Cheater 5 Salsas

I realize that I'm a few days late on spicy week, but rest assured, this is a good one. Hot sauces, people. A good hot sauce is like a good woman. Or so I'd think. I spent hours this weekend analyzing films, literature, and real live human beings to discover this ethereal connection and report back to you.I was recently sent a selection of sauces called Cheater 5, in three different varieties. The first sauce I tried was their taco sauce, a bright red concoction with pieces of pepper bobbing around in the salsa. This salsa was sweet, and not as spicy as I'd have liked, but knew how to talk. It had a sweet fade and a delicious aroma that I wanted, ever so much, to dab on my wrists and imbibe. If this salsa was a woman, she would be the kind who takes impromptu road trips and knows how to cook a fantastic breakfast. The flavor lingers with a paprika edge and a tomatoey base, with a fantastic, natural peppery flavor on your tongue. Like the afterglow of talking on the phone with someone amazing for a really sweet 48 minutes, the flavor stays and continues to intrigue.

With this sauce, I'd definitely want a little more heat, but putting it with a taco meat base or just on top of a taco would bring it to a new level of gastronomical delight with its flavor. It would add a needed moisture to a dish with ground beef and the flavors would work well without dominating the rest of the dish. I'm not entirely sure as to how it would stand on its own as a salsa, unless you're more into a friendly approach with your chips. The next sauce, a green salsa verde, is the classiest of the sauces. It's a brilliant green color that makes heads turn and dishes pop. It has a nice, clean burn to it with a fresh, pepper scent and was definitely the most social of all the sauces. It played well with others the most, mingling best with the chicken I marinated it in and also the chicken I dipped it in, and seemed like it would go the best as an accompaniment to chips, on a sandwich as a sauce, or as a marinade. This is the vibrant woman who pulls over on the side of the road to make out to Nights In White Satin and considers a cocktail dress casual dinner attire. The sauce made my mouth feel clean and snappy, and definitely accentuates the best of any dish. No less than 93 out of 100 for this one. A real classy and unabashedly awesome salsa.The last sauce by Cheater 5 was the caribbean sauce, a bright yellow color that wouldn't be out of place in a certain Beatles album. This sauce sat on my face and slapped me with black leather gloves. It was fresh, like the salsa verde, but so overwhelmingly spicy that I had to step back because it was too hot for the internet. The innocuous color drew me in and then stomped on my back with pointy Manolo Blahniks.The most surprising aspect of this sauce is the rate at which the heat sets in. It nearly ambushes you with the slow burn. With other salsas, you can tell pretty quickly off the bat whether or not they'll be really spicy or not, but this is a special sauce. It masks its inherent evil with papaya and mango and then goes in for a swift defeat, leaving you dazed, confused, and wanting just a little more. The heat makes me want to run a marathon to the sweet serenades of Slade. I found that after my first few bites, though, it was overwhelming and I needed something to dilute it with. I'm definitely going to experiment with this one more, with a marinade or perhaps mixed with another sauce to create something a little less intimidating. In a good way, though.

Fish

This review of Fish will be about as useful to fish eaters as mainstream restaurant reviews are to me. Not very.

Fish is the bigger (but still small) and newer sister to Mike Stollenwerk's tiny (and currently closed due to building structure problems) Little Fish, a restaurant that got the whole town talking about Stollenwerk's simple but spectacular fish dishes. Bigwigs also took notice, as he's cooking up a meal this August at the James Beard House in New York, no less.

If you don't eat fish, like I do, you probably have no business eating at Fish, a restaurant with almost nothing but fish on the menu. But what if you have a loved one that adores Little Fish, never gets to eat there (because a certain someone doesn't eat fish), and has a birthday? You suck it up, and take them to Fish, the next best thing to Little Fish — and currently the only option if you want Stollenwerk's work.Complementary bread is dolled out by the piece from the waitstaff on an as-needed basis, and is accompanied by a tangy goat milk butter.

As a vegetarian, I could eat four things from the menu: a salad, and three of the four sides. I've seen worse at restaurants that were significantly lesser in quality, so I can't complain. And I'm not. I know where I was.

Even a simple salad of arugula, Feta and tomatoes dressed in a vinaigrette gets attention — each grape and cherry tomato half was of a different variety, making each mouthful interesting.For my main, I ordered the spaeztle side. The crispy, pan fried German egg noodles were perfectly salted and seasoned, and topped with musty slivers of white truffle. Not skimpy, but not large — it's a side, after all — the spaeztle left me with enough room for dessert.The bacon ice cream sounded fabulous, but I went with the thick, ganach-like chocolate tort with pretzel crust and salted caramel ice cream. After the sweet and only slightly salty ice cream was no longer around to balance the overwhelmingly rich tort, I put my fork down and called it an evening.

Even though I couldn't eat the main attraction at Fish, I could tell that everything was cooked and prepared with care and skill.

Each of the six varieties of oysters available were ordered by my partner, as well as some fish dish. He loved it all. Asked to compare Fish to Little Fish, he said they both were equally good, but Fish seemed more refined, and he preferred the more relaxed dishes of Little Fish. So there's that, if that is more helpful to fish eaters than my review

Fish
1708 Lombard St., Philadelphia, PA 19146
215-545-9600
Mon-Sun, 5pm-close

Rawley's Drive-In, Fairfield, CT

Heeded by the siren-like and yet, deadly, calls of Alex Guarnaschelli, Dickinson and I took a journey to a land unknown, yet so close. A land where Pink Floyd's "Money" streams through the streets, where single is a four letter word, and affair is a recipe for success. That's Fairfield, CT, my friends, of Fairfield County, and we drove in search of amazing hot dogs.Rawley's Drive-In is extremely quaint. It's the kind of cabin like place with names carved into the wall that a person could easily live in, and with the food they serve, who wouldn't want to? Famous for their fried, then grilled hot dogs at priced fixed since Nixon, and cold milkshakes, it's a favorite franchise. Dickinson and I ordered a black and white milkshake that made the Dairy Queen next door almost seem redundant, served in two cold cups for us.The milkshake, for a smaller serving, was filling enough. It was cool and creamy and had a very strong vanilla flavoring. Since a black and white shake is just chocolate syrup in vanilla ice cream, we got a good flavor of each, but not so much that one really overwhelmed the other. I generally take my black and white shakes slightly unmixed so that in some sips, there's more chocolate than vanilla, but I ain't complaining. It was cold and perfectly textured, not too thick or too thin, but easy to get the texture of the ice cream in each gulp.The dog came in nothing flat, a chili cheese dog with bacon. I almost wish I'd ordered a plain dog to get the essence of the flavoring and cooking without all the toppings, but boy, were they good. The chili was meaty and had a nice sauce that seeped into the bun, but wasn't greasy or too loose. It was a fantastic topping to the burger. The pieces of bacon were absolutely succulent, like little nuggets of smoked angel poop or something. They were crunchy and crispy and hot from the fryer and had a slightly smoky taste to them, and the cheese held it all together well, though I didn't get much of a sharp flavoring from it.The dog itself was really amazing. It was skinnier than I'd expected, but still so full of flavoring. Alex was right, this was a real treat. And at a little under $4, less without the toppings, this was an inexpensive and gourmet snack without breaking the bank. Dickinson paid. That's why no banks were broken. The Foodette doubles as a mooch in the shadow of the night. It was a really crunchy dog with a nice skin and a good bite to it. Really good and fast food.With our dogs and burgers, respectively, as Dickinson is of the sandwich persuasion, we shared an order of fries, although I didn't snap a photo. They were thick and rampant with starchy flavors, nicely fried and very crispy on the ends. I like it when they leave the skin on. They weren't seasoned as well as I'd liked, but still had a good natural taste, and were perfectly cooked on the inside. Good fries. Not perfect or anything remarkable, but decent. It was a lovely lunch with Dickinson and a great time to catch up with one of my best friends over it.

Capri Bleu Goat Cheese

Hey, guys, sorry for the eternally later and later posts. I've been packing and unpacking boxes and have relatively uninteresting, vaguely adult-like responsibilities to fulfill to counteract my drinking bottled wine and lounging about in silk robes in my spare time. I definitely need a smoking jacket.

Here's a classy cheese for classy ladies. Or men. Or children. I had it a while ago, but have only gotten around to reviewing it now. It's a classic bleu cheese, but it's goat cheese, and that makes it doubly delicious. I gave some to my friend, Wiener Woman, and she loved it. It didn't give her a cigarette holder or an instant air of pretension, but she still thought it was fantastic.The cheese is smartly rolled in a nice log, which makes it perfect for slicing as a presentation to get some of the pretty rind in or easy to slice and crumble. It crumbles well, in relatively fine pieces that maintain a nice, smooth saltiness, almost like feta, but with a slight chalkiness at the end. It's a very creamy cheese. If I'd had a better kitchen at Chez Crabtree, perhaps I'd have made a homemade bleu cheese dip for my haute wings for dinner club, but alas, it was not to be. Instead, I sat in my dad's old bathrobe and gnawed it with Reserve Saltines, aged to perfection in my food file cabinet. There was no veining in the cheese, surprisingly, but I liked that because I don't really like too much of that saturated flavor. Overall, though, really delicious and really classy, like a vintage Playboy magazine or an old antimacassar. Good schtuff.

Oscar Mayer Deli Creations: Turkey Monterey

Well, I'm back home, and I'm sorely missing the people back in Amherst. That's more home. In any case, I'm back where I grew up, and I'm eating sammiches and bad Chinese food.

This is a favorite, one that I've mentioned before and really enjoyed. The process is the same deal, microwaving the bread and cheese and then assembling the 'wich. This time, though, the cheese is PEPPER FREAKING JACK, the turkey has PEPPER CRUST, and there's salsa and SOUTHWESTERN mayonnaise to top it with. It makes me feel like I'm in a real live tourist district of New Mexico. Southwestern Disneyland or something.The sandwich, for all my bad jokes, is really, really good. Tons of turkey, and it's moist, but not watery like the ham was in some of the other sandwiches. There's more meat touching here than a rugby team scrum. The cheese's gooiness and texture was completely gone, but the spices shone through nicely. Bummer that the cheese was dead on arrival, though. The sauces really made it a unique and tasty sandwich, though, than just another permutation of meat, cheese, and bread. The salsa wasn't watery at all, in fact, was thick and tasted very spicy with nice chunks of tomato and onion, and mixing with the spicy ranch sauce or whatever, made a really interesting sauce to go on top of the sandwich and gave it a spice as well as a creaminess that it deserved and lacked with the cold, sexless frigidity of the cheese.This was decent. It was better than the soulless hucksters of the other sandwiches, and I'd definitely try to recreate this at home with better ingredients and more exciting flavors. Not bad, but there's always more to check out. Summer is here!

And you all have four more days to enter the contest. I extended the date to this Monday- write Foodette Reviews anywhere you want and you'll get something special from me. It won't be oral sex. But it might be chocolates.

Chuao Panko Bar

Panko breading is a staple in my kitchen, since my husband and I like to eat tonkatsu (fried breaded pork), but I never would have thought to put it in a chocolate bar.

This bar seemed elusive in my area for quite some time, but I just didn't know where to look for it. After checking nearly every local gourmet store, the Chuao Panko bar showed up at Wal-Mart.


The bulk of the bar was a nice, mildly bitter chocolate with a lovely salty crunch. The panko did a great job of adding texture without changing the flavor. The sea salt was great both with the chocolate and the panko, and it reminded me of potato chip chocolates without the potato flavor.

The end notes were bitter and earthy, and it made for a tasty bar. The gritty texture of the panko gave it an extra hearty feel. I've never had anything quite like it, and though it didn't become my favorite Chuao bar, I would certainly buy it again.

Check out another review of this bar at Candy Blog.

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Chuao website

Nestle Calpis KitKat

Whenever I see a new type of Calpis, I buy it. So far, this has meant Calpis soda, flavored Calpis, alcoholic Calpis, and Calpis candy, just to name a few. When Calpis KitKats came out, I knew I had to have them.

The polka dot packaging was adorable, and of course, it was a white chocolate bar. Milk chocolate Calpis just wouldn't make sense (though I'd gladly try it). It's hard to pin down the flavor of Calpis, but it is distinctive nonetheless. It's a little tangy from citrus and yogurt, but typically not carbonated.


The bar smelled like lemon, cream, and just a tiny bit like Calpis. It was tart and just a tiny bit tingly, but it reminded me more of lemon cake than the drink. However, that's not a bad thing, because lemon cake is delicious.

There were sour citrus bits in the wafers that provided a balance for the white chocolate. Not surprisingly, the bar was very sweet, but I didn't mind. In the end notes, there was the faintest hint of yogurt, but I can't really say it tasted like Calpis. Regardless, this KitKat was delicious, and I wish I ordered more.

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KitKat website