I Went To An All-You-Can Eat Buffet Owned By Scott Steiner

Holla' if you hear me ... I'm about to puke scrambled eggs all over Big Poppa Pump's parking lot. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

It's not everyday that you learn that a former WCW world heavyweight pro-wrestling champion opened up a buffet restaurant in your neck of the woods. But sometimes, fortune, she doth smile upon you. 

Living in the northern environs right above Atlanta, I noticed a few months ago that there appeared to be a brand new, totally remodeled Shoney's restaurant around exit 277 off Interstate 75. Now, this is interesting, because there was a long-abandoned Shoney's just sitting there for months and months. That someone - anyone - would invest the financial resources in literally bulldozing the eatery to build a whole new eatery on top of it seems just about the weirdest thing anyone could do with the property that the Acworth, Ga. zoning commission would've authorized.

Well, much to my surprise, I recently learned that someone was none other than WCW stalwart Scott Steiner, who spent 80 percent of his career playing some guy with a mullet before discovering ster...I mean, developing a new muscle-building-intensive training regiment...and becoming this beefed up dude with blond hair that wore a chain mail headdress for no discernible reason whatsoever and once tried to kayfabe rape Vince McMahon's daughter on live television. Oh, and when I say he "bulldozed the property," I goddamn mean exactly what I say ... he was indeed the person responsible for using diesel-fueled, mechanical death to pound the old buffet restaurant into rubble. 

So, a couple of months back, the all new Big Poppa Pump Shoney's opened its doors, complete with a grand opening spectacle in which the man himself - as well as a host of other pro 'rasslin has-beens like Jeff Jarrett and Kevin Nash - showed up to the rechristen the franchise. After driving by the thing for the better part of a year, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I decided to try out this newfangled buffet place, to see if it really was worthy of, ahem, a title shot. 

All right, so I am going to assume that about half of the people reading this already know what Shoney's is, and really have no need for any background info. Alas, I also expect those of you from locales without a big Shoney's presence to have a lot of questions, so to catch those out of the loop up to speed, basically, the restaurant is a sit-down buffet "assemble-your-own-heart-attack" chain, not unlike something like Golden Corral. Granted, the buffet itself - while the main attraction - is a bit downplayed for more festive menu fare. So yeah, you can go in there and savage the buffet line like a neanderthal if you want, but if you want a big meaty steak or a huge honking hamburger, you can also sit there and politely wait for someone to carry out your made-to-order meal like a normal human being. But hey, where's the fun in such a banal dining experience?

Before you get into the exterior of what will forever be known as "The Scott Steiner Shoney's," I reckon you first have to describe its surroundings. It's in a really bad place, traffic-wise, since there is no real outlet accessible for motorists coming southbound or northbound from the interstate. Indeed, once you take the I-75 off-ramp, you have to drive quite a bit down Highway 92 before you can find a decent U-turn spot so you can actually enter the parking lot. It's wedged in between a Waffle House and a Hardee's, with a huge hunting store right across the road. There's some economic development stuff going on behind it (hotels? warehouses? office complexes?) but for the time being, it's mostly just dust and debris in the background. As for the patrons, it was your usual mix of weather-beaten Vietnam vets, late-evening church people and scruffy day laborers. Literally everyone in the building - my tongue-ring-sporting waitress included - dipped out at least once while I was there to get their Marlboro fix in between gnashing down plates of scrambled egg and grits. 

As soon as you walk in, you are bombarded by all of the expected "'Merica" iconography, right down to the giant-assed American flag with the corporate restaurant logo emblazoned upon it next to the cooks' 10 foot-by-6-foot cubby hole in front of the buffet line. There are a ton of plasma screen TVs all over the place, and a full bar, complete with a giant jug of what appears to be bagels floating in a translucent blue fluid. I honestly have no idea what  that's supposed to be, so if anyone out there can fill me in, please, do send an email. The general layout of the place was a little weird. You had a "U" shaped row of booths flanking the perimeter of the dining area, but there was this long row of standalone tables stacked side-by-side creating this buffer between the diners and the buffet trays, with these (comparatively) narrow choke points on the sides that pretty much put your ass in the face of somebody downing a key lime pie every time you get up for a new plate. And, as anyone who has ever been to a buffet in the Deep South can tell you, considering the awe-inspiring girth of many restaurant regulars, at some point you just KNOW some lard-ass has gotten stuck in between tables here. 

As soon as I was seated, the very first thing Miss Tongue Ring said to me was "do you wanna' try any pancakes tonight?" Keep in mind, this is before she asked me what I wanted to order as a main entree, and even before she asked me what I wanted to drink. Meanwhile, the old dude behind me - whose wife, presumably, didn't give a shit - kept calling her "honey," because yeah, in old Dixie, there's a fine line (and sometimes, none at all) between old fashioned camaraderie and blatant sexism.

Unbeknownst to me, the evening I showed up was apparently breakfast night, which is totally cool with me because I'm never really out and about eating stuff until at least 6 p.m., anyway. The buffet line itself was a good 15 feet, with your standard salad bar on the far left end, some chilled desserts (mostly, a bunch of pudding and iced cantaloupe slices) and two mystery soups I didn't have the time/available stomach space to sample. The main breakfast itinerary took up three full sections, which are broken down, Noah's ark style, in the paragraphs below.

First up, we have our heavy proteins. You've got your standard scrambled eggs (enhanced by a heaping helping of nacho cheese), sausage links, grits, chopped up home fries, sauteed mushrooms, chicken-fried steak (a Southern cuisine staple, for those of you not in the know) and the prerequisite made-from-scratch biscuit, which could be slathered in either your basic creamy milk gravy or a more savory one containing chunks of crumbled up sausage. So, yeah, not a bad little offering at all right here. 

Round two was a little more diverse. You've got your breaded and deep fried chicken tenders and maple-soaked bacon to meet your protein needs, but everything else is decisively starchier. For one thing, the section included a large bucket of Spanish rice, which I've never really considered a "breakfast-type" of food, but whatever. Annex to that an entirely different kind of grits (it was way mushier than the kind I tried earlier) and a confectioner's sugar-drenched fried French toast thingy and you definitely had all the makings for a carb-induced headache. 

But the dessert section is where things get really out of hand. Here, there's not even an attempt to justify the inherent unhealthiness of what's on the docket; you've got sugar-encrusted fruit jam-crepes, super-duper-sugary apple cobbler, a sponge-cake drenched in molasses and a gigantic, sugar-coated fried triangle that I'm pretty sure is type 2 diabetes distilled into its purest organic form. Of course, Shoney's tried to make you feel a little better by including some sliced up pineapple in the tray, but it's a ... pun, somewhat intended ... fruitless effort. If you're even sniffing around stuff like this, it's pretty much a given that you don't give a fuck no more about having all of your appendages, and no puny little slice of Adventure Island power-up is going to convince you to change your obese ways, neither.

Ultimately, I was able to put down five plates before my endocrine system started shutting down. In hindsight, it doesn't seem like that much food, but that's probably because there was a (relatively) smaller amount of individual foods being offered. When you go to an Asian buffet where they've got out 30 different types of macaroni and 94 exquisitely made sushi rolls, yeah, you tend to rationalize eating an insane amount of food, but when there are just a dozen or so things you kept devouring, it's easy to see how your brain might try and fool you into thinking you aren't as big of a glutton as you actually are. Still, I was utterly fucked up for two days afterwards, completely sick to my stomach and having to drink water like a half-starved camel for 48 hours afterwards. Regardless, the all-breakfast induced food high was probably worth it - for just $8.99, I'm pretty damn sure I ate at least $40 worth of sausage alone, and really, there's no way to go to bed feeling bad about that, for sure. 

The one thing that really struck me about the visit was the complete and utter lack of any kind of Scott Steiner iconography anywhere. I mean, I didn't expect Scott himself to waltz on out and give somebody a Steiner Screwdriver for leaving behind a shitty tip or Frankensteiner the barmaid for being too slow or cut a promo about how he wants to kill Hulk Hogan again next to the ranch dressing dipper, but one would expect to see at least a photo of the franchise operator somewhere. Indeed, unless you really had your ear on the ground when it comes to ex-professional 'rassler entrepreneurial endeavors, there's no way you would have suspected a former WCW champ owned the place. 

As a pure dining experience, I think it is safe to say I have experienced way better at other buffets. It would've been nice to have tried their proper dinner buffet (and, pending I am in the area for some abstruse reason, I may indeed do just that), but the breakfast slate, overall, was rather unremarkable. Now, don't get too mad at me, Mr. Big Bad Booty Daddy, "unremarkable" doesn't mean "terrible," it just means "good in all the expected ways." It was yummy, it was filling and I feel that I certainly got my nine dollars and some odd change out of the meal. Still, in a glutted buffet market, you really have to up the ante and trot out an experience that separates you from the herd. All of the stuff Shoney's was hocking, I could get at any Howard Johnson breakfast buffet line in America. I mean, you couldn't have ran with the pro wrestling theme and given us Rick Steiner waffles, or Sid Vicious's extra crispy whole pork patties? Hell, not only would I patronize an old school WCW-themed buffet on a weekly basis, I'd probably buy a house within ten miles of it just to be on the safe side. 

Still, I've got no real complaints about my Scott Steiner Shoney's encounter. Granted, the stuff I remember most wasn't the food - never really a good sign if you are a fledgling franchise - but the really small things, like how my water came out with the lime juice already sprinkled in it, or the dude in the bright green shirt who kept asking me 900 times if I liked the home fries, and the fact that the forks that came with my napkin were easily the biggest fucking eating utensils a restaurant has ever supplied me. That, and it was pretty hard not to be distracted by that weird, mechanical "beeping" that kept emanating from the chef's cubby hole.

But then again, for all we know, that could've just been the cooks trying to pump themselves up by blasting their owner's old theme music at full volume...

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A Chick-Fil-A Breakfast Buffet!?!

Just outside of Atlanta, there's a one-of-a-kind Chick-fil-A restaurant that serves a full breakfast buffet. I went there, and it was every bit as amazing as it sounds.

If you really want to experience the best Georgia has to offer, you really have to get outside of Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, there are some pretty cool sites in A-Town -- drive-ins and superhero-themed pizza places and an entire museum dedicated to soda propaganda among them -- but outside the perimeter is where you will find all of the really, really noteworthy destinations.

For example, in Summerville, there is an outdoor museum dedicated solely to the artwork of Howard Finster, a probably psychopathic pastor whose portfolio consists almost entirely of apocalyptic paintings and sculptures of people with Down Syndrome heads. Similarly, Ashburn is home to the Crime and Punishment Museum, whose exhibits include a replica of electric chairs and authentic KKK apparel. It is adjoined by a local favorite restaurant, named, fittingly enough, the Last Meal Cafe. And under the penumbra of Stone Mountain, you will find Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation headquarters, which is home to a life-size bronzed statute of the beloved rapper/convicted racist.

Nestled in Woodstock is yet another must-stop "what-the?" roadside attraction ... or should I say "event," rather.

This one requires just a bit of a history lesson. You see, Chick-fil-A was not the first restaurant venture undertaken by Truett Cathy. Long before Chick-fil-A was a zygote of an idea, he opened a series of restaurants called the Dwarf House.

I'm not exactly 100 percent, certain but I am fairly sure the concept never made its way out of Georgia. Even now, however, the old buildings dot the outside-the-perimeter landscape, although almost all of them have since been rebranded as "official" Chick-fil-A businesses. Although I recall visiting one of the old-school Dwarf House restaurants as a kid, for the life of me, I can't really remember anything about the menu or even its general ambiance. This being the early 1990s, though, I assure you it was nothing like the modern, sanitary Chick-fil-A experience we all know and love -- I don't recall much about the brand, but I most certainly do recall the restaurants being dirty, dingy and very musty-smelling.

The restaurant in Woodstock is sort of a fusion concept -- basically, it appears to be a fairly new Chick-fil-A restaurant attached to the weathered remnants of an old Dwarf House establishment. I suppose the photographs do a good enough job of describing the general concept, but for the visually-impaired, it's basically just a red-brick facade with a bright red miniature door and something of a medieval cottage motif welded onto a modern-day restaurant space ... or is it the other way around?

The anteroom (that's one 1 percenters call a "lobby," in case you were wondering) is really a site to behold. It's hard to describe, but somehow,they managed to cram a to-scale midget-sized Hobbit house just inside the foyer, complete with min-stained glass windows and an operable door that the wee ones can actually run in and out of. Thankfully, they also put a deadbolt on that sucker, because you just know at some point, some nefarious crook or robber tried to squeeze himself through it during the off hours.

Of course, the entrance also has some of the expected Chick-fil-A signage, but for the most part, it doesn't feel anything at all like the average branded restaurant. I got REALLY excited seeing this castle door mock-up at the double doors, but as it turns out, that's not actually a normal decoration. According to one of the suspiciously well-groomed teenage employees, they put up the display to herald some sort of mother/son function, which, yeah, is just a wee bit on the creepy side.

As for the rest of the restaurant, it is more or less was your standard Chick-fil-A diner, albeit just a teensy bit larger than the average store. I visited the place on an early Saturday morning, and it was quite busy -- apparently, this particular branch also does breakfast buffets on Friday mornings and Thursday evenings, too.

So, after plopping down my $9.49 plus state and local taxes, I hit up the metal queue. If you are not familiar with how buffets work (and judging from just how surprisingly popular my write up on Golden Corral has been in developing countries, I am assuming that's quite a number of you), you pay a flat fee and eat a virtually unlimited amount of foodstuffs, which are constantly being replenished by sweaty chefs at breakneck speeds. So in short ... it's the most American thing that has ever existed, or ever will exist.

Comparatively, there wasn't a whole lot of variety offered this morning. All in all, I counted up nine different foodstuffs in the line-up, which is a pretty thin number, especially compared to competing chains like Shoney's, which generally offer enough all-you-can-eat goods to qualify as a miniature grocery store.

That said, you really can't argue with the quality of the food, though. Pretty much everything on tap was delicious, from the golden-flaky biscuits to the super crispy bacon to little sausage roll thingies. In addition to the home fries and scrambled eggs (the staple of any decent breakfast,) you also get a healthy amount of sides, including grits, chunky gravy and what appears to be apple cobbler. Of course, the big draw, of course, is the endless tray of chicken patties, which is pretty much reason enough to visit this place. No lie, folks: I ate ten of them, and almost throw up on the cashier woman while paying my meal ticket.

To be fair, Chick-fil-A is a pretty contentious business, and I would be telling you a flat out whopper if I said I wasn't just a smidge uncomfortable dining there. For one thing, there were a LOT of people doing scripture readings -- I mean, practice what you feel like practicing and all, but shit, what kind of glances do you think people would give me and my buddies if we decided to have a Koran study at Subway, or a dramatic reading of the Satanic Bible at Taco Bell? Secondly, there were a TON of cops in there. Like, at least three or four squad cars worth, and they were sharing a table with a gaggle of girls who could not have been older than juniors in high school. And also, one of them appeared to be Jewish, as evident by the Hebrew tattoos he had on his arm, which I am pretty sure is against Jewish teachings, now that I think about it. And then, there were the servers, who kept telling me it was "their pleasure" to serve me. Now, I know it's corporate policy and all, but I know you really don't give a hoot if I need a coffee refill -- and by the way, their proprietary brew is kinda' on the crappy side, too.

By their very nature, I think buffets are supposed to be kind of scummy. The waiters are supposed to be distant and despondent, providing you with just the bare minimum amount of interface to facilitate you giving them your credit card. Also, the lighting is supposed to be drab and dreary, to cover up the fact that you're eating food that likely has a bunch of fly eggs and eyelashes embedded in it, and that the utensils are just sorta washed. That kind of runs counterproductive to the entire Chick-fil-A corporate mantra, which is customer service and cleanliness ... the precise two things that buffets attempt to stamp out entirely.

Still, the experience is probably worth a detour if you are ever in the Atlanta area. It's a bit on the pricey side, but as stated before, it's basically your only opportunity to ever drop a dozen Chick-fil-a patties on one ceramic plate and tear into them in public without people thinking you are a feral child or something. And it's also astoundingly, ironically close to a sex toy outlet, which means God really does have a sense or humor (or at least, the planning commission in Woodstock really doesn't care about getting re-elected.)

So, to recap? If you like gluttony, processed poultry and people into Jesus, you'll probably really like this place. And if you're a vegetarian, an atheist, a homosexual, someone who is no longer married to his first wife or an individual ready to storm the offices of the Family Research Council? Well, there is a Del Taco pretty close by, I guess...

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Taco Bell's EVEN NEWER Breakfast Items!

Taco Bell's already diverse breakfast menu gets even more ecclectic with the addition of three unique offerings ... all of which are pretty damned awesome, to boot. 

When Taco Bell's breakfast line-up went live nationwide earlier this year, I was among the many, many skeptics. As relative newcomers to the breakfast game, I think we all just sort of thought the menu was going to be nothing more than miscellaneous variations on egg burritos -- i.e., the kind of lazy, low-quality A.M. cash grab you'd expect from any number of B-tier establishments and not the the undisputed king of faux Mexican fast food.

Ultimately, I thought the first incarnation of the breakfast line-up was so-so. The much-ballyhooed "waffle tacos" were a feeble  (and unflavorful) attempt to capture the hyper-consumerist youth market, while the in-house breakfast burritos were shockingly mundane. The big silver lining in the tortilla-shaped clouds, however, were the A.M. Crunch Wrap offerings, which were not only uniquely tasty, but perfectly suited for weekday morning consumption -- meaning, you could eat three or four of them while driving 70 miles per hour down the Interstate, without any real fears of having nacho cheese drip on your slacks.

Unsurprisingly, Taco Bell's second wave of breakfast offerings focus largely on the proven Crunch Wrap formula (and in the most wonderfully weird way, too.) But first up? Taco Bell seeks to make amends for its rather disappointing breakfast burritos -- ladies and gents, I give you the "Grande Scrambler."

As the name implies, the "Grande Scrambler" is both a.) really, really big, and b.) a hodgpodge of all sorts of breakfast favorites, including home fries, pico, egg, cheese and bacon bits. That said there are two major things that make this item stand out from your typical breakfast 'ritto.

First off, obviously, is the fact that it's goddamn enormous. Take about three breakfast burritos from McDonalds and tape them together and you'll get a good idea of the girth of the "Scrambler." It's so "grande" that, feasibly, it could be turned into a bludgeoning instrument, in what would undoubtedly be the most delicious homicide in history.  

Secondly, the thing is really, really tasty. I wasn't too impressed by the Bell's initial A.M. tortillas, but this one MORE than makes up for their rather lackluster first wave lineup. The pico really gives the offering a flavorful kick that's lacking from the standard burritos, but what REALLY makes this thing delicious is the sour cream. I never really thought the combination of egg and curdled milk yogurt would gel all that well, but folks, I was as wrong as wrong could be. If you're looking for an XL morning pick-me-up, and you really don't mind having a case of the trots around lunchtime, I would highly, highly recommend giving this thing a try ASAP. 

And from there, we hop to the two newest additions to the A.M. Crunchwrap family -- an avocado loaded "California" iteration and, if you can believe it, a gravy injected country biscuit permutation. 

We'll start with "California" first and work our way eastward. The first thing I noticed about my particular meal was how lumpy it was ... when I say these tortillas are utterly loaded with foodstuffs, I mean these things are freaking packed with the goods. 

As far as the contents of said offering went, I was pretty impressed. There's a lot of shredded cheddar, some bacon chunks, onions, tomato, egg, and, of course, guacamole galore. Overall, it has a nice, tangy flavor, that makes it taste more like a traditional burrito than your normal breakfast variation. It certainly feels zestier than most breakfast burritos; if you like food that tastes healthy even though it really isn't, you'll probably really enjoy this one. 

I could tell the country gravy biscuit Crunchwrap was going to be phenomenal as soon as I opened up the little paper envelope thingy and a bunch of watery white stuff started pouring out of it. As jam packed as the California wrap was, this one was even bulkier, as if the innards were threatening to burst out of the tortilla like Hulk Hogan shredding off his own shirt, circa 1987. My hopes, obviously, were sky high here.

Give the Bell props, because somehow, this thing did indeed taste like a genuine Southern biscuit. Inside the tortilla exterior, it had a big old pork patty, wrapped up in a thick coat of cheesy eggs and milky sauce, which I assume to be some kind of watered down flour compound with a couple of specks of salt and pepper sprinkled into it. Of course, it does taste pretty weird, but it's the soothing kind of weird, the weird you really, really like although empirical science tells you it should make you vomit instead. So, yeah, this thing is a Taco Bell offering, through and through I reckon. 

Ever the busy sort, I rarely have time to make the trek to restaurants in the A.M., but pending you have some free time on the weekend, I would really encourage you to give these three products a taste-chow. They're unorthodox, filling, unexpectedly yummy and kooky more or less for the sake of being kooky and bringing in the ever-growing satirical fast-food blogger reviewer demographic. As such, I really can't imagine these things become longtime staples of the Taco Bell morning menu, so you best suck these babies down while you still have the opportunity. 

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Taco Bell's All New Quesarito!

Is it a burrito, or a quesadilla, or simply a rolled up slice of heaven?

It's clear that Taco Bell views Chipotle as a major threat to the U.S.-ified Tex Mex fast food chain hierarchy. First, there was their line of gourmet tacos and burritos that looked and tasted suspiciously identical to Chipotle's much ballyhooed rolled up and bowled foodstuffs. Then, there was the Bell's announcement that it was going to open up its own line of higher-scale fast food eateries, whose MO sounds pretty much identical to Chipotle. And now, taking this rivalry to almost Bloods vs. Crips proportions, Taco Bell has fired what may very well be the fast food taco chain equivalent of the shelling of Fort Sumter: they've actually went and MASS MARKETED the competitor's off-the-menu urban legend!

The Quesarito, historically, has been known as a "secret" item that select Chipotle chains across the U.S. offered to customers who were in the know about furtive fast food offerings. Basically, a "quesarito" was a standard quesadilla, melted cheese and all, wrapped 360 degrees around a burrito. Sure, it sounds gross at first, but after a while, the inherent deliciousness of the concept strikes you. It may very well be the most ingenious way of making people fatter since the advent of the fried brownie, in my humblest of opinions.

I've tried ordering a quesarito a few times at various Chipotle stores, but always to no avail. With T-Bell riding high off their super-awesome breakfast menu blitzkrieg, I suppose they figured now was a good time to continue the offensive strategy, this time by defictionalizing their number one competitor's most mythical menu item!

Indeed, the items are EXACTLY what you'd expect them to be. They're semi-gourmet burritos -- topped off by your choice of meat -- blanketed by a thick, gooey tortilla wearing molten cheese like warpaint. I'm guessing the universe as a whole is split, 50-50, on whether or not that's the most salivating idea ever, or the absolute freaking grossest.

Currently, the Bell is offering three variations of the Quesarito. We'll take a look at the steak permutation first -- primarily, because that was the first one I opened up.

As you can see for yourself, we've got quite the medley of flavors going on here. There's cheddar cheese, some wild rice, some sour cream and a smidge of chipotle sauce, alongside the sinewy chunks of dead steer. Of the three variations, this was probably the least bold in terms of flavor; for fast food adventurers who don't like any surprises, this is probably your best bet heading into the Great Quesarito-Off of 2014.

Next up is the beef version. As expected, it was extremely greasy, even on the outside of the tortilla. Of the three, it definitely felt the lightest.

I'd have to say this was my least favorite of the trio. For one, it didn't feel as if there was anywhere near as much rice chunked into the 'rito,  and the overall cheese and sour cream quotient felt pretty low, too. Nobody will ever hail Taco Bell for having the best ground beef in the world, so however you feel about it in normal Bell offerings will probably swing your overall impression of this item.

The shredded chicken Quesarito was definitely the heaviest of the three permutations, and smelled the weirdest, too. It almost smelled like Texas Pete, but then again, I guess anytime you combine poultry with chipotle sauce, that shit's going to end up smelling like hot sauce, no matter what.

This one was probably my favorite, because there appeared to be way more sour cream and sauce tossed into the goulash. I've never been a big fan of chicken, but this one certainly outdid both the steak and beef versions. The nacho cheese also seemed to gel the best with this one: overall, I'd say this is probably the best way to experience the Quesarito...that is, until the Bell inevitably wheels out their special Doritos Locos Tacos Quesarito. With chunks of grounded up waffle taco in it.

All in all, I thought Taco Bell's stab at Quesaritoes wasn't half-bad. They probably won't become anybody's favorite menu item, and their longevity as an offering is definitely suspect, but as a quick meal, circa July 2014? These things will do you quite well, especially if you are already fat, really sweaty, and not just giving a damn about most things anymore. Which, I know, is pretty much everybody reading this right now.

The big question now, I reckon, is obvious: will Chipotle strike back by trotting out THEIR version of the much-requested old school Taco Bell enchirito this autumn?

Stay tuned, fast food Tex-Mex enthusiasts: things are starting to get very interesting around these parts...

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Krave S'mores Cereal Review!

Kellogg's long-awaited third entry in the "Krave" brand family has arrived...and it's, in a word, "freakin' delicious." 

Nearly two years ago, I reviewed Kellogg's (then) brand new double-shot of breakfast cereals: Krave Chocolate (which tasted like chocolate, despite having an exterior shell that looked like your standard Shredded Wheat chunks) and Krave Double Chocolate, which was both your traditional coal-block chocolate hue AND your standard hyper-sugary choco-offering. I enjoyed both, for the most part, and like everybody else in America, I have been impatiently waiting for Kellogg's to release a third member for the Krave IP family. While I was hoping for something extra ridiculous (a "Triple Chocolate" variation, perhaps?), the tertiary variation the company actually did trot out is something way more amazing than anything I could've dreamed up: ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Krave S'MORES.

Periodically, I will get comments and e-mails from folks asking me if the stuff I say on this blog is what I actually think, in real life. While I will continue to make you guess as to my true inclinations regarding everything else on this site, I want this to be unmistakable: Krave S'mores is one of the most delicious things I have ever put in my mouth, and I'm 100 percent sincere when I say it's already one of the greatest breakfast cereals of all time. This stuff isn't just an excellent addendum to the brand, it's an absolute masterpiece of cereal-engineering.

The back packaging of the box tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the target audience of the product. Whereas most cereals have puzzles and cut-out masks and mail-in information for novelty premiums that generally take half a year to arrive at your house, the Krave S'mores product art is something of a pastiche of your celebrity-obsessed rags -- clearly, not the kind of stuff most eight-year-olds would really be into. Even the CGI-like design of the anti-mascots (a chocolate bar that may or may not be Hershey's and a lightly toasted marshmallow) seem to reek of a certain adult sensibility -- and the inclusion of the founding Krave cereal bits as hyper-jealous paparazzi (why most co-branded cereals ALWAYS rely upon the intra-family rivalry gimmick, anyway?) is just the hypothetical icing atop the purely metaphorical cake here.

The cereal bits themselves aren't the most impressive specimens in the world -- they look just like your regular Krave chunks, after all -- but that's not necessarily a negative. I mean, why monkey around with an already proven formula for success? Furthermore, I have to give Kellogg's proper dap for the vacuum sealed plastic pouch the contents are shipped in. That stuff felt futuristic and sturdy as shit, folks.

As this cereal biopsy clearly shows, the guts of the new cereal consist of a gooey paste that, as the product name implies, would appear to be one part melted chocolate bar goo and one point silver streak of marshmallow paste. The internal gunk doesn't really have a distinct smell, per se, but the overall product definitely has an aroma altogether different than its fore-bearers.

More than anything, I would say the product exudes something of a vanilla aroma -- which, really, is a scent/flavor/texture that you would think a lot more cereal producers would want to imitate, but whatever. There's definitely a nice crunch to the cereal chunks (a harder feat for cereal engineers to accomplish than it appears), but ultimately, it's the taste and texture of the product that really puts this thing over the top. Imagine that...the FLAVOR of a cereal being its utmost selling point. 

Describing the overall taste of Krave S'mores is a bit difficult, because depending on how much marshmallow paste is in an individual chunk, the overall flavor of the cereal varies from almost peanut-butter-tasting (comparable to the Reese's cereal, I would say) to almost white chocolate-ish. I don't think I've ever eaten a cereal that had the same general taste as this one, and that is most certainly a positive. As difficult as it may be to explain how the food feels, this much, I can assure you: it tastes quite goddamn great.

Of course, with an ample serving of your favorite milk-like solute (I opted for off-brand soy myself), an already delicious product becomes even more incredible. I may be prone to hyperbole every now and then, but I can state -- with nary a sarcastic molecule in my body -- that Krave S'mores is one of the best cereals I have ever tasted. The greatness of the cereal is so hard to put into words, but then again, cereal is for eatin' and not deconstructin', I suppose.

So, just how good is this stuff, you may be asking? Well, I popped open a fresh box on a Saturday morning, and by late evening, the entire cardboard box was just a collection of beige dust. That's right, it was so darned tasty that I ate an entire package over the course of about six or eight hours. And I promise you, I wasn't high on anything at the time...

...well, except for the natural high that can only come about via eating large quantities of a delectable, new-wave breakfast cereal, anyway.

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CHRISTMAS CRUNCH!

It’s Cap’n Crunch the Way You’ve Never Seen Him Before (Even Though It Tastes JUST LIKE the Regular Cereal, But Still!)

Good lord, the troubles I had to go through for this cereal.

I saw "Christmas Crunch" last year, and thought about picking it up, but didn’t. I waited an entire year and saw a big cardboard container of it at a local grocery store a few days before Thanksgiving, and once again, I thought about renewing my inventory, but I didn’t. So, the next week, I went out in search of the Cap’n Crunch variation, and you know what I found? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, anywhere. I spent the better part of a month just combing through local retailers, and not a single damn one had the stuff on their shelves. Ultimately, I did end up finding a box at one grocer, but the box literally looked like it had been chewed through by a rat or something. I thought about picking it up anyway, but since I’m not really that big a fan of the Bubonic Plague, I had to reshelf the item at the last second.

And so, about a week before Christmas, I finally found a non-rodent-chewed box, and this time, I knew better. I snatched it up, I locked it in my trunk, and I kept that thing well-guarded like it was the Stanley Cup or something. If I had to wait until 2013 to taste this stuff, I thought to myself, then I’m not quite sure I have the internal motivation to press through such a long moratorium sans seasonal Crunch in my life.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of Cap’n Crunch variations out there. And also, it wasn’t until recently (as in, the past month) that I realized that the actual brand name was “Cap’n Crunch” and not “Captain Crunch,” as so many souls are often prone of calling it. And, uh, if you read my review of “Halloween Crunch” back in October, uh, yeah, let’s talk about Christmas Crunch, why don’t we?

I guess a good place to begin is the packaging. Not surprisingly, the box feature Cap’n Crunch decked out in a Santa suit - I guess because depicting him as Jesus Christ probably would have ruffled more than a few feathers.

The big hook with “Christmas Crunch” is that it really doesn’t have a hook to speak of. All in all, it’s just regular old Cap’n Crunch, only with a couple of red stars and green Christmas trees thrown into the mix. And they’re not even marshmallow addendums, either; we’re talking cereal bits that taste JUST like the main product, only shaped and colored differently.

As far as the rest of the packaging goes, it’s quite basic. You’ve got your nutritional info on one side and ads for the million billion other Cap’n Crunch permutations out there on the adjacent panel. The top and bottom flaps of the box say pretty much the same thing, which is, fundamentally, nothing at all.

The back of the box, however, is kinda’ the exception here. For one thing, it says that there are “five” differently shaped cereal bits inside every box, including some red snowmen and a Santa hat, but I didn’t see anything within my cereal that came close to resembling either. Maybe it was a last second excision, or perhaps cereal-crafting technology isn’t advanced enough to give us adequate Santa hat corn puffs yet?

The backflap also suggests that you go out and buy a gingerbread house, and use the cereal bits as, among other things, shingles and landscaping foliage. A cool idea, I guess, but I think I have a better one; how about instead of using “Christmas Crunch,” you open up one of those boxes of “Halloween Crunch” you’ve been hoarding since fall and make a HAUNTED gingerbread house instead?

And, onto the cereal itself. It’s quite festive and colorful, no doubt. I’ve never really thought of yellow as being a Christmas color, but it’s not too sore a sight on your peepers, either. And if you see anything in there that resembles a snowman or a Santa hat, please encircle it with a bright black marker and e-mail me the photographic evidence.

Yeah, there’s not too much to say about the cereal, as far as aesthetics go. For whatever reason, I keep getting a trail-mix vibe here; although, for the life of me, I’ve never had a bowl of trail mix with sugary pine trees in it before.

And there’s even LESS to say about the taste of the product. If you’ve ever had Cap’n Crunch before, well, this stuff tastes EXACTLY like what you’ve already eaten before. And unlike “Halloween Crunch,” you don’t even have the incentive of radioactive green milk to keep you glued to your cereal bowl. It ain’t bad, by any stretch, but the “special” attributes of the product, I am afraid, are limited to purely cosmetic differences.

The Herculean task of finding a box of this stuff was probably several million more calories than anyone should ever expend in quest of a breakfast item - I’m convinced that Ah-nold put in a lesser effort trying to find a “Turbo Man” doll in “Jingle All the Way” - but I can now say that I’ve tried TWO different Cap’n Crunch variations explicitly tied to two different holidays, when most of humanity can never say that they’ve tried just ONE. The final product wasn’t too exciting, but this gimmick opens up the door for untold possibilities in the future. Easter Crunch? St. Patrick’s Crunch? Independence Crunch?

Yes, please. Yes, so hard.

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