This is part two of a three-part series. Part one is available here.
After sampling terrible replicas of hot dogs and pizza made out of what were probably recycled car tires flavored with flat Code Red, we moved on to two treats supposedly of the marshmallow persuasion. Things did not improve.
Mallow Fries
Contrary to the packaging’s claims, these are neither fun nor fries, and I have serious doubts about their being American. Oh, wait. The packaging says “Made in China”, which means they’re also likely to contain lead. I’m also inclined to think that the “Fat Free” line is a lie, too. I mean, it’s marshmallows. “Fat free” doesn’t usually enter into things. “Free of human meat”, perhaps.
On opening the package, we discovered that the “fries” weren’t like ordinary marshmallows. They had the same kind of hard texture common to the marshmallows in Lucky Charms. Unfortunately, unlike Lucky Charms marshmallows (and really, why else would anyone eat that shit – not for the reshaped Alpha-Bits that make up the actual cereal), these didn’t dissolve instantly at the touch of saliva.
The only positive thing I can say is that the Mallow Fries are nowhere near as disgusting as their hamburger-shaped relative, the Mallow Burger. They have a sweet but stale taste that’s hard to describe.
The not-really-fries come with a packet of sour “Kandy Ketchup” (Note to marketing people: spelling things with a “k” does not automatically make it either cool or comical.) as a marketing gimmick. It’s a sticky red gel stuff that reminds me of expired sex lube. The sour not-really-strawberry flavor of the “ketchup” actually did a fair job offsetting the sugariness of the psuedo-fries.
The Maitre d’s perspective:
I should mention I generally hate marshmallow anything, and this was the same way. It was mostly tasteless, with just a hint of… some form of aftertaste. I don’t even want to hazard a description of it. The strawberry stuff made it by bearable by actually giving it a taste.
Mallow Burger
The Mallow so-called Burger, unlike the fake fries, was not stale-hard. Instead, it was spongy and slightly sticky, like month-old bundt cake. In fact, it was downright dense, like there were a million tons of marshmallow crammed into that tiny package.
Once again, the packaging extols its virtues: “Cholesterol Free!” “Sodium Free!” They make no mention of the sugar content, which is enough to put anyone without a mutant hyper-accelerated metabolism into a diabetic coma.
Despite its dense, spongy feel, the Mallow Burger tended to come apart easily. You have to give the makers credit for not simply molding the infernal foodstuff in a single piece, injecting colorings at the right stages. Instead, the two “buns”, the “cheese”, and the “meat” are separate pieces of mallow-junk. And to boot the meat-shaped marshmallow (I never though I would type that phrase, and it is one I hope to never type again) is made of a different stuff.
The pseudo-meat is firmer and less spongy than the others, with bits of gritty, sort of crunchy something-or-another that are either some kind of cookie crumbles or the residue of digested souls crapped by Bubba Ho-Tep. Even money on either of those. While the flavor of the other components was indistinct other than “too fucking sweet”, the center layer has a distinct hint of chocolate, specifically the same kind as those not-really-chocolate marshmallows in Count Chocula. And yes, I just referenced Bubba Ho-Tep and Count Chocula in the same paragraph. That either means I must be the biggest geek of all time, or I’m a fucking genius. Take your pick.
The Maitre d’ had this to say:
Again, I don’t know what “mallow” is but it shouldn’t be crunchy. Seriously, the “burger” tasted like a chocolate cookie. Chocolate and mallow are two flavors that should not be mixed.
It’s obvious from his comments that our esteemed Maitre d’ has never had chocolate-flavored Peeps (which are next to godliness) or rocky road ice cream. That said, the odd crunchy bits truly were disturbing and the flavor was so disgusting that I couldn’t even finish my fourth of the Mallow Burger. It ended up in the trash along with the rest of the leftovers from our little experiment.
Next Time: Gummy Cookies and More Gummy Pizza!
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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