to the chalkiness and artificially fruity flavor. It has a powdery, fake smell reminiscent of the marshmallows in Lucky Charms and flat, dull color. While there but for the grace of Nestle goes the texture, surprisingly fluid and smooth, there is absolutely nothing else redeeming about this drink. It has the disturbing heft and substance of baby formula and an unrelenting sugary aftertaste. In pinning down this flavor I think it's best described as "protein ass." Please, please, please, if you're between this and another protein drink for twice the price, splurge. Nestle, merely putting the word "nutrition" on the bottle five times does not make this nutritious.

Back to Nature Cupcake Bites

When certain concepts are trendy, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. No sooner did the word "cupcake" make home cooks shiver with delight did news spread, and in a matter of months, trendy cupcake boutiques, recipes, and artistic renderings of cupcakes were the new "it" treat. Of course, all flash-in-the-pan products fall wayside to the trickle-down effect. In the case of cupcakes, they were first relegated to children's birthday parties and baby showers. Their prices went up as did their twee factor, and as they got to be a more exclusive, "artisanal" item, varieties were made so that the novelty of cupcake trendiness could be available to the general public. Basically, a roundabout way of explaining why these Cupcake Bites are cheap and awful.

I was sold on the retro-looking "new, with sprinkles!" endorsement on the box because I am a pretty pretty princess. They're pretty unattractive out of the bag, though. Small orbs, no bigger than a pea, with ice cream sprinkles haphazardly mashed onto a chalky, greyish coating. According to the box, they're along the same lines of Cookie Dough Bites (same company, in fact) and have a wheat-based center with a candy coating. And sprinkles. Don't forget the sprinkles.

While I give kudos to the company for explicitly stating that the chief ingredient is "white birthday cake," I can't help but shudder at how unappealing these are to eat. I'm still not sure why a company called Back to Nature makes these Frankensteinian creations with artificial flavorings. That being said, eating these is a bit purgatorial. I can nosh them with no enjoyment or sentiment, knowing that they're absolutely terrible and really not caring. They inspire my most indifferent tendencies with a bland flavor. Bland is the kindest thing to say, though. Opening the bag, I was struck with a clinical, powdery scent, like the coating on a pair of medical disposable gloves. That alone was so unappealing that I almost didn't eat these at all.

The texture of these is really offputting. While the appeal of an element of graininess was desired in Cookie Dough Bites to mimic the sandy, sugary texture of actually eating cookie dough, the same is present here and feels disgusting consumed out of context. The graininess makes me feel like I'm chewing on a tablespoon of pure granulated sugar mixed with greasy shortening. There's no cake flavor to speak of and the mushy, irregularly textured center is a far cry from the fluffy, fragrant plushness of actual birthday cake. There were quite a few sprinkles in each bite which threw off the ratio of sprinkles to cake and turned them from a garnish to an ingredient. Those of you who have eaten raw sprinkles know that they taste kind of gross, with a crumbly, chalky waxiness and a strangely fruity sweet aftertaste, like that of an artificial sweetener. These were terrible. As a child I'm sure I would have been attracted to the bright pastel colors and sweet flavor, but there's nothing appealing about them now. Even for a dollar, I'm pretty miffed.

Davio's Northern Italian Steakhouse Frozen Chicken Parm Spring Rolls

For me, chicken parmesan and fried spring rolls are second-tier foods. I don't dislike them, but I'm only going to order them when there is literally nothing else on a menu that I even vaguely like the sound of. Basically, with the exception of non-Jewish weddings, I never order chicken parmesan or spring rolls. The wild assumption that not everything needs to be deep fried in an wonton wrapper has apparently not reached the HQ at Davio's. We've reviewed the Northern Italian Philly Cheesesteak spring rolls and studiously avoided the shrimp cojita. Now it's time to sample my edible consolation prize, the Chicken Parm spring rolls from Davio's.

These started as a result of some guy named Wayne's fastidiously childish compulsion of only eating chicken parm regardless of the establishment he was dining at. Wayne sounds like the kind of guy who brings his own tofu burgers to 4th of July barbecues and feigns indigestion to get out of eating Indian food. Instead of dismissing this as annoying, Davio's found it memorable enough to...create a spring roll out of? And give us permission to enjoy it even if our name isn't Wayne? All right. Well, considering that constitutes a cool 312,041,825 out of 312,430,801 people in the USA, or 99.8% of people, I'm glad they felt the need to give us that disclaimer. I think we can all safely agree that the chief allure of chicken parmesan is the crispy, flaky crust underneath the sauce and cheese. Likewise, the prime part of an egg roll is the chewy wonton wrapper. Put the two fried goodies together and you have Tums executives everywhere laughing evilly and twiddling their mustaches in glee.

The epitome of class.

Regardless, I tried these out of shameless intrigue and a complete lack of desire to actually cook. Unfortunately, they bombed even while eaten commando. (The spring rolls, not me.) Wayne can go back to eating chicken parmesan, because these are no substitute for either dish. If I was able to have an egg roll at Davio's made in my honor, it would be the anti-chicken parm egg roll, and would consist of all that is good and pure on this earth that I could stuff in my mouth. This egg roll, on the other hand, is the antithesis of that concept. It cooks unevenly, a small facet that just adds insult to injury. Davio's bumbling chefs took the concept literally and stuffed breaded chicken, sauce, and cheese inside the thick, absorbent egg roll dough, which, when indirectly heated and steamed through its crispy shell, translates as a mushy, overbreaded cheesefest with a pasty, thick mouthfeel and a salty sauce recipe lifted directly from Totino's Pizza Rolls. It was impossible to discern any chicken in this whatsoever in both texture and flavor.

A part of me really did adore the Philly cheesesteak rolls because there was no filler ingredient to gum up the works. Every aspect played a key role in the composition of the dish, with the meat and cheese as filling and the egg roll as the carbohydrate binder. Here, the balance was thrown off and the ratios were completely skewed. I felt like I was eating the end result of a rejected Epic Meal Time sketch, with the subpar quality and condescension included with the $6.49 price tag.

McDonald's Peppermint Mocha Hot Chocolate

Quick! Scream the first thing that reminds you of October out loud!

Was it Halloween? Was it? Was it?

You're wrong! The correct answer was "snow." More appropriately, metric asstons of it, in my backyard. And frankly, I'm tired of all of this anxiety over Halloween. I'm not even dressing up. I've decided to skip the entire affair, screw this Halloween noise, and go right ahead to the generic winter festivities that have popped up in town over night. You'd think New England would be used to these weatherly shenanigans by now, but here we are and here's the new hot chocolate from McDonald's.

Much like Martha Stewart and her stock portfolio, McDonald's seems to have a pretty uncanny sense of timing. Why else would they release these blatantly wintry libations at the end of October? I sense a conspiracy theory for the 11 o'clock local news! Well, men, I've gone to McDonald's and back in this freak blizzard, I've tasted their peppermint mocha hot chocolate, and I've heard the good word of the Lord himself, Mr. McDonald, and the word is this. This hot chocolate is fairly heinous.

While the regular McCafe hot chocolate is passable with a creamy consistency and "eh" chocolate flavor, this is not the best representation of winter. In fact, it's freaking strange. I just

don't see how throwing around mint and coffee automatically denotes winter in the world of advertising. Peanut butter hot chocolate? Chili hot chocolate? All flavors I can get behind. I consider myself a fairly adept Googler, and though my search terms tell me that peppermint-flavored objets around Christmas just for the hell of it are merely piggybacking off the popularity of the candy cane, it still ain't right.

And that's the case with this hot chocolate. No matter which way you swing it, certain flavors aren't meant to be mixed together like some sort of nontoxic chemistry set. Those flavors include chocolate, coffee, and mint. If I were to make a diagram I'd begrudgingly admit that chocolate and mint go well together, as do chocolate and coffee, but the three together are unpalatable. In this particular beverage, all three flavors are fighting for top billing, with the bitterness from the coffee clashing horribly with the crisp, herbal flavors of the peppermint. There's a reason why people don't brush their teeth and then drink their coffee- it's pretty gross. Unfortunately, that's what this drink mimics to a t.

Rokit Fuel Pumpkin Chocolate Cereal Cup

Today's my birthday and I figured I ought to kick off the bacchanal with a good breakfast. I'm a closeted oatmeal lover. As soon as the air gets nippy and the nipples get snappy, I'm heating up a cup of Quaker in the communal microwave. Today was different, though. To adequately prepare myself for the fall season, I prepared a cup of Rokit Fuel, a new brand I spotted at the school convenience store the night before.

Rokit Fuel has a subtitle following its endearingly misspelled name. "For humans." It seems like less of a descriptor than a disclaimer. Although Rokit Fuel doesn't explicitly say it was originally intended for dogs or elephants or infants, its oatmeal certainly contradicts that. Not to swerve off our grand highway onto a tangent as dirty and controversial as a trucker's rest stop, but well, tough crap. Rokit Fuel employs a passive-aggressive little statement at the bottom of each of their products (and also, I hear, in the form of bumper stickers) that says "Not for Wussies- Wussie (noun) A person whose pursuit of excellence is eclipsed by a total lack of discipline and drive."

Wow. Never thought I'd see the day when I had to write about sexist oatmeal. While that's laudable in a wacky Jackie Gleason hi-jinks/domestic abuse fashion, I'm pretty irked by the word "wussie." It doesn't take a genius with a degree in vagology to know what that's loosely imitating by rhyming, and I'm a little insulted that Rokit Fuel, in all their creative misspelling and edgy graphics, turns to a staid mysogynistic stereotype to imply weakness. I've been told I have a good sense of humor, and a dark one at that. And even I don't particularly find it funny or effective. I'm actually less annoyed that they're ragging on lady bits so much as irritated at the feeble structure of their joke. It's like something an angry child of a single dad would make up. I don't see who the intended "non-wussie" audience is. I bought it and I'm an overweight food writer. I'm the direct antithesis of a tennis ball. It wasn't an endorsement for the contents inside. Rokit Fuel didn't make me any more driven in my day. It's a low blow appropriate for an already shoddy product.

Back to our college dining theme, you'll be pleased to know that since I ran out of spoons to eat with, I used a tablespoon and can accurately report to you that there were 13 1/2 tablespoons in this cup. Which brings me to my next point. Not only is Rokit Fuel heavy on the calories, with a hefty 340, 120 of which come from fat, and 20 grams of sugar, (the most blasphemous Quaker variety, Banana Bread, has 150 calories, 18 from fat, and 14 grams of sugar) it's annoyingly minimal in its cooking instructions. It provides consumers with the basic, Captain Obvious facts anyone out or in an assisted living facility for retarded adults would be aware of and leaves the important stuff out. How much milk or water should I put in this? Nobody knows, so get the hell out. Leave the resealable top on while cooking? No fucking clue.

I still wound up with an oatmeal with a decent consistency, but I finished with a bad taste in my stomach and a frown on my face. What the creators imagined tasting like a "freshly baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookie" tastes like a muddled gravy-like concoction reminiscent of overbaked butternut squash and tepid stuffing. The consistency was thick, but wet and pasty with a very dense, unsweetened flavor. Believe me when I tell you that when I went to bed last night I was more excited to wake up and eat this oatmeal than I was to watch the season seven finale of Weeds, close the book on another year, and sleep in. So gulping down a flavor typically reserved for soup kitchen Thanksgivings and retirement home meals was not optimal. The flavor made eating the entire cup feel like a chore around the last few bites, and the stupid jokes and sparse instructions annoyed me. I'd spent $3.29 on a single serving of sub-par oatmeal. Hikers and bikers may have elevated standards, but in the end, the man in the wideawake hat knows best. Straying from the pack has devastating consequences.

Chocolate Chex Mix Cookies & Cream

There are certain flavor profiles that I automatically reach for when I'm looking for a snack. If I'm in the mood for chips, the spicy flavor is usually my first draft pick. With sweet snacks, it's a little different, because there's usually a much wider range, but I do know that if I ever see a cookies & cream flavored confection, that's the one I end up taking home. Such is the case with this new Chex Mix flavor. I've never seen a C&C flavored snack outside of chocolate bars and ice cream, and wondered how this would shape up.
According to the prestigious publication, Convenience Store Decisions, this debuted in July after a positive response to the homestyle Muddy Buddies flavor and is the first salty snack mix to incorporate a cookies and cream flavor. So stop dreaming, Funyuns. As excited as I was to try this, actually eating it was just disappointing. Let me put it to you this way. I originally bought this as a small treat for Keepitcoming Love on our drive to Mohegan Sun, but had the foresight (hunger) to try it ahead of time. Miss Love is our resident cookies and cream aficionado, and this was so weak that giving it to her would have seemed like an insult.
It was awful. For a product that has the potential to incorporate a variety of textural and flavor nuances throughout a bite or two, this was upsettingly one-noted. Each piece was coated in a filmy substance, a finely ground dust in greyscale that I'm assuming is the cookies and cream condensed to a powder with the texture, but not the expertise, of a dessert at wd-50. Even on the pieces that seemed to be more grey, as though they contained more cookie, the flavor was overly sweet and lacking in any chocolate flavor. The package screams that there are "real cookies" in it, as opposed to the plastic "my first kitchen" ones I use when I make Chex Mix. I've already called witness protection and the FBI, as it appears as these have been processed through a woodchipper and slid into my plastic bag. Real cookies, my ass.
Perhaps the most aggravating element in this was the "sweet creamy coating" on the Chex. I'm not stupid. I know that any substitute or clever wording for chocolate (in this case, white chocolate) is a way to imply chocolate without having it in the ingredients. At the very least, I expected white mockolate. This didn't even rise to the level of Palmer-esque confections. The coating caused it to fail as a portable snack, as it left a cocaine-like residue all over my desk. That wasn't so bad, because at least the cocaine-esque stuff made me look like a cool, edgy person, but the flavor was downright unpalatable. As a cereal, the powder sank to the bottom and left an oily sheen on top. It was creepy stuff and made my teeth hurt.
I'm annoyed that the essence of the Chex Mix in itself is an endearingly haphazard, thrown together sort of affair and with that philosophy, neglected to include its flagship ingredient. Would it have been so hard to throw some pieces of Hydrox or co-brand with Kraft and use "real Oreo pieces" in there? I'm disappointed that a snack like this had so much potential and then dropped the ball. With a slim market for cookies and cream snacks, this isn't helping other brands branch out into similar versions.

Godiva Gems Caramel Apple Truffles

Ah, the clearance section. A cheap gourmand's paradise, where one can freely browse the shelves, chucking dented cans and oozing bottles in a basket until it's full and still not go over $10. My senses are finetuned to the point where I can see that beautiful orange sticker 100 yards away. Usually, it contains seasonal items painfully past their prime, like chocolate Santas with their heads cracked in and melting bags of candy corn, but today, at my local Walgreens', I came across a strange surprise, Godiva's poorly named G Gems in Milk Chocolate Caramel Apple, a distinctly autumnal flavor evocative of Halloween and the people who only give away fruit or nickels at their houses. Bastards.

For a mere $4.49 I received a bright green and gold bag full of 10 Godiva truffles. Godiva strikes me as the Molly Ringwald of the chocolate world. They're prettily wrapped, they try too hard compared to the je ne sais quoi Ally Sheedys of artisanal bars, and they give away diamond earrings like they're nothing. Doing the math, I can pretty much figure that I've spent about 40 cents per truffle, allocating a generous 49 cents to the cost of providing such a luxurious and aesthetically appealing bag. (/sarcasm) So even before I get my grubby paws down Ms. Standish's pink Laura Ashley top, I've already paid for dinner, drinks, and a movie. So how do they taste?

I'll give Godiva some credit. It DOES taste like a caramel apple, in that I take one bite and throw the rest away so that the ants can colonize it. The milk chocolate molding breaks crisply to reveal the filling inside, a potently smelling, grainy substance that tastes like the inebriated byproduct of a Brach's caramel after a night of too many Appletinis. The fruit flavor is fake and sour with a sweet fermented flavor and strongly contrasts with the milk chocolate, which is far too sugary to be paired with motor oil, much less caramel. The end result tastes like raisins, for some reason, or maybe that's just my taste buds telling me to abort the mission prematurely.

I don't like these but I'm anxiously awaiting the new LTO flavors inspired by this, such as "Suspect Unwrapped Candy Corn Ganache from the Neighbor Who Belongs to the State Sex Offender's Registry," "Day After Halloween Vomit," or as I like to call it, the "second taste," and "Overly Bloomed KitKat from 1996." Enjoy, folks. And happy end of summer for those imprisoned in school!

Red Velvet and Bacon Chocolate Bars at Dylan's Candy Bar, New York, NY

One of the things I'm least proud of when it comes to food writing is that I am an absolute sucker for hype and tourist traps. It's the yenta drag queen in Eileen Fisher in me rearing her perfectly coiffed head and dragging me to places like Serendipity 3 and Katz's Deli before catching a matinee of fucking Spiderman on Broadway. Luckily, our trip to New York was slightly tempered down, and we managed to entertain ourselves with a minimum of pure, unadulterated tourism. But sadly, my puerile curiosity for the bizarre forced us into Dylan's Candy Bar on 3rd and 59th, the slutty little sister trailing a noxious odor of sugar and sweat behind stately Bloomie's.

For all the veterans of combat who read this website, please accept my sincere respect and admiration for what you do. Only yesterday did I get a true taste of what it is to be in an honest-to-goodness war zone, replacing foreign enemies with tiny terrorists from boroughs far and wide. Never in my life did I imagine I'd witness the mental breakdown of an eleven year old girl who has just witnessed the largest Hershey bar in the world, but damn it, I never imagined I'd be playing the role of Pvt. Augustus Gloop on private assignment, either. I skirted throngs of peeved nannies and dodged manchildren to reach my goal: the red velvet chocolate bar. The listless employees, desensitized to the shrill screams of nascent shitheads and blaring juxtaposition of Aaron Carter and Shirley Temple, merely blinked when I shouted my DTs and prepared my foo gas for the Lower Zone.

I found my man, plus a limited edition bacon bonus bar. But only when I witnessed Keepitcoming Love shriek at a cute candy-studded tank top and leap into a bathtub full of dirty gumballs did I realize, too late, that we'd gone too far. The jelly bean eyes of Dylan Lauren herself bored holes into our backs as we beat a hasty retreat. Dylan's Candy Bar is a self-contained, biohazardous circle of Hell. Once we scraped the memories of sticky floors and $13/lb gummies out of our heads, we tried the chocolates. I have no qualms paying $5-$10 for a good chocolate bar because I am generally confident that the premium is an example of the quality of the bar itself. At the risk of losing my escort demographic as a result of using two hooker jokes in one night, the chocolates of Mistress Dylan are unequivocally the prostitutes who leave you with a hole in your pocket and a burning sensation when you pee. They may just be the worst chocolates I have ever consumed.

The red velvet cake bar, one of three in the dessert bar series, had a strange combination of ingredients that resembled a basket on Chopped with the red velvet cake as the end interpretation. Artificial cookie dough flavor and miniature marshmallows have no place in a red velvet cake, but as far as Dylan Lauren is concerned, the brightly colored, dyed sky is the limit.

The bar apparently contains premium Belgian milk chocolate, but apparently the neutral Belgian variety from the Phony War. The end result on the chocolate front was a waxy, strangely greasy crumble with a bright red menstrual smear carrying the unmistakable reek and pre-engineered, factory canned flavor of a Yankee Candle. The dye lingered on the finish and left a bitter, chalky, strangely fruity aftertaste. Runts and Yankee Candle is what your $2.95 buys you. Dylan's demonic laugh echoed in the back of my head and I had to go take a walk around the block to clear my head and vomit.

Add a "U" for "Ummy" where the apostrophe is!



At the time, I thought my second purchase was a bonus that I'd simply not seen on the website, a limited edition offering dropped from heaven itself. But when I looked closer, I realized the cruelty in the typeface. The bar wasn't bacon. It was bacon-flavored to accommodate Schuyler's allergies and probiotic diet, and thusly contained Bac-O's. I forged on. As I slipped a morsel of the chocolate into my mouth, my brain's primordial instincts kicked in in one last valiant attempt to prevent me from expelling this from my mouth on impact. By telling me that I was simply eating a Krackel Bar, which accounted for the crispy texture, I was able to finish the bite. That is, until the liquid smoke and sugar came in. The unmistakable flavor of Bac-O's flooded my mouth along with the mediocre, overly sweet chocolate, and I could no longer go on.

Note the angry jutting of an elbow in the upper left sector as some poor bystander loses an eye.

Dylan's Candy Bar bested me. I was defeated. I was scared. I was swayed by the promise of exoticism and for that, I have paid with the ultimate price: my soul. It was horrifying. If I were to go back, it would only to be to torch the wretched mess and never look back. I've paid my dues.