Tag: 2015

FOOD: Burger King – Surge

By Eggware.XYZ

Surge…

Want to impress someone who was born in the 90s? Tell them you have an unopened can of Surge at home. Surge was a somewhat popular citrus soda released from 1997 to 2003 in the United States. Intended to be a competitor to Mountain Dew, it never managed to find a solid market and was eventually discontinued. Dedicated Surge fans didn’t take this sitting down and immediately launched a dedicated campaign to have the drink returned to store shelves.

The campaign has paid off with small victories in the past (namely the introduction of Vault, which was also quickly removed from stores) but their ultimate goal was accomplished in 2015. Surge was released as an internet exclusive on Amazon, and eventually returned to store shelves. It’s since been available pretty consistently since then as a total 90s nostalgia cash-grab. We don’t know if you can still get it in cans or bottles right now, but it’s openly available at any Burger King with a Coke Freestyle machine.

Should they have bothered to bring it back? Let’s find out.

GAMING: Hylics

By Eggware.XYZ

Hylics is a JRPG-style game made by Mason Lindroth and released on August 29, 2015.

The concept of “hylics” is taken from Greek gnosticism, where it was the basest portion of what made up a living person: their physical body. This was the evil portion of a person, the part of them that demanded to eat, to have sex, to do anything that would keep a person away from perfect spiritual enlightenment. Hylics doesn’t portray itself as an evil game, but it is an intimately physical one where the entire world is molded out of malleable, changeable clay.

After the jump, we’ll sculpt our opinion out.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Steak and Potato Boss Wrap [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

What does it take be boss? It’s an aspiration that most all of us can relate to. We all want to be the boss of something, whether it be our own lives or the responsibilities of other people. Being the boss means a new level of responsibility and the benefits that come with it. Almost everything wants to be the boss – yes, friends, that even means Crunchwraps.

The Boss Wrap is the latest limited time offer from Taco Bell, a ‘fully-loaded’ Crunchwrap variant packed with a double serving of steak. It comes in two varieties: the “Fully Loaded Steak” comes with a double portion of steak, avocado ranch sauce, guacamole, sour cream, lettuce, a 3-cheese blend, and pico de gallo; the other version, “Steak and Potato”, comes with a double portion of steak, crispy potatoes, chipotle sauce, sour cream, bacon, and a 3-cheese blend.

After the jump, we’ll see if the Boss Wrap can pay the cost to be the boss.

FOOD: Popeyes – Wild Pepper Tenderloins [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

There are a lot of different kinds of pepper out there! What most think of first when they say “pepper” is black pepper, a member of the Piper family. For others, it would be Capsicum, the family that provides us with the intense chile peppers. And even outside of those two, there are lots of thing called “pepper” that aren’t pepper in the least, like pink pepper or allspice.

This month, Popeyes has decided to take that same wide ranging idea of what constitutes a pepper in their Wild Pepper Tenderloins, chicken tenderloins spiced with habanero, aji amarillo, and Sichuan peppercorns (spelled as Szechuan in the advertisements). Are these peppery tenderloins really that wild, or are they mild? Find out after the jump.

FOOD: Trader Joe’s – Ghost Pepper Chips [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

We here at Eggware.XYZ love spicy food. We are constantly on the hunt for the most spicy of snacks, no matter the country of origin. But there’s one pepper that’s come into vogue that’s continued to elude us. A pepper that was once the hottest in the world, and still takes home the bronze in heat today. The Bhut Jolokia. The ghost pepper.

Lots of restaurants and snack food providers have tried to obtain the ephemeral essence of the ghost pepper, and many have failed. Like a ghost, capturing the Bhut Jolokia is easier said than done, and it isn’t for the faint of heart to try.

But ghost-chasing is what October is all about, so when we stumbled upon this bag of Trader Joe’s Ghost Pepper Potato Chips, we knew we had may had found a worthy competitor laying claim to the title of The World’s Third Hottest Pepper. Trader Joe’s has always been good for us when it comes to cheap food and wine – will they hold up to the heat of the Bhut Jolokia itself? Hit the jump and find out.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Lava Sauce & Volcano Quesarito [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

Taco Bell, compared to most other nation-wide fast food restaurants, has an extremely dedicated following. Like most fast food places, Taco Bell’s menu is regularly changing, adding new items and removing old. This has led to a lot of contention among their fanbase, as cult favorites tend to be the first to get the ax. These include items such as the Beefy Crunch Burrito, the Bell Beefer, the Blackjack Taco – all cut down in (what their fans will claim was) their prime.

But there’s always been one menu item that’s had an especially loud clamor for its return. It wasn’t a taco, or a burrito, or even a real meal in itself – it was a sauce. The Lava Sauce, the foundation of the now-discontinued Volcano Menu, has been widely requested for a return to the proper menu ever since its discontinuation in 2013. It was essentially a spicy nacho cheese sauce, yes, but fans will claim that the spice made the difference. If you were to hear it from a Lava Sauce lover it could elevate virtually any Taco Bell food into a heavenly experience, a kind of claim that we only hear about Sriracha sauce nowadays. Although the Taco Bell fans cried loudly for their sauce back, Taco Bell stayed quiet… Until now.

Now, the legendary Lava Sauce is back and featured in the Volcano Quesarito, a standard Taco Bell Quesarito with Lava sauce in place of the regular cheese. We’ve never had the original Lava Sauce, but the idea of having such a monumental sauce for a limited time was too interesting to pass up. Will Lava Sauce live up to its volcanic hype or be a stone cold flop?

Find out after the jump.

FOOD: Taco Bell – Dare Devil Grillers [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

Taco Bell has been on a roll recently! We didn’t get a chance to review the Bacon Club Chalupa, but we thought it was very good and an excellent bargain in its $5 meal deal. Their latest offering is the Dare Devil Loaded Grillers, a set of three “loaded Grillers” with super-spicy sauce in three heat levels.

Each Griller is wrapped in a grilled burrito and includes Taco Bell’s seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese, and crunchy red tortilla strips. The primary draw is the Dare Devil sauces, however: Chipotle, Habanero, and Ghost Pepper (from least to most hot).

The sauces for the Grillers are all mayonnaise based, with the Habanero sauce also including sour cream. As the sauce for the Chipotle Griller was an already established sauce on their menu, we decided to only review the two new sauces.

After the jump we’ll take the dare and see if these Grillers are red hot or stone cold.

FOOD: Popeyes – Hushpuppy Butterfly Shrimp [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

Although Popeyes is a fast-food chain mainly noted for its famed chicken, seafood has always been a prominent sidekick on its menu. A Louisiana themed restaurant wouldn’t be complete without a fried seafood po’boy, after all, and shrimp is the quintessential Gulf of Mexico seafood.

And though shrimp plays its part in Popeyes’ menu, hushpuppies do not. To our recollection, hushpuppies have never been a part of Popeyes’s menu. Maybe this is because hushpuppies are more of a Deep South thing than a New Orleans thing? Who knows.

But what about both shrimp and hushpuppies combined? Could a combination of two classic Southern dishes be greater than the sum of their parts? Popeyes’s Hushpuppy Butterfly Shrimp (their limited time offering for July) attempted to fuse these two classics to create a Frankenstein-esque monster of deliciousness. Combined with a new Cajun Cocktail sauce, and we may have had a winner on our hands – we’ll find out after the jump.

FOOD: Arby’s – Jalapeño Hushpuppies [Discontinued]

By Eggware.XYZ

Arby’s is in a very confused place. With the price of beef being sky-high, Arby’s has been trying to develop a greater range of pork, poultry and fish offerings to balance out their menu. The addition of new fish sandwiches on their menu had necessitated the addition of a fish-focused pairing: hushpuppies.

Released in late December on the cusp of the new year, Arby’s Jalapeño Hushpuppies were an attempt to create a side dish specifically for Arby’s latest fish sandwich offerings.

After the jump, we’ll put these puppies on the show circuit and give them an official judgement… Or just see if they tasted good.

Taco Bell’s Grilled Stuft Nacho

By Eggware.XYZ

In December of 2013, Taco Bell came out with one of its most… innovative limited time product offers in a while: the Grilled Stuft Nacho. Promising to be all the goodness of a plate of nachos that could be held in one hand, it became a minor sensation fulfilling Taco Bell’s typical promise of cheap food that was easy to eat. It was discontinued rather quickly, before we could give it a try.

It was reintroduced for a brief period at the end of May, and we got our hands on it then – but did it live up to the expectation of a full-fledged nacho experience in the palm of your hand?