Category: Grocery Grails

The ‘Dines List 4: Sketches of Spain

This is my fourth installment of The ‘Dines List, a series of rambling reviews that extol the virtues of sardines and other tinned seafood, which I eat quite often. The goal is to review new and interesting tinned fish and shellfish I discover in my travels (or friends send me as gifts), and also to win over the sardine-skeptical.  Sardines in particular are very healthy due to being pure protein and full of omega-3 fatty acids.  They are mostly environmentally friendly since they are tiny little fellers who are low on the food chain.  And they are surprisingly delicious — far tastier and less “fishy” than the uninitiated might think.

A few years back, sardines started going viral for being “hot girl food” (check that Vogue article if you don’t believe me!), which really raised their profile and made these humble little fish both trendy and sexy.  Well, I am neither hot, nor a girl, nor sexy, and rarely am I trendy, but I’ve been flying my fish flag since I was a poor college student decades ago.  Now I eat them because I like them, not because I have to.  I guess I’m just ahead of my time, like with the whole loving superheroes thing, ever since I was a little kid in the early ’80s, long before they were cultural icons.  Awww, I’ll never be a cultural icon.

(But good grief, there is already some backlash against the whole tinned fish trend, and I blame the criticism on the fact that women have embraced it.  Let people — and especially women — enjoy things!  Be curious, not judgmental!)

Anyway, back in 2021, I wrote my first riveting installment of The ‘Dines List, which I titled Canned Sardines 101, listing and reviewing some of my favorites and providing advice and recommendations for the ‘dine-curious.  Then I started getting geographical with The ‘Dines List 2: Mission to Morocco!, where I only reviewed Moroccan sardines, and The ‘Dines List 3: Postcards from Portugal, where I only covered Portuguese tinned seafood.  As you might guess, these countries along the Mediterranean Sea have huge fishing and canning industries, as well as a culture and tradition of dining on ‘dines.  I wrote about Portuguese sardines way back in March 2023, so it was only fitting that I’d get around to Spanish sardines and other tinned seafood eventually.  Spain and Portugal produce the most serious gourmet tins, and I’ve been trying as many different varieties as I could in the meantime.  So with all due respect to the legendary Miles Davis, welcome to The ‘Dines List 4: Sketches of Spain.

I found Vigo hot spiced sardines in sunflower oil at Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg, a place I always recommend and rave about.  As sardines and other tinned seafood have become more popular and trendy, Mazzaro’s has dramatically increased its tinned seafood selection with a lot of higher-end Spanish and Portuguese brands that you won’t find at everyday supermarkets.  These Vigo sardines are some of the cheaper ones at Mazzaro’s, for $2.99.  I’ve also seen them at Walmart, but just the big Supercenter near me, not the smaller Neighborhood Markets.  Does anyone else think of Vigo the Carpathian coming alive inside the painting in Ghostbusters 2, whenever they see this Spanish food brand?  No?  Just me?  It can’t just be me!

Once I drained most of the oil, these definitely weren’t as pretty, so maybe you get what you pay for.  I either ate these bad boys straight out of the tin or dumped them on top of a salad.  I recall them being perfectly okay, but I’ve had better — read on to see some of them!

I bought these La Española sardines in “oil – spiced & piquant” at Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery, an awe-inspiring Italian market and deli in Los Angeles’ beautiful Santa Monica neighborhood.  Bay Cities is a West L.A. icon that has been open since 1925.  I bought several sandwiches and a bunch of snacks there on a work trip in April 2025, including a few different La Española tins, since I’ve never seen this brand for sale anywhere in Florida.  That way I had food for my hotel room and for work lunches, since I never rent a car in Los Angeles.  At some point, I’ll get around to writing a Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery review, because it deserves one.

These were larger sardines — firm and meaty, not super-spicy, but just fine for eating out of the tin in a hotel room like the most depressing film noir antihero ever.  I don’t remember finding the pickle and carrot slices pictured on the outer box, but they may have been under the ‘dines.

These Jadran sardines with hot pepper are interesting, because they seem to be harvested from the Adriatic Sea (between the boot of Italy and Croatia), but the box specified they are a product of Spain — perhaps processed there.  I think I bought them at either the huge International Food Club out on L.B. McLeod Road off John Young Parkway (a super-fun place to browse and discover treasures) or at Tima’s House, the small Euro-Balkan market in Longwood.

They weren’t the prettiest sardines ever, but I have plenty of silvery beauties coming up:

I added them to a nice salad, so isn’t this a work of art?  Dig the jammy hard-boiled eggs and beautiful pickled onions I made myself.

I’m pretty sure I picked up these Serrats small sardines in olive oil when they were on sale at our friendly neighborhood Fresh Market, because I don’t like paying full price for the fancy Spanish and Portuguese sardine brands. 

These were attractive, silvery fish, packed tightly and beautifully in their tin.  (I had already drained the oil here.)  I think more people would like sardines if they all looked this nice and orderly, since people eat with their eyes.  But did they taste good?

I served them on some lightly toasted Cuban bread with more of my homemade pickled onions from a different batch and some sliced tomatoes.  As you can see, they fell apart a bit as I removed them from their tight tin, but these were very good.

Fresh Market is where I’ve bought the vast majority of my Matiz sardines as well.  I am nuts for lemon desserts, but not as big on lemon in savory dishes.  Still, I had to try these Matiz wild sardines with natural lemon essence.

Trust me, they looked a lot less blurry in real life.  I don’t recall them tasting super-lemony, which was fine with me, but they didn’t make a strong impact on my memory, which means they weren’t mind-blowingly amazing or mind-blowingly awful.  I probably wouldn’t buy this variety again as a result, but I never regret trying anything.

My next Matiz product was their wild spicy sardines with piri piri pepper in olive oil, also from Fresh Market:

My only experience with piri piri peppers so far had been in hot sauce from Nando’s, the South African grilled chicken chain I tried in Chicago and still need to write about.  If Nando’s opened locations in Orlando, it would be a license to print money, but you can buy Nando’s piri piri-based hot sauce  (they call it peri peri there) and “Perinaise” at Publix and Fresh Market.  Just one look at these ‘dines made me think they would have a nice, vinegary, tangy bite to them.   

I had these with some rice after draining most of the oil, and sprinkled them with some crispy fried jalapeños.  They were a great little lunch, and barely spicy at all on their own.  The little included pepper is usually like an empty sack of seeds and never terribly pleasant to eat, but do I try every time?  YUP!

I had an even better feeling about these Matiz wild small sardines with sweet piquillo peppers, because I always think smaller sardines taste better and have better textures than the larger ones, and piquillo peppers make everything better.

They looked nice and silvery in the tin after I drained most of the oil.

I don’t even remember what kind of dark, crusty bread I ate with these little ‘dines, but I spread some cream cheese underneath them.  They were excellent, and for a change, the little peppers were pleasant to eat.  I always appreciate a piquillo pepper, though.

I liked these so much that I tried another tin on a different nice salad:

A while back, an old friend mailed me these Donostia Foods sardines in spiced sauce, and I knew they would be awesome.  She runs The Back Yard restaurant and bar in Baltimore and started their imported gourmet tinned seafood program, which sounds like a big hit.

I knew that despite a nondescript box, these would be special sardines because they included olive oil, tomato, carrot, cucumber, red pepper, onion, “spices,” and salt.  They were some of the most delicious ‘dines I’ve ever had. 

Here they are on a cracker with a wee cornichon from the tin.  This was a well-balanced bite of food!

I am lucky to have true and dear friends in my life, and sometimes they even hook me up with tinned seafood.  I hope you all have people like this in your own lives.  My best foodie friend and his wonderful girlfriend surprised me with these Los Peperetes sardinillas (small sardines), which he had read raving reviews about.  She was already in Spain, and he sent her on a special mission to track these down for me.  Can you imagine going to that trouble for someone you haven’t even met yet?  They are awesome, and so were these Los Peperetes.

Look at how beautifully packed these tiny sardinillas are!  Los Peperetes did an artful job.
Even the tiny tails were lightly crispy.  Yes, you can eat the tails, and you won’t choke or anything.  I like them.

I had to include this photo to show that there was a whole second layer of tightly packed fish below the top layer.  It was the gift that keeps on giving!  These were really something special.  I ate them plain at first, to get the full effect without any other distracting flavors, but I still have one more tin that I’m saving for a special occasion (or maybe a nice treat if we lose power during hurricane season).  You can’t ask for better quality sardines than these, or better quality friends than mine!   

The same dude surprised me a different time with this assortment of imported Spanish tinned seafood from Conservas de Cambados, which blew my mind.  This freakin’ guy!  What a mensch!  I had never heard of this brand before or seen them for sale locally, but I recently saw them for the first time “in the wild” at the aforementioned Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg.  I was absolutely blown away by his generosity and excited to dig into each of these.

There was only one tin of sardines in the box, but I knew they would be great because they were small.  Luckily for us, the label tells us the tin contains fish (sardines, in fact)!

This was up there with the Serrats and the Los Peperetes for gorgeous presentation.  I definitely think more people would eat sardines if more tins looked like this:

Here they are on some toasted Cuban bread… or maybe this was a Cusano’s hoagie roll, which I make a special trip to Gordon Food Service to buy.  There were a bunch of these little guys!  I might have added some lettuce, tomato, onion, and a splash of vinaigrette after the photo op, but I wanted to photograph them in an unadulterated manner first.

Wait a minute, ye scurvy scalawag!  This next thing isn’t a sardine!  I know, I know — it is line-caught Spanish white tuna belly, also from the Conservas de Cambados assortment.  I love tuna in all its forms: raw in sushi or poke, seared as a posh appetizer or entree, or even the cheap canned stuff in a tuna salad sandwich or tuna melt.  I hardly ever eat canned tuna because of the mercury, and because the smell of regular canned tuna makes my wife gag in a way that sardines (luckily for both of us) do not.  But this was a rare and decadent treat, and this was the best place to include it. 

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it looked a hell of a lot more appetizing than the cheap “chunk light” tuna in natural spring water that I grew up eating, and packing the fish in oil rather than water makes it smell a lot less offensively fishy.   

After draining the oil, I enjoyed it on some toasted Cuban bread with a light slathering of Duke’s mayo underneath.  I make really good tuna salad (and chicken salad, and egg salad), but this was such a luxurious product, I didn’t want to dilute the flavor with any other distractions.  As you might guess, it was a cut above any canned tuna I’ve ever had in my life.  It just tasted rich — not necessarily fatty, but not “fishy” and definitely not dry.

The Conservas de Cambados gift box also included a tin of line-caught Spanish white tuna in olive oil, which I forgot to photograph, but it was also really good, I assure you.  And the other tins in the photo above were scallops and two different types of octopus, which I will tell you about later.

As long as we’re talking about delicious Spanish tuna, this is my most recent discovery from Bravo Supermarket, the Latin grocery store chain with multiple locations here in the Orlando area: Conchita Fritada de Atun, or Zesty Tuna Fish Dip.  It was essentially a tuna paté blended smoothly with tomatoes, pimento, onions, pickles, “spices,” rice flour, and sunflower oil.  It might look like cat food, but it tasted luxurious and was absolute heaven to eat, meow meow.  I dipped some toasted pita bread wedges in it, and I loved every moment.  It was cheap, too — had to be $2.99 or at most, $3.99.  It would be easy enough to make something similar, but this was better than it had any right to be.

Finally, these aren’t sardines either, but huevas de merluza, or hake roe (hake being a whole different kind of fish).  I had never heard of this Spanish company Agromar, or even hake, but it turns out they are medium-to-large fish related to cod and haddock, so nothing like the little dudes I’ve been specializing in writing about so far.  But I do love fish eggs, whether they are masago (orange capelin roe), tobiko (orangey-red flying fish roe), or ikura (that much larger salmon roe that pops in your mouth like popping boba) in sushi, or caviar, that ultra-decadent delight.  And these were spicy too, so how could I not try it? By the way, I bought this at the best place to buy fancy tinned seafood in Orlando, Hinckley’s Fancy Meats in the East End Market food hall.  I reviewed Matt Hinckley’s wonderful sandwiches a few years back, and he is definitely a master of smoking and curing meats, making patés and rillettes, and so much more.  But since then, he has branched out into curating and selling some very high-end, fancy tinned fish and shellfish from Spain and Portugal, so check out his staggering selection and order some.  Yes, he ships!

These definitely didn’t look anything like what I would have expected, though.  Not tiny round eggs, and not anything like bottarga, that intensely flavored, decadent, Italian salt-cured roe sac from a grey mullet, either.  The box refers to them as “medallones” (medallions), and I guess they look like that… or sliced Vienna sausages.  At first, I didn’t know what to think, but I will try anything once!

These hake roe medallions are some serious gourmet shit, and what do I do?  Serve them (just to myself, because my wife would have wanted nothing to do with this) on Ritz crackers, which are the best and most versatile crackers.  I’ll dip Ritz crackers into smoked whitefish salad or chopped liver, spread them with cream cheese and guava paste, or crush them and bake them into the best buttery-salty-sweet pie crust ever.  Or I’ll put hake roe on ’em! Were they tasty?  Sure.  They weren’t spicy at all, not salty, or even “fishy,” but they were pleasant.  Can I describe the texture?  No, not really.  It really wasn’t like anything else I’ve ever eaten.  Am I glad I tried them?  You better believe it!  Would I get them again?  Probably not, only because there is a wide world of seafood out there, and I’d love to try some different impulse buys from the vast selection at Hinckley’s Fancy Meats before doubling back.  But if you’re buying the next round, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I will happily enjoy some future huevas de merluza tapas with you!

That’s all for now, but I have a huge stash of more sardines and other tinned seafood to review, from Spain and other seas and ports around the world.  In the meantime, whether you read this piece while sardines are still in style or discover it long after the tinned trend has come and gone, you can always rely on The ‘Dines List for detailed descriptions and unbiased reviews of humble (and occasionally not so humble) tinned fish.  And coming soon, we’ll venture into the wild waters and delicious depths of tinned shellfish, so get ready to see me flexing my mussels.

Cutting the Mustard IV: Mustard on the Beat

Well, it’s Memorial Day weekend, 2025 — a time for many people to get a three-day weekend and get together with family and friends for cookouts.  That usually means hamburgers and hot dogs, so that usually means mustard.  And because I am obsessed with mustard, that means it is time for my fourth Cutting the Mustard feature, where I spend the better part of a year hunting, discovering, sampling, and reviewing massive multitudes of mustard.  These take me a while to write because our fridge is only so big, and I can’t have too many open bottles and jars taking up space at the same time, so I try to finish jars before opening new ones.

For my first-ever Cutting the Mustard back in 2021, I reviewed seven different mustards.  In 2022, I raised the stakes by reviewing ten different mustards in Cutting the Mustard II: The Quest for More Mustard.  In 2024, I went above and beyond by reviewing 26 mustards (making up for skipping 2023) in Cutting the Mustard III: Mustardy Agreement.  And now I’m back again, with more of that yellow condiment you may tolerate, but I love!

Since I’m trying to eat somewhat healthier, with fewer carbs, I tried a lot of these mustards with Kirkland oven-browned turkey breast, which I buy at Costco.  It is a boneless, skinless, fully cooked, unsliced turkey breast that is relatively cheap, lean protein.  Best of all, it is a blank slate for any kinds of recipes or sandwiches, and it goes with almost any condiments or other accompaniments.  Kirkland oven-browned turkey breast is like the vanilla of meats, and I am not saying that as a diss to the turkey or to vanilla.  Everyone knows that really good vanilla is delicious, but what I mean is that almost any other flavor goes well with it.  So I guess I’m saying that turkey breast is like the capybara of meats, because it gets along well with everything the way capybaras get along with all the other animals.

Way back in Cutting the Mustard II, I reviewed Zakuson Russian Standard mustard, a real sinus-burner.  I got the Zakuson Canadian mustard on the left at the same store, the Eastern European grocery store Green Hills Supermarket in Altamonte Springs.  Instead of having that nasal burn like Chinese mustard, this one was toned down with a sweet maple flavor.  I usually find sweet mustards to be too sweet, but this one was mostly just sticky and bland.  I wouldn’t get it again. 
I think I found the Simply Supreme Craft Beer mustard at Clemons Produce, arguably Orlando’s best produce market, and my personal favorite.  In addition to the freshest fruits and vegetables from Florida and beyond, Clemons always stocks a huge selection of Amish products and other interesting condiments, sauces, sodas, and snacks, plus they have an Amish deli that slices Troyer brand meats and cheeses.  This Simply Supreme Craft Beer mustard is a Woeber’s product; I’ve reviewed their Sweet & Spicy and and Hot & Spicy Sandwich Pal mustards before, and both were better.  This one lacked the “zing” I always appreciate in mustards, so I could see it going better with bratwurst and other German-style sausages that have stronger flavors of their own.

I know I found the Duke’s spicy ground mustard at Winn-Dixie, and it was really good.  I would happily get it again and use it anytime I might employ a spicy brown or deli-style mustard.  I am a Duke’s mayonnaise loyalist, and I am happy to report this mustard was on par with the excellent quality of their mayo.

On a rare day I found myself with time to kill in Winter Park, I found a parking space along busy, bougie Park Avenue and went into the busy, bougie Ancient Olive, a store that specializes in different flavors of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  If you love to cook and especially if you make a lot of salads at home, this is a wonderful place to browse, especially since you can sample any of the flavored oils and vinegars before you buy them.  I love vinegars almost as much as I love mustard, and I have a little collection of them, but that’s not what you’re here for.  I decided to try two fancy mustards from unfamiliar but posh-looking brands.

This is Fischer & Wieser mesquite horseradish mustard, which was as delicious as it sounds.   The mesquite smoke flavor sets it apart from other horseradishy, deli-style mustards, and I loved it.  Here are two tiny turkey sandwiches on leftover pão de queijo, Brazilian cheese buns, with more of that turkey, a bit of cheese, tomato, and I probably put some hot pickled cherry peppers on those, since I bought a gallon jar and have been putting them on everything lately.  But if you’ve ever had pão de queijo before, you know they are really little, so these aren’t big sandwiches by any means.   

Here’s a close-up of the jar.  This would be terrific on turkey (obviously), roast beef, ham (especially a sweeter ham), you name it.

This is Edmond Fallot honey & smoked paprika mustard, another impulse buy from The Ancient Olive.  It is a French brand I’ve never heard of, but it looked interesting, and I’m a sucker for anything smoky, as I just demonstrated.  Lately I’ve been making nice pita bread sandwiches with the same turkey, and I tried the honey & smoked paprika mustard alongside turkey, feta cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, pickled onions, hot pickled cherry peppers, and I think some bleu cheese dressing, which I always get to have for myself when I bring home wings for my wife.

This isn’t a bad condiment, but it is very salty, even by mustard standards.   The smokiness is subtle because I think paprika is always a subtle spice, and I didn’t detect any honey flavor or general sweetness.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t taste anything like mustard either!

This small jar is still open in my fridge, with a lot left to go.  I bought some giant pork loins at Aldi recently, for even cheaper, lean, versatile protein to mess around with, and I intend to experiment more and figure out the best things to do with it.  I think it might go better with pork than it did with turkey and all those fresh-tasting accompaniments.

When I reviewed my favorite place in Florida, Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg, last summer, of course I picked up a few unfamiliar mustards while I was there.  I had never seen or heard of the MadeWith brand, but I bought their Organic Stoneground and Organic Horseradish mustards, but forgot to take any pictures of the Horseradish one while I was working my way through the bottle.  They were very similar, with a thick and almost creamy texture, but the stoneground was a little blander and the horseradish had more flavor without being overpowering or burning my sinuses.  MadeWith makes a big deal about their products not containing any GMOs, in case anyone is really into that.   
Yes, this was a turkey sandwich on a savory homemade waffle.  It was okay, but the waffle got too soft and soggy too quickly and lost its crispness.  And that Sir Kensington’s chipotle mayonnaise is awesome on anything and everything.  Despite my Duke’s love, I snatched up a few of these bottles when Publix put them on clearance earlier this year.  I’ve enjoyed two of Sir Kensington’s mustards in the past as well.

I also found this Pilsudski Polish style mustard at Mazzaro’s.  It was thicker and spicier than your typical Gulden’s-style spicy brown mustard, without being as bright as something like Ba-Tampte.  It was very good on the best pastrami sandwich in Florida, from The Pastrami Project food truck.  Chef-owner George Markward saved our Christmas AND Hanukah by being open on Christmas Day, so I brought home pastrami and brisket sandwiches for us, and the Pilsudski mustard was a good choice to accompany the best pastrami from a place not named Katz’s or Langer’s.

Last year, Beaverton Foods, the Oregon-based company that produces Beaver and Inglehoffer mustards, offered a sale with free shipping, so I ordered six mustards from them.  

Every so often, I will treat myself to a whole ham at Aldi, usually when they discount them after a ham-centric holiday like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  I always joke about my “half-price Hanukah hams,” and how that makes me a good Jew and a bad Jew at the same time.  Anyway, I rubbed my most recent ham  with a blend of Beaver deli mustard and a pineapple-Scotch bonnet pepper Jamaican hot sauce from a company called Spur Tree, and then I made sure to use a lot more of the deli mustard on the ham sandwiches that followed.  It was a very tasty deli mustard,  but again lacking the brightness of Ba-Tampte, Boar’s Head, and Kosciusko, three of my all-time favorites. 
I should note that the Inglehoffer deli mustard in the round bottle tasted almost identical.  I wondered if Beaverton Foods just repackaged the same mustard for their two different brands, and upon checking the website (now that my bottles are long gone), they are similar, with a few minor differences.  I noticed they both contain sugar and soybean and/or canola oils, which was disappointing, especially since most mustards don’t contain (or need) any oil or sugar at all, and the Beaver deli mustard contains corn syrup too!  I’ve never been big on reading ingredient labels, which probably explains a lot about me, but I need to become more diligent.

Here’s that Beaver deli mustard again, for a taste test with one of those Deutsche Kuche soft pretzel sticks (I pronounce it “Douche cooch”) from Aldi.  The mustard in the middle is Bertman Original Ball Park Mustard, which I believe I found at Cavallari Gourmet, an upscale grocery store in Oviedo.  It’s a great store, but I can’t say the same about the mustard.  It didn’t have any zing or zip, and it was quite bland and uninspired.  I’m never sorry I tried anything, but I definitely wouldn’t buy it again.  Sorry, Cleveland — you might rock, but your Bertman mustard doesn’t.

On the other hand, the Beaver Coney Island mustard in the above and below photos, did indeed rock.  I loved this one.  The Coney Island mustard contains cucumbers, red bell peppers, red and green chili peppers, pimento, paprika, onion,  garlic, and tomato paste, and it had a lot of rich flavor, especially on the hot dog below.  Disappointingly, it also contained soybean oil, wheat flour, sugar, and corn syrup.  Seriously, Beaver?  Did you really have to go there?
When I think of Coney Island, I definitely think of hot dogs (specifically Nathan’s) and The Warriors, the great 1979 film and recent musical concept album.  But “Coney dogs” are a very specific style of hot dog that are not local to Coney Island in Brooklyn; they are from Detroit diners founded by Greek immigrants, and they are smoky dogs topped with a smooth chili sauce, raw onion, and yellow mustard, somewhat similar to the chili-topped hot dogs from Cincinnati chili parlors like Skyline Chili.  Here in Orlando, SoDough Square Pizza serves an authentic Detroit coney dog that I loved, but they just use regular yellow mustard.  I figured Beaver was trying to approximate the Midwestern chili flavors of Coney dogs rather than anything associated with Nathan’s or the historic Coney Island amusement park.

The Inglehoffer spicy brown mustard was pretty standard.  Here it is on the free Chorizo Sunrise breakfast sandwich I get from Einstein Bros. Bagels every year on my birthday: an over-hard egg, a chorizo sausage patty, cheddar cheese, smashed avocado, and jalapeño salsa cream cheese on a green chile bagel.  While I try my best to avoid chains and I have high standards for bagels, I admit I really like this breakfast sandwich and the green chile bagels from Einstein Bros.  They are much more like rolls than bagels, but I enjoy them a lot just the same.  And I always like mustard on my eggs and breakfast sandwiches, so this was a good combination.

Because we were both wondering, the Inglehoffer spicy brown mustard doesn’t contain any oil, the way the deli mustard does.

The Beaver hickory bacon mustard, which I had on this turkey sandwich on a depressing whole wheat roll, was tasty, creamy, and smoky, and it contains actual bacon, so watch out, kosher and halal folks.  But I would have been disappointed if I bought a hickory bacon mustard that didn’t contain bacon.  Unfortunately, it also contains sugar, honey, and high fructose corn syrup!  Like I said, I’m always happy to try anything new, but knowing how Beaverton Foods adulterates its mustards with oils and sweeteners, I wouldn’t get them again.  This is why I write reviews, folks, and why I hope people read them.  According to my monthly analytics, the jury is still out on that one.

I found this photo of my mustard collection from many years ago, long before I even started writing this blog.  You may remember most of these mustards from previous Cutting the Mustard reviews, but you can see I also tried the Beaver spicy hot stone ground and extra hot jalapeño mustards in the past (see them on the right, the two bottles of orangey mustard with red caps).   I bought them at Mr. Dunderbak’s, the good and fun German restaurant in Tampa, after trying them with my food.  It has been a few years since I’ve tried either of those flavors, but they were delicious and very hot — hotter than most other mustards I’ve had. 
The spicy hot stone ground mustard seems to be discontinued, but the extra hot jalapeño mustard does contain soybean oil.  Take several seats, Beaverton Foods!

But this is the spiciest thing I am reviewing here today: Matouk’s Calypso hot sauce, a mustard and Scotch bonnet pepper-based hot sauce from the Caribbean island of Trinidad & Tobago.  I loooove Trinidadian food (and if you like Jamaican food, you will too), but this sauce was a lot for me.  I put some on this simple chicken sandwich on a soft roll with tomato and probably a little onion, knowing me, and it was the most dominant flavor by far.  I love spicy food, but I needed to eat a bit of yogurt or drink some milk every time I used the Matouk’s Calypso sauce.  It made my tongue and lips tingle and burn that much, but despite all that, it is tasty.

It has been far too long since I’ve had a Jamaican patty, but this mustardy hot sauce would be great with them.

So after a whole year of anticipation (by absolutely nobody), this was the latest crop of new mustards I have found, sampled, and earnestly evaluated.  Somehow, it feels like a bit of a letdown after previous years, if I do say so myself.  But fear not, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos — I already have a dozen new mustards waiting in the wings to try, after a fruitful trip to South Florida earlier this year.  I went down to visit my family and attend a concert with my best friend, where we happened to eat one of the best restaurant meals of my entire life.  But I also stopped at an Italian gourmet market and two kosher grocery stores and stocked up on plenty of new and exciting mustards for the 2025-2026 year, so stay tuned, true believers!

Cutting the Mustard III: Mustardy Agreement

Here we are again on Memorial Day weekend, a time to honor heroic fallen soldiers, when people often gather to have cookouts with loved ones over the long holiday weekend.  For Memorial Day in 2021 and 2022, I dropped my first two Cutting the Mustard features, when I reviewed a whole bunch of different mustards just in time for a lot of Americans to gorge on hot dogs and burgers, hopefully to give my dozens of readers some ideas to reach beyond the plain yellow stuff.

For my first Cutting the Mustard, I reviewed seven different mustards, and for my second mustardy mega-review, Cutting the Mustard II: The Quest for More Mustard, I reviewed ten mustards.  I didn’t get around to writing one of these last year, but I’ve tried a lot of mustards over the past two years, so now I’m reviewing and recommending more mustards than anyone ever thought possible… not that anyone has ever given these a thought anyway.

I always challenge myself to try each mustard with multiple applications — on sandwiches, burgers, and dogs, in dressings and marinades, and as a dip for fries, Gabila’s potato knishes, and Deutsche Kuche (pronounced “douche cooch”) soft pretzels from Aldi.  Certain mustards excel for certain uses, and it is rare to find a perfect all-purpose mustard.  But just like with root beers, chili, pasta salads, onion rings, pimento cheese, Italian subs, and tinned sardines (which I review in my ‘Dines List features), each brand, flavor, and style of mustard is a little different, and I find them all worth sampling and reviewing.

Here are just a few of the contenders, so let’s see which of these tangy condiments reach or surpass the desired standard or performance, or in other words, which ones cut the mustard! 

I found Bookbinder’s stone ground dijon mustard at Publix quite a while ago, although I haven’t seen it there in quite a while.  I admit to not being the biggest dijon fan in the world, but this was a lot more mellow and less spicy than the industry standard (especially in the hip hop community), Grey Poupon.  The main thing I do with dijon mustard is rub it on lamb chops before roasting them in the oven until they turn rare.  Bookbinder’s worked fine for this purpose.   

Publix seems to have stopped carrying the Mister Mustard brand too, but I picked up a jar of the hot kind while I could.  It definitely brought the heat.  Here I used it with a takeout Waffle House All-Star Special with eggs over hard, sausage, hash browns covered with melted American cheese, and white toast.  I love mustard on eggs, and I’m always willing to risk bringing home breakfast so I can apply mustards from my own collection. 

I have already proven my deep, undying, unironic love for Waffle House, so here’s another All-Star takeout breakfast (hopefully from a photo taken months apart), this time with Zatarain’s Creole mustard spread on the toast.  This was a terrific mustard, also found at Publix.  It was a lot like a typical spicy brown deli-style mustard (which is typically my favorite kind of mustard), with maybe a bit more “zing.” 

I make pretty epic breakfast sandwiches at home, and here is Braswell’s chipotle mustard on one of them.  I treat my breakfast sandwiches like grilled cheese sandwiches — I spread Duke’s mayo on the outside of the bread and then grill them in a hot pan, but I actually add an entire HEAD of chopped garlic directly to the mayo jar, so it always has garlicky flavor and a bit of texture too.  This particular sandwich looks like it had eggs, American cheese, sautéed onions, sliced tomato, and some of the tangy, smoky chipotle mustard, which I liked a lot.  It had a little bit of heat, but not a lot.  I love spicy food that has flavor, but I don’t like overpowering, sadistic heat that overwhelms and destroys other flavors.  This was a nice one, and I think I got it when it was on sale at Publix.

I tried these three mustards together for a taste test with one of the aforementioned Gabila’s knishes, which you can buy frozen at Publix and Winn-Dixie stores.  While some delis and bagel shops serve fresh-baked potato knishes, I like the onion-heavy, fried style from Gabila’s that some restaurants proudly serve for their consistency, taste, and unique shape.  The Publix Deli-Style mustard with horseradish is a real winner — a standard deli mustard that is cheap, but never disappoints.  Great on almost any kind of sandwich, hot dogs, and knishes, you just can’t go wrong.  I even like it more than Gulden’s spicy brown mustard!I picked up the Cracovia extra hot mustard at International Food Club, a sprawling, warehouse-like market that features a staggering selection of foods from all over the world, with a special focus on Europe and the Middle East.  It’s a fun and fascinating place to shop, and I always come home with a few new impulse buys.  Cracovia, a Polish brand, is one of the hotter mustards I’ve sampled, but I like it more than some of the others (like the hot Mister Mustard, for example).  I like it paired with ham, where the heat balances out the sweetness inherent in the cured meat.  It is like a slightly thicker yellow mustard with tiny flecks of green and red, but it lacks the overwhelming brightness so many everyday yellow mustards feature.

Finally, the Braswell’s Vidalia onion mustard sounded good, but I found it a bit too sweet and also kind of watery.  You can tell there was a lot of real, finely grated sweet onion in the mix, which I appreciate, and I love onions.  In fact, I buy sweet onions for almost all my cooking, even when recipes call for white, yellow, or red instead.  But this mustard lacked any savory bite and was just disappointingly sweet.

In my first Cutting the Mustard feature, I reviewed Sir Kensington’s Dijon mustard.  Since then, I really got into Sir Kensington’s spicy brown, which I like a lot more than the Dijon.  It has a mellow sweetness from maple syrup and cane sugar, but isn’t cloyingly sweet like a lot of other mustards I’ve tried here.

I swiped some onto a corned beef sandwich I made on what looks like a green chile bagel from Einstein Bros. Bagels.  It isn’t the best bagel shop and certainly not the most authentic, but I really love the green chile bagels just the same.  They are more like rolls than bagels.  With all the rich, salty ingredients, the slight sweetness of the maple-infused spicy brown Sir Kensington’s really brightened up this decadent sandwich. 

There is a time and a place for sweet mustards that incorporate honey or maple syrup, and honey mustard can be a wonderful salad dressing.  (The house salad with honey mustard is one of the only things I like at Outback Steakhouse, along with the Bloomin’ Onion and brown bread.)  But too many mustard companies take the sweetness way too far.

My best friend sent me a dazzling, delightful birthday present — a sampler of six Wisconsin-made mustards from the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin (a real place).  Most of them were awesome, but the thick, syrupy Bucky Badger honey mustard pretzel dip on the left was just too sweet for me, even spread on a soft pretzel.  But funny thing about this one — my wife, who does not share my mustard obsession, loves this one!  Maybe because it tastes like a dessert.

The Wisconsin gift set from the National Mustard Museum also included a Sprecher root beer mustard that was sweet, but not too sweet, with the delicious herbal flavors I love so much in root beer.  Unlike the Bucky Badger honey mustard dip, it was terrific on this pretzel.  However, I liked the root beer mustard best on roast beef sandwiches, and when I treat myself to roast beef, I get the Dietz & Watson London broil top round roast beef from the Winn-Dixie deli.  It is always really rare, with terrific seasoning.  I never roast my own beef, but maybe I should, so I can put more mustard on it.

I opened a bottle of Hickory Farms honey pineapple mustard to go with this roast beef sandwich, but it was also way too sweet, and yet it didn’t taste like pineapple at all.  However, the biggest surprise was that a Hickory Farms store still existed in 2022, even though it was seasonal like Spirit Halloween!

Terrapin Ridge Farms is a company based in Clearwater, Florida, that makes fancy, high-end condiments, sauces, dressings, dips, and preserves.  I tried their dill pickle mustard in my first Cutting the Mustard feature and thought it was just okay.  This time I tried their smokey maple bacon mustard and thought it was way too sweet and not smokey or bacony enough.  I waited patiently for these to go on sale before trying it, but I wouldn’t get it again.

I also tried Terrapin Ridge Farms’ Nashville hot spice mustard on some toasted pita bread and a fried pita chip here.  It was spicy, but didn’t really taste like mustard at all!  I experimented with it more on chicken, since I do love Nashville-style hot chicken, and it was just okay, but not great.  We are lucky to have a pair of amazing Nashville-inspired hot chicken restaurants in Orlando: Chicken Fire and JAM Hot Chicken.  I love them both and crave them often.  I’ve even attempted to make my own Nashville hot chicken at home, but it was labor-intensive and made a mess.  That’s something I leave to the professionals now, and I would also leave the Terrapin Ridge mustards on the shelf from now on.

Here are three more mustards that I tried with Aldi pretzel sticks.  The champagne mustard came from a HoneyBaked Ham store, where I love their spiral-sliced ham and smoked turkey breast.  They sell some pricey condiments, so I gambled on this one, but unfortunately lost.  It was kind of a creamy mustard and very dill-heavy, so I could never get into it.  It probably would have been great with salmon, but as much as I love salmon both raw and cured, I never cook it or order it cooked.  Anyway, I don’t even see the champagne mustard listed on the website anymore, so maybe it never caught on. The other two mustards came in the Wisconsin gift set from the National Mustard Museum.  The one in the middle was a sweet mustard, but one I actually liked: East Shore slow-cooked cranberry mustard, also made in Wisconsin.  While it was sweet (and extremely sticky and thick), I appreciated how the tartness of the cranberries gave it an extra dimension and kept it from being cloying like the previous sweet mustards that were too sweet.

Finally, Ringhand’s beer mustard, in the squeeze bottle, was my favorite from the National Mustard Museum gift set.  Made with brown beer, this creation of Wisconsin Democratic state senator Janis Ringhand was excellent on everything, from pretzels and knishes to ham, roast beef, and turkey sandwiches, hot dogs, burgers, and more.  It was salty, a little spicy, a little tart, and one of those rare mustards with endless uses.  I loved it, especially on some good dogs.

I found this Tracklements hot horseradish mustard in a little jar at Sprouts supermarket.  A little goes a long way, and it was great for clearing my sinuses, yet still not as nose-runningly, eye-tearingly hot as typical Chinese mustard or Colman’s mustard prepared from the powder.  It also went very well with ham.

I wish I could remember which takeout establishment included a packet of Woeber’s spicy brown mustard, but it was a pleasant surprise.  Sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos may remember I included two other Woeber’s mustards in Cutting the Mustard II: the hot & spicy and sweet & spicy varieties.  This one was more versatile and probably more of a crowd-pleaser than either of those — different enough from Gulden’s and the Publix brand that a mustard maven would want to try it on a deli sandwich or a dog.  I see Woeber’s products for sale in Orlando at Gordon Food Service (GFS) on East Colonial Drive and Clemons Produce on Curry Ford Road. 

Just like Waffle House, I have made no secret of my ridiculous love for White Castle, and I consider that review one of the best ones I’ve ever written.  On that first-ever trip to Orlando’s White Castle, I didn’t get to try their Dusseldorf mustard, but I made sure to request some packets on a more recent return trip, where I came home with another Crave Case of cheese sliders.  I had been unfamiliar with Dusseldorf mustard, but I’d have to describe it as “spicy brown mustard without a hint of anything spicy.”  It was fine, but without the zippy spice of Gulden’s or the bright tang of a standard yellow mustard, it didn’t stand out to me as anything special.  That slider sure tasted good, though!

Not one to give up easily, I bought a bottle of this Carnegie Deli branded Dusseldorf mustard at the Brooklyn Water Bagel Company, a chain bagel shop that I rarely go to, even though it isn’t bad.  They sell Carnegie Deli pastrami, which I haven’t tried there, even though my family and I went to the legendary Carnegie Deli on our one and only family trip to New York City back in the summer of 1991 (along with the Stage Deli, Lindy’s, and Grabstein’s in Brooklyn — all gone, but not forgotten).  Several Internet altacockers have told me that now, Carnegie Deli is just one more brand name, but the products aren’t anything like they were in the real deli during its glory decades.  It’s safe to say this Dusseldorf mustard was okay, but again, it lacked the zippiness of Ba-Tampte, Boar’s Head, or even Publix’s deli mustard.  In fact, “it’s safe” is the safest thing I can say about it.   Once again, the White Castle sliders slapped, with or without mustard.

I found Gold’s deli mustard for the first time ever at Doris Italian Market, a small chain of five awesome Italian grocery stores in South Florida, on a trip down in 2022.  It was similar to Ba-Tampte — a decent all-purpose deli mustard, more yellow than brown in color — but not as good as Ba-Tampte.  Few mustards are.  But it brightened up these kraut-covered hot dogs on grilled buns, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

I also found this Sabrett brand spicy brown mustard on the same trip to Doris Italian Market.  You can buy Sabrett brand hot dogs at every Publix in the state, but I had never seen the mustard before, and I had to try it.  It was kind of like they mixed Gulden’s (the industry standard spicy brown) with a yellow mustard, and somehow toned down the spice during the processing.  You can even see from the bottle that it is more yellow than brown, and you don’t even see the granulated mustard seeds in it.   It was fine on a slider and on some hot dogs, but I was surprised Sabrett’s mustard didn’t excite or excel as well as the brand’s beloved dogs.  I preferred Gold’s to the Sabrett.

Speaking of national hot dog brands and their own mustards, my dad asked me to find him Nathan’s Famous deli style mustard, which had disappeared from stores all over Florida, and apparently elsewhere too.  I did some research and found out it still existed, but the trademark had most likely been sold to a different company.  I tracked down a company that ships it, Pop Pop Foods, but you have to buy three bottles (still not bad for $2.99 each), and then they charge a flat shipping rate of $18.  I couldn’t justify it for myself, but I sent a care package to my dad down in Miami, with three bottles of the deli style and three bottles of the spicy brown mustard.  When I visited my parents at their house last summer, I saw they had an open bottle of the Nathan’s Famous deli style mustard in the fridge, and I begged to try a little on one of these little pinwheel sandwiches.  It was really good, just as I remembered.  Definitely better than the Sabrett mustard above.  I didn’t try the spicy brown, but I’m sure that was good too.  I still can’t bear to pay $36 for six bottles of two different kinds of mustard just for myself, but if anyone else would like to go in on an order with me, just say the word.  I would just want one deli style and one spicy brown, in case any of my constant readers in Orlando would also like to get some Nathan’s Famous mustard.

I have only ever found Plochman’s Intense Cuban Style mustard at Winn-Dixie too, but it is awesome, especially as a substitute for yellow mustard on Cuban sandwiches like this homemade version (which was probably prettier when I first assembled it, but this looks like I pulled it out of the fridge).  I baked the ham and marinated and roasted the pork loin myself, but the pickles were Grillo’s and the bread was from Winn-Dixie, same as the mustard.  It had a really nice, spicy zing and some flavor from garlic and citrus.  It was really good mixed with a bit of mayo as a seafood sauce, too.  It was different from the Sam’s Choice Cuban mustard I reviewed in my first Cutting the Mustard, and I give the edge to Plochman’s.

Here are two familiar faces with a Gabila’s knish and a new contender on the left: Silver Spring whole grain mustard, part of my gift set from the National Mustard Museum (since Silver Spring is a national brand made in Wisconsin).  I usually avoid whole grain mustard with the round, crunchy mustard seeds in it, but this was the best version I’ve tried of that kind of mustard.  Usually I don’t care for a condiment crunching between my teeth like a mouthful of Nerds candy, but it had a good flavor to counterbalance that texture. 
Plochman’s chili dog yellow mustard, the third one, is brown in color rather than yellow, but that accounts for all the spices added to it.  It’s uncanny how it tastes like a chili dog with mustard already on it!  The ingredients mention dehydrated onion, paprika, and turmeric (possibly for color), as well as the mysterious “spices.”  I definitely taste heavy cumin and garlic, and I’m guessing there is some ingredient that gives it a very slight smoky flavor too.  It is also really salty, even by mustard standards.  Like the Plochman’s Intense Cuban Style mustard, I bought it at Winn-Dixie, and I’m having a hard time using up the big bottle.

I’m sure these aren’t the only new mustards I’ve tried over the past two years, but I don’t have pictures of all of them.  In my travels, I tried the hot mustard at Philippe the Original, one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles, which claims to be the birthplace of the French dip sandwich.  I also found Sy Ginsberg’s deli mustard on the tables at the excellent Palm Avenue Deli in Sarasota, Florida — a tasty mustard I’ve never seen for sale anywhere or at any other restaurants.

I make no secret of my love of condiments and sauces, and I’m always searching for new mustards to buy and try, since each one holds its own unique promises.  I worry I’m starting to run out of mustard I can purchase locally in the Orlando area, so if you have some good local brands I haven’t mentioned in my three Cutting the Mustard features so far, please let me know.  And if any readers want to send me some mustards to review in future installments, my journalistic integrity isn’t strong enough to make me stop you.  I hope this was informational, or at least entertaining in some weird way.  If you find yourself enjoying some burgers or hot dogs with family or friends over the remaining Memorial Day weekend, I hope you consider trying a new mustard, and I hope you’ll let me know what it was and how you liked it.  And if not, why not?  Are you YELLOW?

Tight Chips: Over Two Years of Potato Chips

In this new installment of Tight Chips, I will review some of the new flavors of potato chips I’ve enjoyed and discovered over the past two years, since my last chip review roundup.  I pride myself on sticking to a budget and keeping my impulse buys and “retail therapy” in check, but one way to sucker me out of a few bucks is to come out with new and weird flavors of potato chips.  I always feel obligated to try them, especially five years into this food blog, under the flimsy excuse of “JOURNALISM!” and even “SCIENCE!”  I used to be like that with sodas too (especially as a non-drinker), but at least I’ve managed to cut back on those.

But it’s almost July 4th, a time when we celebrate our country’s independence (while hopefully realizing we still have a long way to go to improve things here) and get together with family and friends for cookouts and dangerous explosions, often eating lots of chips.  Perhaps this blog entry can serve as a guide for those of you who offer your guests salty, crunchy snacks in between grilling out, drinking heavily, and blowing things up.

I’m going to start with some of my favorite potato chips I’ve ever tried: Zapp’s, out of Gramercy, Louisiana.  Zapp’s specializes in thick, crunchy kettle-fried chips with strong, bold flavors.  You can usually find them at Wawa, 7-Eleven, Publix, and Winn-Dixie stores, at least here in Orlando.

Zapp’s most popular flavors may be Voodoo and Voodoo Heat, which combine salty, savory, sweet, smoky, and tangy flavors, similar to the Canadian-inspired all-dressed chips I have reviewed before.  I give the slight edge to Voodoo Heat, which, as you might guess, is spicier than the delicious but mild Voodoo flavor.

If you like it spicy, but also tangy and sweet, these are awesome.

I must admit preferring the thinner, crispier, Lay’s-style potato chip to Zapp’s crunchier, thicker chips, but Zapp’s has recently started offering its own “Thinz,” which are more like Lay’s, texture-wise, but with the superior Zapp’s flavors.  Winn-Dixie carries larger bags of Zapp’s Thinz.

The Voodoo Thinz taste just as good as the thicker kettle chips:

Zapp’s Bourbon Street Smoky Sweet is kind of like a sweet barbecue flavor minus the tanginess of tomato, and they are also really good.  I’ve only seen the Thinz version sold around here:

But you can’t go wrong:

Zapp’s Evil Eye is more of a tomato-forward flavor that I like, but not as much as the Voodoo:

But they don’t skimp on the seasoning:

Finally, Zapp’s Cajun Dill Gator-Tators are kind of like a mildly spicy dill pickle flavor, but not overly spicy, so don’t worry.  They don’t taste like alligator at all, so don’t worry about that either.

They are one of the better pickle-flavored chips out there, but I will be covering a few more here.

The Voodoo flavor is such a breakthrough hit, other companies have similar versions.  Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of Winn-Dixie, has a surprisingly excellent New Orleans Blend potato chip flavor that is thin and crispy like Lay’s and Zapp’s Thinz, and large bags are ridiculously cheap compared to the name brands.  They also go hard on the seasoning and are excellent quality. 

These are better than they have any right to be:

I only ever see the Dirty brand of potato chips in small bags near the Publix deli (not in the chip aisle).  These are thicker kettle chips.  My wife likes the plain ones from time to time (she doesn’t share my fascination with flavored chips), but one day I tried the Funky Fusion, and it is essentially the Dirty version of Zapp’s Voodoo flavor.  Not nearly as good, though.

Not bad, but they’re no Zapp’s.

All this talk about July 4th cookouts and then the flavors of New Orleans might put someone in the mood for an icy cold, refreshing beer.  If you want one, enjoy it responsibly, but I can caution you against bothering with Clancy’s Beer-flavored potato chips, which are occasionally available at Aldi supermarkets.  Clancy’s is Aldi’s private label for chips and other salty snacks like pork rinds.  Some are great (including Moscow Mule- and Bloody Mary-flavored chips I have reviewed before), but this wasn’t one of the great ones. 

They were mostly bland, vaguely earthy-tasting, and incredibly salty, even by potato chip standards.  I wouldn’t get them again.

I mentioned Clancy’s Bloody Mary and Moscow Mule-flavored chips, which I enjoyed in the past, but the smoked Kentucky bourbon flavor was another miss from this Aldi store brand.

They tasted a little smoky, but not in a good way, like smoked meat or barbecue sauce.  Mostly they just tasted overwhelmingly salty.  I used to enjoy Maker’s Mark bourbon, and there is no substitute for the real thing.

To close out the Aldi chip discussion but tie it back to the cookout theme, Clancy’s also came out with a grilled ribeye steak flavor, which I didn’t love either. 

These had a subtle “burned on the grill” taste with more overwhelming saltiness and also a peppery flavor, but they sure didn’t taste like steak or any other meat.  I think I just don’t care for the “Krinkle Cut” style of ridged chips that much, at least not from the Clancy’s brand.  They always taste much saltier to me.

I bet you didn’t realize how classy potato chip flavors have become.  Barbecue and beer are one thing, but bourbon and ribeye steak are new.  Going beyond that, a Spanish company called Torres makes really upscale chips, including a sparkling wine flavor I recently found at Publix, and another snack company I love, Herr Foods, Inc., out of Nottingham, Pennsylvania, came out with Herr’s charcuterie board-flavored potato chips earlier this year!  Forget cookouts, these are the perfect chips for a really fancy soiree or a date!

It’s uncanny how much the Torres chips actually tasted like sparkling wine — sweet, acidic, fruity, sour.  It isn’t the most satisfying flavor combination overall, but they are definitely worth a try for those who share my fascination with novelty and weirdness.

And as my longtime readers know, I am a pretty serious aficionado of cured meats.  I love that the Lunchables generation has turned charcuterie boards into a thing, but I would rather have my salami, prosciutto, soppressata, capicola, and other delicious deli meats on a sub or hoagie, topped with cheese, vegetables, and condiments, rather than arranged beautifully on a wooden board.  But when you don’t have access to either, you probably want to try these new Herr’s chips.  They definitely have a delicate, salty, porky flavor, but didn’t taste like any specific cured meat that I could pick out.  I should note that I’ve only ever found this Herr’s flavor at Deli Desires, which is one of Orlando’s more underrated spots.These chips did not include any meat in the ingredients, so you’re welcome, vegetarians!

I love Herr’s chips, and being a Pennsylvania-based company, you can always find them at Wawa convenience stores, another Pennsylvania company.  My most recent chip finds are these three “Flavors of Philly” Herr’s chips: tomato pie, roast pork sandwich, and Korean BBQ wings.  

I tried the tomato pie chips first, inspired by Corropolese Italian Bakery & Deli in Philadelphia.  Tomato pie is similar to Sicilian pizza, but the thick, rectangular slices have a sweet tomato sauce and are topped with Romano cheese, but no mozzarella.  The closest I’ve found to it in Orlando is the tomato pie at Tornatore’s, which is more of an upstate New York version, but the scachatta at Alessi Bakery and La Segunda Bakery in Tampa is similar to tomato pie, sweet sauce and all, only they have finely ground beef in their sauces.  These chips tasted like sweet tomato sauce with a dash of pungent cheese, so they nailed it as best they could.

The roast pork sandwich chips are specifically inspired by John’s Roast Pork, a Philadelphia legend I haven’t had a chance to try, although I did have two pretty amazing roast pork sandwiches when I was there last month.  Be on the lookout for that review coming soon.  Anyway, these chips were a lot more subtle, with garlic emerging as the main flavor (aside from salt).  It’s a delicious sandwich when made well, especially when topped with sharp provolone and bitter broccoli rabe, but much more subtle than an Italian hoagie or a cheesesteak.

What I wasn’t expecting was that Herr’s Korean BBQ wings flavor, inspired by Mike’s BBQ restaurant in Philly, would be the best-tasting chips in this new trio.  But I should have guessed, because Korean-style chicken wings kick ass, whether you order them from Hawkers, Domu, Kai Asian Street Fare, or bb.q Chicken.

And Herr’s just keeps on barreling forward with wild flavors.  I admit I didn’t think much of these Loaded Tots chips, but it was an ambitious experiment:

There were some interesting flavors present, but I know I couldn’t pick out bacon and cheese and sour cream and chives!

Earlier this year, Herr’s sold new Sandwi-Chips with four “extra bold” flavors, exclusive to Wawa stores, marketed to be put into sandwiches.  That’s something I’m going to do if I have a sandwich and chips together anyway, so I took it upon myself to sample all the new flavors, inspired by condiments and sandwich toppings.

Everyone knows I love mustard, to the point where I write a recurring mustard review feature called Cutting the Mustard, so I tried the Herr’s mustard Sandwi-Chips first.

Needless to say, these tasted bright and tangy and acidic, just like yellow mustard.  If you’re making a ham, turkey, or roast beef sandwich or a burger, go to town with these.  You won’t regret it.

The sweet onion Sandwi-Chips were almost too strongly oniony, compared to a more mellowed-out sour cream and onion flavor.

They were kind of a lot, as my students used to say.

Next up, I had to try the ketchup Sandwi-Chips, because I have always really liked Herr’s regular ketchup chips.  That is a popular Canadian chip flavor, but not nearly as popular in the U.S.  I’ve never been to Canada, but always wanted to, as I have a fondness for its culture and people, with their reputations for being polite.  In fact, several people have thought I, your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, am Canadian, between my voice (your guess is as good as mine) and my unfailing politeness.  I’ll take it as a compliment, eh?

Anyway, to make this a truly scientific experiment (well, not really), I had to compare and contrast Herr’s original ketchup chips, which I’ve had several times, with the new Sandwi-Chips.

They tasted very similar, and I’m honestly not even sure if I mixed up the photos or not.  I’ve always appreciated that the regular ketchup chips are heavily seasoned, and they will definitely turn your fingertips RED.  They are tomatoey, tangy, and sweet, and I like them a lot.  Always have, always will.

I think the only difference I noticed was that the “extra bold” ketchup chips might have had even more seasoning on them, but I couldn’t discern any unique taste.  But I liked both!

Finally (at least for these), Herr’s came out with a spicy pickle flavor of Sandwi-Chips, and they tasted very pickley, as one would expect and hope, but somewhat light on the spice.

They were fine.  They would go particularly well on any sandwich or burger where you would normally add pickles, or even if you actually did add pickles.

As long as we’re talking about pickle-flavored chips, I should note that I used to hate pickles, until I embarked on a mission to learn to appreciate pickles by comparing, contrasting, and reviewing a bunch of different pickles.

The pickles that made me a fan were Grillo’s pickles, which I waxed rhapsodic about in that above review, “A Plethora of Pickles.”  The Utz Quality Foods company, another snack company with Pennsylvania roots (Hanover, this time), actually created Grillo’s pickle chips, which a good friend shared with me after buying a ginormous bag at Costco.

These are maybe the best pickle chips I’ve ever tried, and I was grateful to not have to buy the whole pillowcase-sized bag of them.

I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of Frito-Lay’s extremely popular Flamin’ Hot flavor, regardless of its heartwarming and/or apocryphal origin story.  What exactly does it taste like?  HOT.  It tastes like hot, and there might be a bit of lime, but maybe that’s all in my head.  All the Flamin’ Hot chips (Cheetos, Ruffles, Lay’s, etc.) are fiery, angry red, and sometimes after the fact, other things are fiery, angry red too.

Even though I would have ignored this flavor in the past, when I saw Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle Lay’s, I had to give them a try. 

They weren’t gross like I expected.  The sourness and the dill helped offset the intense Flamin’ Hot flavor (like nothing else in nature!), and I ended up thinking these would be good pickles to crush up on a burger or in a sandwich — maybe something that already had real pickles on it.  They would be great with some kind of cool, creamy dip, too.

And while we’re still on the condiment-flavored chips, Trader Joe’s offered these Patio chips over the summer of 2021 (and possibly still, although I haven’t looked for them since). 

The bag contained a blend of multiple chip flavors: sea salt and vinegar, delicious dill, homestyle ketchup (for all the people who make their own ketchup in a world where Heinz is easily available, cheap, and superior), and smokin’ sweet BBQ.  I appreciated this ambitious experiment, but I don’t think any of the Trader Joe’s flavors stood out on their own, and crunching on multiple flavors in the same mouthful didn’t work as well as I would have guessed.  If these have since been discontinued, I wouldn’t even be surprised.

As long as we’re talking about pickled things, the Kettle brand makes really tasty pepperoncini-flavored chips, which would be awesome crushed up on an Italian hoagie, a gyro, or a Greek salad, or anywhere else you might enjoy those pale green, mildly spicy pickled peppers.

Keep in mind these are also thicker, crunchier chips.  I don’t buy the Kettle brand very much because they only come in large bags, but I’m glad I took a chance with this particular flavor.  They really did taste like pepperoncini peppers!

So let’s switch gears now and talk about some more spicy chip flavors, after that flawless segue.  Lay’s briefly offered an Adobadas flavor in 2022, featuring chile peppers, tomato, and lime.

They were okay.  I only bought one small bag one time, and that was fine with me.

On my 2022 sojourn to the senses-shattering Buc-ee’s, a colossal convenience store that pretty much sums up the American experience and all of its excesses, I bought these “Hot” flavored chips:

And they delivered.  They were hot, but not overwhelmingly so.  Definitely not “Flamin’ Hot.”  I would have preferred some nuance, though.

These Southeastern Grocers Sweet Hot Barbecue chips came from Winn-Dixie, so you know they were cheap.  But were they good?

Actually, yeah.  I love the sweet, tangy smokiness of barbecue chips, and these packed more heat than most. I still prefer the New Orleans Blend, Southeastern Grocers’ Voodoo knockoff flavor, though.

Have you tried hot honey as a condiment?  Mike’s Hot Honey is the main brand, and it has a lot more heat than other companies’ versions.  It is awesome on pizza, just FYI.  And Utz makes a Mike’s Hot Honey potato chip flavor:

They are sweet and hot, so I guess I like my potato chips like I like my women.

Just in case anyone else cares about such things, Utz owns both Zapp’s and Dirty chips, in addition to its own brand.

Lay’s short-lived chile mango chips were also sweet and hot, but I didn’t care for the flavor combination as much:

This was a one-and-done flavor for me.  I love mangos like crazy.  I will eat mangos like they’re going out of style, and I’m a sucker for anything mango-flavored.  I was excited to find these and disappointed I didn’t love them, but you don’t have to take my word for it!

On a lucky trip to Walgreens (admittedly a while back), I found not one, but two new flavors of Lay’s: Hot Sauce (specifically Frank’s Red Hot, the perfect sauce for classic buffalo wings), and Kettle Cooked Beer Cheese.  I like Walgreens because they almost always get new chip flavors first, and unlike Publix, they sell them in small bags, which make me feel much less guilty about eating chips in the first place.  What do you get, six or seven chips in these wee bags?

I like Frank’s Red Hot sauce in the first place because it balances the cayenne pepper-based heat with the acidic tang of vinegar, and I love anything vinegary.  If you shy away from spicy food and order “mild” or plain wings, you probably won’t like these.  But if you do like typical hot sauce flavors, you will be in for a real treat with these chips, especially if you have some good blue cheese dip or dressing to go with them.

The Beer Cheese Lay’s were a lot more subtly flavored.  I’ve had real beer cheese before, and it is delicious.  A friend in Kentucky assures me it’s a big deal up there, whereas it is a little harder to find around Florida.  But these chips didn’t taste too strongly of anything.  I rarely regret trying new chip flavors, but I wouldn’t bother getting these again.  I haven’t seen them in a long time, so they may already be discontinued.

One more spicy flavor, and then we’re done, if you can believe it!  I’m guessing Game Day Chili Lay’s might have been timed to come out around the NFL playoffs and the Superb Owl.  I didn’t find them until early March (2021 or 2022?), and I was really surprised to find them at all.  These were yet another Walgreens find.  I love chili in all its forms, so I was excited to tear into this bag.

This flavor was also a little disappointing, especially given how much I love chili.  It wasn’t overly tomatoey, and I didn’t pick up on cheese at all.  It wasn’t very spicy either, and nothing about it tasted “meaty.”  I’ve already gone on at great length about how I love tomatoey flavors in my chips, but this one was a letdown.  At least I didn’t spring for a larger bag.

Well, that’s a pretty good rundown of the new potato chip flavors I’ve tried since 2021 — the good, the bad, and the weird.  If you have tried any of these, I want to hear about it.  Which ones have you enjoyed?  Were any disappointing or gross?  What are your favorite chip flavors and brands, especially if I haven’t covered them, and where can I get my hands on some?  I might not be an influencer, but if anyone wants to send me chips to review, I would probably graciously accept them!

So enjoy your Fourth of July, stay safe, have something delicious to eat (ideally accompanied by people you like spending time around), and remember to stay hydrated in this insane summer heat, especially if you’re munching and crunching on salty chips.

The ‘Dines List 3: Postcards from Portugal

It has been a long time since my last installment of The ‘Dines List, the recurring Saboscrivner feature where I review different tinned sardines and other tinned seafood.  Before you recoil in disgust or make that “Flehmen Response” face that is so funny when cats do it, I want to once again extol the virtues of the humble sardine.  These tiny fish are near the bottom of the food chain.  They are extraordinarily healthy, full of omega-3 fatty acids, no mercury like so much canned tuna, pure protein, and mostly environmentally sustainable, although I have been reading articles recently about sardines being the victim of overfishing, both in the Pacific Ocean and near the setting of this latest ‘Dines List.

Plus, now sardines are trendy “hot girl food,” so even though I am the furthest thing from a hot girl (not a girl, not hot unless you have a thing for bear types, and then the jury is probably still out), I am pleased that a thing I like is finally being appreciated and enjoying a moment in the cultural zeitgeist, just like how the last 20+ years of superhero movie mania has validated another one of my lifelong loves.  So now, on to the ‘dines!

Beautiful Portugal, the westernmost country in Europe, lies on the western coast of the Iberian peninsula, next door to Spain.  Historically, Portugal was responsible for a lot of seafaring, trading, and fishing, and to this day, fish and seafood are a major part of the typical Portuguese diet.  Only Japan and Iceland consume more fish per capita than Portugal!  Many of the locally caught sardines, tuna, and other fish are processed (tinned) and exported all around the world.

After my last ‘Dines List feature, where I reviewed sardines from Morocco, Portugal’s neighbor across the sea, I decided to do a round-up of all the Portuguese sardines I could find, to review them all and point out the good, the bad, and the stinky.

I discovered these Nuri spiced Portuguese sardines at Lotte Plaza Market, the fantastic and huge pan-Asian supermarket in West Orlando, a super-fun place for local foodies to shop and eat.  You can have a delicious meal at one of the many Asian restaurants in the food court and then stock up on groceries and snacks, but don’t forget the Nuri ‘dines!

These had a really nice heat from piri-piri peppers, and they also included carrot, cucumber, laurel(!), and clove in the seasoning.

Since I had never tried the Nuri sardines before, I ate them plain, but for some reason I plated them instead of devouring them straight out of the tin.  Note the single carrot slice, single pepper, and single cucumber slice, which was more like a thin pickle slice at this point.  I really liked these and would get them again.  They were surprisingly, pleasantly spicy!

I must have bought these Bela sardines a long time ago, maybe at Fresh Market.  This brand tends to cost more than other sardines, so I must have gotten the can on sale.  Unlike the Nuris above, these were lightly smoked, and the label makes clear they were packed in organic extra virgin olive oil.  Like the Nuris, they were also seasoned with piri-piri peppers, which is a delicious, piquant pepper that adds a nice kick to foods without being overwhelmingly hot. 

These Belas were much nicer-looking than most other tinned sardines, still retaining their iridescent silvery skin (which is perfectly tasty, don’t worry).  I typically avoid boneless, skinless ‘dines, because the bones give a nice, light crunch and are packed with calcium, and ‘dines with skin are more attractive and taste better, at least to me.

I made a Bela sandwich on a toasted bialy, with some sliced onion, fresh cilantro, Trader Joe’s piri-piri hot sauce (the orange sauce on the left), and crispy French-fried onions over the ‘dines themselves, with cream cheese beneath them.  Thankfully I’m still wearing a mask in public three years into the pandemic, which allowed me to eat a stanky sandwich like this with a clearer conscience.  It was delicious, though.  All the flavors went well with these beautiful Belas.

I believe I found these Bon Appetit Portuguese sardines at Green Hills Supermarket, a wonderful Eastern European grocery store in Altamonte Springs, Florida, which is heaven for tinned fish aficionados.  They stock all kinds of pickled herring, smoked Latvian sprats, and countless brands of tinned and bottled ‘dines from around the world, particularly European brands.  

After draining the “hot olive oil,” these weren’t that much to look at either, and to be completely frank, I barely remember them.  I think they had kind of a dry taste, like you could chew them forever and not much would happen (like too many people’s mamas’ pot roast).

I served the Bon Appetit sardines on homemade potato blinis, fancy little savory pancakes I learned how to make after first trying them at Bern’s Steak House in Tampa.  The blinis were definitely better than the ‘dinis.

I always see this Porthos brand at Fresh Market, usually priced higher than most supermarket ‘dines — maybe even $6 or $7 per can?  I know myself, and I know I would not have bought this unless it was on sale for $5 or under.  What I didn’t catch was that the ‘dines were packed in brine rather than some kind of oil, so caveat emptor.

Not very pretty, are they?  I would have expected more from the fancy-pants Porthos brand.  They were smellier than most canned ‘dines just because they were packed in brine rather than oil.  I grew up in a house where we ate canned tuna packed in water as a regular staple food, and I ate it throughout college and grad school, pretty much until I met my wife and the smell emanating from a can I opened made her throw up immediately, with no warning whatsoever.  I never bought canned tuna in water again, and while she might not share my love of canned sardines, the smell never nauseates her either.  But these were fishy and funky, and I wouldn’t buy this bougie brand again.  I probably mixed them with Duke’s mayonnaise and one of the many mustards in my collection to make sardine salad, a tribute to the tuna salad that sustained me through far too many bachelor pads and degrees.   

I think I found these Tome sardines at Enson Market, another Asian supermarket at 5132 W Colonial Dr, Orlando, FL 32808, maybe five minutes west of the aforementioned Lotte Plaza Market.

The picture on the box shows little sliced vegetables, including what looks like a pickle slice and maybe a red pepper.  I think these ‘dines had a bit of a sour, pickley note, but I must admit, I don’t recall the vegetables coming in the can.  I would have mashed these up into sardine salad with a dollop of mayo, and I chopped some Grillo’s Pickles into it (my favorite brand, from my Plethora of Pickles review).

The Tome sardines in spicy olive oil with chili were better, but still pretty standard.

They looked more appealing in the can with their shimmering silvery skin attached.

I recall these being good enough to eat straight up, after draining the oil (never down the drain, folks!).  

Trader Joe’s Wild Caught Sardines in Olive Oil with Smoke Flavor are a terrific value for Portuguese sardines, and surprisingly tasty on their own or in anything.  That little bit of smokiness helps immensely.

Like so many of the others, I ate these plain, straight out of the can after draining most of the oil, probably standing over the sink at home.  They definitely aren’t the prettiest ‘dines, but I would get them again. 

This is my most recent ‘dine discovery: the Angelo Parodi brand, which I found for the first time visiting Filippi’s Pizza Grotto in San Diego’s Italian Village, a wonderful old-school Italian-American restaurant attached to an equally old-school Italian grocery store.  You have to walk through the tiny market to get to the restaurant in the back, with red and white checkered tablecloths, candles melted into chianti bottles, the whole deal.  I had great pizza and a good Italian sub (which I should really get around to reviewing), but I couldn’t walk through an Italian market without bringing home some edible souvenirs, so I grabbed two tins of the Angelo Parodi ‘dines in olive oil with chili peppers.  Despite the brand name and the source, they are also products of Portugal, not Italy. 

I already drained the orange oil in this photo, but they looked beautiful — nice and meaty, silvery skin intact, packed tightly, definitely pleasing to the eye.

And here they are.  Thrill to my half-assed plating with some fresh, house-made Ceili chips (potato chips) from Fiddler’s Green, our favorite Irish pub in Winter Park, Florida.  Tonight I brought my wife home her favorite chicken tenders and the chips, but I knew I was having the Angelo Parodi ‘dines so I could finally finish this mega-review of Portuguese sardines.  They were surprisingly spicy, even drained of the oil, but very firm, meaty, and on the salty side, especially paired with the potato chips.  That was not the best choice — some crusty Italian bread would have been better, but crusty Italian bread would make almost anything better. As usual, the included chili peppers were sad sacks of seeds, not really worth trying to eat.   But even though I’ve never seen Angelo Parodi products for sale in Florida (not even at Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg or Doris Italian Market in South Florida, two wonderful places I desperately need to revisit and review), I would definitely get these sardines again.

Finally, this isn’t a can of sardines at all, but rather Cole’s smoked rainbow trout that happens to be from Portugal, so I’m including it.  My wife loves trout, and I often pan-fry pecan-crusted (fresh) trout filets for her.  She does not share my love of sardines, but this is one of the very few canned fish she will actually eat.  It is absolutely freakin’ delicious, and I include it here to go along with the Portuguese theme, and to for the sardine skeptics who might be open to other tinned treats.  If any canned fish is going to win over the masses, this is the one. 

While the canned rainbow trout filet doesn’t look like much, it flakes apart beautifully, and it is tender and moist and lightly smoky, and not “fishy” at all.  Here is the before pic:

And the after pic is below.  I enjoyed this tin with a Gabila’s frozen potato  knish, thawed in the microwave and then heated until crispy in the toaster oven.  I usually use these frozen Gabila’s knishes as mustard delivery devices, as in my last Cutting the Mustard mega-review, where I went into more detail on the brand and its storied history.  But the knish went so well with the smoky, flaky, oily, rich trout, I refrained from adding mustard or any other condiments.  It didn’t need them.  Trout, trout, let it all out, this is the fish I can’t do without!

I worry now about the reports of the entire Portuguese sardine fishing industry being in danger, because they are such a major part of the Portuguese diet, as well as the national economy.  I always thought eating sardines was morally superior to consuming larger fish that are higher up in the food chain, but now it sounds like we all need to get used to cutting back.  The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch website even says Moroccan-caught sardines are a good alternative, but it is better to avoid Portuguese-caught sardines.  Of course, I started writing this ‘Dines List column well almost two years ago, and I fully admit I had no idea when I started.  I strive to sustain a sundry sardine stash at the Sabo-Shelter, but once I eat my way through those, I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Grocery Grails: BarbaCuban Sauces

Longtime readers of this humble food blog, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, know I am obsessed with condiments and sauces, to the point that I will plan entire meals around certain ones and check grocery stores wherever I am for new condiments I might not be able to find back at home.  I occasionally take breaks from restaurant reviews on this blog to occasionally highlight  grocery store finds in a recurring feature called Grocery Grails, and that got a spinoff of its own, another recurring feature called Cutting the Mustard, where I review different mustards.

Earlier this year, I was introduced to a whole new line of sauces I’ve never seen for sale before, and I was actually encouraged to review them on my blog.  A foodie friend with impeccable taste and a job in marketing gave me the sauces to try.  He told me that if I like them, they would be grateful if I reviewed them, but if I don’t like them, I’d be under no obligation.  No money changed hands, just a few bottles of sauce.  I’ve always taken pride in maintaining the independent status of this food blog, not taking any kind of quid pro quo in exchange for good reviews, and I’m not about to start now.  I’m no influencer-for-hire, just a guy who loves to try new foods and tell people what I think of them.  As a result, I was stoked to sample some new sauces, free from any conflicts of interest or ethical worries, and even more stoked that they were good enough to feature in a Grocery Grails segment.  (In fact, two of them are mustard-based, so this is also an official Cutting the Mustard column!)  So here we go!

BarbaCuban sauces (https://barbacuban.com/) are the creation of the BarbaCuban himself, Jose Juarez.  Back in 2015, he appeared on the Live with Kelly and Michael show and won the title of “America’s New Grill Star,” a nationwide contest sponsored by the show.   The secret to his BarbaCuban Sandwich success was his 455 Sauce, a tangy, creamy blend of three “M”s: mustard, mayo, and mojo criollo, the marinade that brings citrus and garlic flavors to so many Cuban pork and chicken dishes.  Now you can buy it, along with all of his other condiments and sauces, on the website.

The BarbaCuban website showed me that 455 Sauce is named after the engine block of Jose’s GTO convertible, which was a mystery to me until just now.  But I have been enjoying both the regular and hot 455 Sauces for months now, using them for everything from chicken marinades to dips for fries to the base for chicken salad, cole slaw, and honey mustard salad dressing.  As I’ve shown in my previous Cutting the Mustard columns, I consider myself a mustard aficionado and connoisseur, and BarbaCuban 455 Sauces have been a terrific, versatile addition to my condiment collection and my mustard museum.

Here are the ingredients for the hot 455 Sauce.  I finished the bottle of the regular version a while back and recycled it already, but I’m sure it is very similar, minus the smoked ghost pepper powder:

Here is the hot 455 Sauce accompanying a platter of chicken salad sandwiches I made on nice, fresh Cuban bread from the legendary Alessi Bakery in Tampa, the subject of my review from last week.  I pulled every morsel of meat off one of those gigantic mutant Costco rotisserie chickens and mixed it with chopped cornichons, pepperoncini peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, raisins, a good bit of hot 455 Sauce (where I would normally use mayo and some other kind of mustard), worcestershire sauce, and pretty much every herb and spice in my spice drawer. 

Here’s that hot 455 Sauce again, served with a grilled cheese sandwich with homemade pickled onions on sourdough bread, with chicken sausages on the side.  It’s a ridiculously versatile condiment — definitely the spiciest of the six BarbaCuban sauces I sampled, but creamy enough to be a great ingredient and/or dip for anything, in a way most conventional mustards aren’t unless you mix them up with mayo or something like that.  Mr. Juarez has already done that mayo-mixing for you!

Ketchup might be the most popular condiment in the United States, but it still has a polarizing reputation.  People either like ketchup or hate it.  I like it fine, but only for certain applications: burgers, fries, onion rings, and making a glazed crust for meatloaf.  I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, so I have no problem buying private labels and store brands, but for ketchup, I must admit I’ve always been a Heinz loyalist.  Nothing else ever tastes or feels quite right.  I’ve been to some restaurants that serve “house-made” ketchups, and I always steel myself for something that tastes like Christmas — chefs going hard with cinnamon and cloves, either too thick or too thin and never quite right.

But anyway, BarbaCuban makes Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup, and it immediately won me over: a non-Heinz ketchup I have been using exclusively for months.  Having these new sauces in my life, and especially this spicy ketchup, has inspired me to order more fries than I ever did before, and to bring them home from restaurants, untouched, just so I could reheat them in my toaster oven and use them as a Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup delivery system.  I also make a legendary meatloaf, so of course I have been brushing it on to form that sweet, tangy, sticky glazed crust.  Even if Heinz is the industry standard, this is the disruptor everyone has been waiting for without ever realizing it: a more complex flavor than Heinz with a pleasing amount of heat, but simple enough that it will still enhance all your old favorites without overpowering them.

Here are some Sidewinder fries (maybe my favorite kind of fries) that we brought home from St. Johns River Steak and Seafood earlier this summer, just so I could enjoy them with the Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup.

These are the ingredients, which include orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices, Spanish olive oil, smoked salt, smoked paprika, and smoked ghost pepper powder.  Yowza yowza yowza!

Here are some onion rings and fried avocado nuggets from two different restaurants we visited on a recent trip out of town, which I have yet to review.  If you can guess where we got these, I’ll be impressed, and I may have to think of some kind of prize for the sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerino.  But as good as they were at their respective restaurants, they were even better heated back up with BarbaCuban condiments:

My absolute favorite of all the BarbaCuban sauces was the 4 Barrel BBQ Sauce (below left).  I always love barbecue sauce as a condiment, and not just on barbecued meats.  I know Mr. Juarez, the BarbaCuban himself, is a grill-master, but I don’t even own a grill!  It’s too damn hot and humid to spend any time outside nine months out of the year, so I know I wouldn’t get my money’s worth.  But that didn’t stop me from pouring that 4 Barrel BBQ Sauce on anything and everything over the last couple of months, while trying to make my one bottle last.

It is thinner than a lot of sticky, thick, gloopy commercial barbecue sauces, but so much more complex-tasting.  It has the most inspired ingredients I’ve ever seen in a barbecue sauce, including bourbon, Cuban coffee, tamarind extract, worcestershire sauce (bringing some nice umami funk from anchovies), ghost pepper, and guava, mango, pear, pineapple, lemon, and lime juices.  All those amazing ingredients and NO high fructose corn syrup?  Now that’s what I call barbecue sauce!

The BarbaCuban 4 Barrel Barbecue Sauce is so delicious, you could put this on vanilla ice cream!  I didn’t, but I would have if I ever kept vanilla ice cream in the house.

Next up, the BarbaCuban Havana Gold Barbecue Sauce is a combination of the mustard and mayo-based 455 Sauce and the brilliant 4 Barrel Barbecue Sauce.  It was sweet, tangy, a little spicy, a little creamy, and so good.  While I dipped plenty of things in it (see two photos above), I decided to use it to glaze a bone-in, spiral-sliced ham I bought on sale at Aldi after Easter.  I only ever treat myself to whole hams when they are discounted after holidays, which makes me both a good Jew and a bad Jew at the same time!  I’m here all week, folks!  Tip the veal!  Try your waitress!

Here’s the before picture:

Here it is, post-slatherin’ with BarbaCuban Havana Gold BBQ Sauce:

And here it is, hot and sweet and sticky and crackly, right out of the oven.  Our home smelled like heaven, and this ham tasted like it too.  Since I’m the only one here who eats ham, I froze a lot of it to save for later, specifically for the next time I make Cuban sandwiches at home. 

So that is an excellent segue to the last, but definitely not least, the BarbaCuban 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade, Mr. Juarez’s excellent version of mojo criollo, that citrusy, garlicky Cuban marinade so perfect with chicken and pork.  I follow a long, involved, labor-intensive Binging With Babish recipe to make my own mojo criollo from scratch when I want to make roast pork for homemade Cuban sandwiches, inspired by the delightful movie Chef.  It yields one of the most delicious meals ever, but it’s quite a process.  As a result, I’ve tried several store-bought mojo marinades over the decades, and most of them are pretty lousy.  In fact, I’ve only ever found two I liked, and this 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade is one of them.  Here are the ingredients:

I took this photo today, in fact — oven-roasted chicken thighs, marinated overnight in 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade, and served with seasoned black beans and homemade pickled red onions.

I do a lot of meal prep for the week on Sundays, and these are going to be my work lunches for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, alongside salads and fruit.  They are going to be great.  The whole house smells so good!  I made sure to save plenty of the 90 Miles to Mojo for the next time I bring home a pork tenderloin to make Cuban sandwiches.  Here’s hoping it will save me a ton of money and prep time, compared to making my own scratch mojo criollo.  And I already have sliced ham ready to thaw, with that BarbaCuban Havana Gold glaze on it.

Over the last few months, since my friend introduced these sauces to my life, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled to find them at retail.  I shop for groceries at a lot of different stores in and around Orlando, but I have yet to see them at Publix, Aldi, Winn-Dixie, Fresh Market, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, or Walmart.  Right now, my advice is to take the plunge, treat yourself, and order them on the BarbaCuban website: https://barbacuban.com/.  If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written about food before, you know I’m a nerd who gets enthusiastic about recommending things I have enjoyed.  I wouldn’t tell you to seek these out if I didn’t like them, trust me.  I did, so now I’m tellin’ you.  Call me a saucy boy if you must, but your meats, your carbs, your friends, and your mouth will thank you if you trust me!

Cutting the Mustard II: The Search for More Mustard

Well, it’s the summer, and that means we’re getting some sequels.  Movie sequels always try to top the originals by being BIGGER, LOUDER, and LONGER, so that’s what I’m trying to do with the sequel to my original mustard review feature from last summer, Cutting the Mustard.  I reviewed seven different mustards, just in time for Memorial Day weekend, when people tend to eat a lot of hot dogs and burgers.  Well, it’s Memorial Day weekend again, so here’s our sequel: Cutting the Mustard II: The Search for More Mustard!  And if you think I only reviewed eight mustards this time, then go jump in a lake, jabroni.  I only offer the best content to my dozens of readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, so I have raised the stakes and reviewed TEN mustards right here!  Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for mustard mishegas!

The first two new mustards I reviewed were from iconic mustard company French’s, famous for its standard yellow mustard.  But since nothing I write about on this blog is standard, I tried two of French’s deeper cuts, if you will.  The first one was French’s Brown Sugar Bourbon stone ground mustard, which comes in a relatively small glass jar.  Just like in the first Cutting the Mustard, I sampled it on a Deutsche Kuche (pronounced “douche cooch”) Bavarian soft pretzel stick from Aldi, imported from Germany, a place that knows something about pretzels and mustard.  This was a winning combination.  The Brown Sugar Bourbon added a subtle sweetness that wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet.  I thought it would go great with hot dogs to cut their extreme saltiness, and would also go well with most deli meats like turkey, roast beef, or ham, as long as the ham isn’t overly sweet already.

I chased that with French’s Roasted Garlic stone ground mustard, which comes in the same kind of glass jar, at the same price point.  I found both of these at Winn-Dixie, by the way.  The garlic flavor was a lot more subtle than I expected.  It reminded me of a standard Dijon mustard, but not as spicy in your nose, and definitely not as “bright”-tasting as a classic yellow mustard.  It would go really well on a sweeter ham sandwich, and it would be fabulous with roast beef or on a nice rare burger.  I could also see mixing it with mayonnaise and honey as the base for a slightly garlicky honey mustard dressing.   I was pleased that despite being labeled as “stone ground,” neither of these French’s mustards had whole crunchy seeds in them.  As I’ve remarked before, I am not a fan of eating mustard and feeling like I’m crunching away on a mouthful of Nerds candy.

I found my next two mustards at Clemons Produce, a wonderful locally owned and operated produce market at 3325 Curry Ford Road, Orlando, Florida, 32806.  It is on the northwest side of the intersection of Curry Ford Road and Crystal Lake Drive, in a great foodie neighborhood known as the Hourglass District.  I am a recent convert to Clemons Produce, but in addition to carrying some of the finest, freshest fruits and vegetables in town, they also have a great selection of groceries, including lots of Amish products: jams and preserves, pickles and other pickled veggies, pies, and even bottled sodas I haven’t found anywhere else in Orlando.  They also have an Amish deli counter that features meats and cheeses from the Troyer brand.  I recommend trying the Lebanon bologna and farmer’s cheese, if you’re in the area. 

And while you’re there, you can pick up some mustards from the Woeber’s brand!  I picked out two of Woeber’s Sandwich Pal mustards: Hot & Spicy and Sweet & Spicy.  The Hot & Spicy mustard had a fair bit of heat.  The Aldi pretzel sticks may have been out of season, so I don’t have a photo of it on one of those, but this was around the time during the pandemic when I was trying to engineer the perfect breakfast sandwich, and I used plenty of it on those experiments.  I love mustard on eggs and breakfast sandwiches.  I even love McDonald’s Sausage McMuffins With Egg, a nostalgic childhood treat that has aged better than anything else at McDonald’s, as far as I’m concerned.  As an adult, I always take them straight home so the American cheese has a chance to melt, and I can apply my own mustards.

Here is one of my most beautiful breakfast sandwich creations with the Woeber’s Sandwich Pal Sweet & Spicy mustard.  This is on Wonder brand Texas Toast (far superior to any other white bread due to its thiccness), and it is topped with a perfectly fried egg (cooked in a ring mold, the way McDonald’s does its McMuffin eggs), American cheese, lap xuong Chinese sausage (much chewier and sweeter than typical breakfast sausage), sautéed onions, Peppadew peppers, and of course the Sweet & Spicy mustard.  The Texas toast is spread with Duke’s mayo, after I chopped up an entire HEAD of garlic and added it directly to the Duke’s jar, so I always have garlic aioli at the ready.  Then I grilled the entire sandwich in a pan like a big ol’ grilled cheese.  Brilliant, and the different kinds of sweetness from the mustard, the sausage, and the Peppadews really sent this one over the top.

My next two mustards are Russian mustards, which I bought months before Russia invaded Ukraine, committed war crimes, and threatened to start World War III.  I found them at another terrific grocery store that specializes in Eastern European products, Green Hills Supermarket, at 1140 East Altamonte Drive, Altamonte Springs, Florida, 32701.

This first one is Zakuson Russian Standard mustard.  It was extremely spicy, the kind of spicy that burns your sinuses more than your tongue.  It reminded me of the hot Chinese mustard that comes in little plastic packets with takeout Chinese food — great for clearing clogged sinuses when you have a cold.  I have to admit, it wasn’t my favorite, but I bravely made my way through the jar.

Here is the Zakuson mustard on a toasted bagel with delicious smoked sable (aka black cod, one of the finest smoked fish you can eat), also purchased at Green Hills Supermarket.  I also added sliced tomatoes and my homemade pickled onions, which are sweet and crispy.  In the future, I would stick to cream cheese for a decadent sandwich like this, rather than a strong and pungent mustard.

The other Russian mustard I bought at Green Hills Supermarket was Uncle Vanya, a small bottle that called out to me because it cost under $2.  How could I go wrong?  It was less intense than the Zakuson, which was a relief.

I decided to use it on the last batch of Cuban sandwiches I made at home, after making my own mojo criollo marinade for some pork tenderloins.  I used a loaf and a half of fresh Cuban bread, and I used up the entire jar of Uncle Vanya mustard, spreading it on both sides of the bread.  

These turned out to be some fine Cubanos!  Of course I used Grillo’s pickles, which I reviewed back in 2020.

Next up, I did a scientific taste test of four more mustards: three I like quite a bit, and one that was new to me.  I call this segment DARE TO COMPARE.

First up is Burman’s horseradish mustard, a pretty standard and budget-priced selection available at Aldi, great on hot dogs and most sandwiches.  It might be a rebranded private label version of Gulden’s horseradish mustard, given the similar shape of the bottles:

Next up is Ba-Tampte delicatessen style mustard, a classic and one of my all-time favorite mustards.  This is available at most Publix supermarkets for $2.99.  Just be aware that they keep it near the deli and not in the mustard section in the condiment aisle.  It is so delicious on anything, and I always recommend it highly.   As good as it is on hot dogs and conventional sandwiches, you might weep if you can get your hands on some good corned beef, pastrami, or tongue and apply a liberal schmear of Ba-Tampte.   Of course rye bread would be the industry standard here, but if you know someone who can hook you up with club rolls, you’ll never want your pastrami on rye again.

I also highly recommend Boar’s Head delicatessen style mustard, which is made with white wine and horseradish.  It is also available near the deli at Publix, and one of my favorite local delis in the Orlando area, Pickles New York Delicatessen in Longwood, is classy enough to put bottles of this on every table.  It is like a cross between a standard deli mustard and a dijon, and it’s absolutely delicious — tangy with a subtle acidic sweetness I attribute to the white wine.  Bottles usually cost around $4 because Boar’s Head products aren’t cheap, but I think I grabbed this one on sale for $3.50. 

And the new one (at least for me) was Kosciusko original spicy brown mustard.  I actually bought this one at Green Hills Supermarket too, despite it being an American product (and not Australian, as the name would have made me guess).  It is actually owned by mustard mega-conglomerate Plochman’s!   
Kosciusko is very similar to the Gulden’s spicy brown mustard my dad always kept in our house growing up, but maybe a touch creamier?  Despite “spicy” being in the description, it probably had the least zing of the four.  Still good, though.  I would consider it a solid all-purpose, everyday mustard.

I had these with a Gabila’s potato knish, which are my favorite knishes.  For the uninitiated, knishes are seasoned mashed potatoes that are baked — or in Gabila’s case, fried — in a pastry crust.  There was a fire at the Gabila’s factory back in 2013, and  I still remember multiple articles being written about the cataclysmic knish shortage, stirring up tsuris among fellow fressers and affiliated altacockers alike.  But luckily, just like the Fox’s U-Bet syrup empire, Gabila’s bounced back.  A lot of delis serve these knishes because they are such a high-quality product with a lot of history, but now you can buy a box of four frozen Gabila’s knishes at Publix, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.  They are one of my favorite ways to eat potatoes, and considering I also write potato chip reviews, I don’t say that lightly.

Here are the frozen knishes:

I very scientifically heated up one knish, cut it into quarters, and enjoyed it with each of the four mustards.  I am pleased to say that unlike sports, where there is generally always a winner and a loser, in this DARE TO COMPARE even, all of these mustards were winners, and I was the biggest winner of all.   
I would strongly recommend any of these four mustards for any of your dipping, spreading, or seasoning needs, especially if you’re mostly used to plain yellow mustards or just standard dijon when you’re feeling fancy.

So when you’re grilling out on Memorial Day weekend (please don’t call it “barbecuing” unless you’re smoking meats low and slow; that’s a pet peeve of mine), please consider some of these magical mustards for your condiment needs, and you too will conclude that they cut the mustard!

Chain Reactions: Buc-ee’s

We were somewhere around DeLand on the edge of I-4 East when the Beaver Nuggets began to take hold.  Luckily, Doctor Professor Ma’am and I didn’t encounter any bats on our drive to or from Daytona Beach, but we shared a truly exhausting, truly American experience at Buc-ee’s (https://buc-ees.com/), the colossal convenience store just off I-95, a unique shopping experience as vast, overwhelming, and occasionally maddening as its home state of Texas.

Imagine Wawa, Cracker Barrel, and Walmart Supercenter twisted into a sweaty, throbbing throuple, and that comes close, but still doesn’t quite capture the sensory overload of Buc-ee’s.  I counted 43 locations on the website, but there are only two in Florida, both new: off the highway in Daytona Beach and St. Augustine.  We didn’t even bother to fill up the car with gas there, given the surprising crowd at lunchtime on a Friday.  Instead, we hustled inside to see what food and snacks awaited us in the sprawling superstore.

They say everything is bigger in Texas: the deserts, the hats, the trucks, the cattle, the churches, the guns, the belt buckles, and unfortunately the intolerance (see recent news for far too many examples).  Well, Buc-ee’s goes big in every way as well.  Once we made our way through sections of the store devoted to kitschy casual clothing, folksy home décor, and touristy novelties (the “schlock and awe” department), we made it to the the real draws: stacks and stacks of snacks and snacks.

Here is the wall of jerky, which is the kind of wall Texas should focus on building.  There is also a jerky counter, where you can get any of the jerky varieties you want, by the pound.  It was easier and faster to grab bags off the wall for $7.99 each.   

I chose cherry maple, Bohemian garlic, and sweet and spicy beef jerky.  So far, the cherry maple was disappointingly bland, but the Bohemian garlic was packed with strong, garlicky flavor.

Doctor Professor Ma’am is more of a fan of gummy candy, and she was faced with overwhelming options, here at the wall of gummies. 

She went with hot cinnamon gummy bears (I think that smell, taste, and texture are all gross, but more for her!) and chamoy-flavored peach rings, pictured below with three different flavors of Rice Krispy Treats she chose (regular, salted caramel, and “Fruity”), plus fried pecans.

I’m not really into nuts.  I just buy them for her, and I almost never snack on them myself.  But when we busted into these fried pecans back at home, all I could say was “GOOD LORD.”  Even with the hell-squirrel armed with a sharp fork on the bag, “GOOD LORD” is the appropriate response.  I couldn’t believe how good they were.  At $14.99, that was the most expensive single item we bought, but it is a good-sized bag, and they are so rich, they should last quite a while.

As an unabashed fan and collector of condiments, sauces, and preserves, Buc-ee’s had a staggering selection to tease, tantalize, and tempt me.

I went a little mad, but we all go a little mad sometimes.  I couldn’t resist (I’m your) huckleberry and blackberry preserves, peach-chipotle and mango-pineapple-habanero salsas, prickly pear cactus jam, candied jalapeños, sweet and spicy ghost pepper hot sauce, and pickled quail eggs!

I fully admit I haven’t tried most of these yet, since our fridge door has only so much space (and it is already stuffed with interesting things in bottles and jars, as one would expect from me).  But I did just bust open the pickled quail eggs, after letting the jar chill in the fridge overnight, and I liked it a lot!  Very spicy and tangy from the vinegary brine, which includes garlic and jalapeños.  “What, you egg?”  [I stabbed it.]

It was even hard to choose a soft drink, with dozens of options.  This is only one of the three huge soda fountain setups.  I grabbed an extra-large cup, avoided anything I could find elsewhere, and sampled sips of the Buc-ee’s-specific flavors.  Favorites included pineapple cream soda, piña colada soda, orange Creamsicle soda, sarsaparilla, strawberry lemonade (non-carbonated), and my big winner, the cream soda on the far right, which I ultimately filled our shared cup with for the schlep home.  Doctor Professor Ma’am said it tasted like pecan pie filling as a soda, and she wasn’t wrong.  It was too sweet to be refreshing, but a very tasty cream soda nonetheless.  We also tried the blue cream soda, which I thought tasted like banana-flavored candy.  She liked it until the chemically aftertaste hit.   We both really wished some of those sodas were sold in bottles or cans, since we would have definitely bought a few different ones to savor later, but alas, they were fountain drinks only.

There were multiple stations to get hot, fresh food, including a station with barbecue sandwiches already wrapped in foil.  I grabbed us a pulled pork sandwich that was delicious.  Doctor Professor Ma’am was tired and hungry by this point, so we split it in the car in the parking lot on the way out to keep hungry from approaching hangry.  Forgive my freestyling, but we savagely ravaged this sandwich, and its richness fixed us from being sad bitches.  The barbecue sauce was sweet, but it didn’t overwhelm the smoky savoriness of the pork. 

There were also touch-screen kiosks for ordering other food, including tacos, burritos, chicken fingers, and a few other sandwiches that get freshly assembled.  I was really hoping to get a pastrami Reuben on a pretzel roll, which came highly recommended, but they weren’t available!  I was so disappointed, which is a quintessentially American take, to bemoan the loss of one option in this land of abundance.  So I chose a “Chopping Block” sandwich that came with sliced rare roast beef, horseradish, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and I asked to add jalapeños for a 50-cent upcharge.  We had to wait a while for that one, since the sandwich-makers were slammed due to 20 busy touchscreen kiosks all beaming in constant orders, but it was worth the wait.  The roast beef was tender, flavorful, and rare, the way I like it, the hoagie roll was nice and soft, and the sandwich was still warm by the time I got it home.   To the right is a chopped brisket sandwich that was also really good — pre-wrapped in foil like the pulled pork sandwich, and mixed up with sweet sauce.  I liked it even better than the pulled pork.

She was disappointed by the fresh potato chips, but I thought they were fine.  Just plain, crispy, salty, slightly greasy chips, as expected.

A fried apple pie was yet another impulse buy.  She enjoyed it in the car (eating it over the open bag to catch the cinnamon sugar cascade), and the one bite I took was really good.  The flaky fried crust was terrific.  We hoped it would be like the bubbly, crackly McDonald’s fried apple pies of our ’80s childhoods, but it turned out to be so much better than those.

Here’s half of the brisket sandwich I saved for Doctor Professor Ma’am back at home, along with a cream cheese kolache (left), a strawberry cheese kolache (right), and a sausage, cheese, and jalapeño kolache (bottom).  Kolaches are pastries that Czech immigrants brought to Texas.  There are sweet and savory varieties, and as you can see, the sweet ones look a lot like danishes.  The sausage inside that bottom one was hot dog-shaped, but much chewier, like a Slim Jim.  It was okay.  The pastry itself is just like chewy white bread.   
I also got a boudin kolache that looked almost exactly like the one on the bottom in this photo, stuffed with the savory Cajun pork-and-rice sausage, but that one didn’t last long enough to get photographed.

They had a fudge counter with nearly 20 different varieties of fudge, all neatly divided into squares.  You could buy any combination of four and get two more free, so how could we refuse?  My wife chose the different fudge flavors, and there is a chocolate one for sure, a chocolate pecan, a “gooey pecan,” a “tiger butter” in the top left (vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter), and a blueberry cheesecake fudge (bottom left).  The sweet fudge lady would cut off little sample slivers, and I sampled key lime pie and banana pudding fudge.  Both were good, but too rich to get entire slices of, on top of everything else.  She warned me I might not like the banana pudding fudge, but I sure showed her!

Anyway, these are ridiculously rich, so I know we will make them last.  We might even freeze some, forget about them for a while, and then have a pleasant surprise when we rediscover them days or probably weeks later.

The very first thing that tempted Doctor Professor Ma’am was a box of six pecan pralines.  I suggested we do one loop around the store first to get the lay of the land before we start grabbing everything, and that’s when she found individual pecan pralines at the fudge counter.  She was thrilled to be able to just get one, rather than a six-pack, with all the other stuff we chose.  I broke off one little morsel, and it was almost cloyingly sweet and  intensely rich.

Since I regularly review chips in my series of Tight Chips features here on The Saboscrivner, I couldn’t resist grabbing a few small bags of classic, barbecue, and hot Buc-ee’s chips.  I don’t know how they’ll be, but I got ’em.   
A sample guy was giving out samples of the barbecue-flavored Baked Chees-ee Curls, the Buc-ee’s version of Cheetos, and they were good enough to bring home a small bag.  I’m surprised Frito-Lay hasn’t come out with a barbecue Cheetos flavor, in all these decades.

And we couldn’t go all the way to Buc-ee’s without grabbing a bag of Beaver Nuggets, one of the most famous (infamous?) and recommended snacks from fellow travelers.  These things are unbelievably good.  Crunchy, toffee-sweet, buttery, salty.  Imagine Corn Pops cereal, but a million times better in every possible way.  Neither of us had ever tried them before, but I figured she would love them, and I was right.  As for me, I can eat a whole bag of chips standing up in my kitchen without even thinking about what I’m doing, but the Beaver Nuggets are so much richer, heavier, and more substantial than chips, I was perfectly content after just crunching on a few of them. 
The Buc-ee’s Nug-ees on the right are a “Bold ‘n’ Spicy” version of the sweet, crunchy Beaver Nuggets.  Their texture is softer, though — more like puffy Cheez Doodles that you can easily crush between your tongue and the roof of your mouth.  They are well-dusted with spicy, cheesy orange powder that is spicier than regular Cheetos or Cheez Doodles, but much less spicy than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.  I can only imagine combining the two varieties in a bowl as some kind of decadent snack mix.

Finally, I grabbed two large boudain [sp] sausage links from a freezer case, and I got the small package of sliced smoked venison sausage at the jerky counter.  Those were $5 and $4.40 respectively — cheaper than I expected.  I haven’t tried them yet, but my hopes are high.

Our first trip to Buc-ee’s was both physically and mentally draining.  It is a lot to process, and if you arrive hungry and like to try new foods and snacks, you can get yourself in a bit of trouble there, as we did.  But it’s such an overwhelming experience, somewhere between the food halls in cosmopolitan cities like Philadelphia or Seattle and a Southern Walmart on Black Friday.  I suspect that if we ever return, the novelty and mystery will have worn off, so we can quickly grab a few favorites and rush out, without feeling the need to see and try everything, like we did this time.  Trader Joe’s definitely feels like that now, after breaking the bank on my first-ever visit so many years ago, but now just running in and out for a few staples while dodging the mobs.  Novelty fades.  Newness wears off.  That’s why I constantly seek it out and share it here, with YOU.

But beyond the novelty of new sandwiches, snacks, and sodas, Buc-ee’s also felt like the kind of roadside attractions that used to line America’s highways and byways — bemusement parks that drew cross-sections of society away from their homes and out of their cars, those in-between places that made the journey so much more interesting (and often weirder) than the destination, before every highway exit started to feature the same corporate fast food restaurants and chain stores.

Being in a new job in academia where I no longer work directly with our diverse student body, and generally avoiding crowds and social situations for the past two years, this was the most people I had been around in a while — and such people!  There were exhausted families, bored teenagers, leather-clad bikers, swaggering cowboy types, beachgoers, retirees, active-duty military men and women in uniform, actual Goths (in broad daylight, in Daytona Beach!), a guy who looked like Gung-Ho from G.I. Joe, and so many tattoos, with a particularly large amount of spider webs on elbows.  The two of us only noticed one guy in an overtly political T-shirt, and we seemed to be the only two people still wearing masks.  Stefon would have had a field day.  But everyone was passing through Buc-ee’s on their way somewhere, fueling themselves up before or after they fueled up their cars, or stopping to use the gleaming, spotless restrooms (which are indeed glorious, living up to all the hype).

I wondered where that sea of sweaty people was off to, and how many had made the pilgrimage to Buc-ee’s as their ultimate destination, as we had, rather than just a rest stop along the way to someplace else.  Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I can tell you that Buc-ee’s is definitely worth a stop — at least once — but don’t expect to get any rest there.

Grocery Grails: Fox’s U-Bet Syrups

This week I’m taking a break from restaurant reviews to bring back my recurring Grocery Grails feature, where I review and recommend some of my favorite food products you can buy at supermarkets and grocery stores.  In the past, I’ve reviewed pickles and ramen noodles in order to highlight the best store-bought varieties I’ve ever found, as well as all kinds of potato chips under the Tight Chips banner, reviewed sardines in features called The ‘Dines List, and mustards in a recurring segment called Cutting the Mustard.  Stay tuned for more of those, sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos, but today we’re going to cool things down with something a little different.

Have you ever eaten too much, or too much of the wrong things?  I have.  Sometimes you get that feeling where you’re too full and bloated, or you’re an anhedonic altacocker like me and suffer from a bit of acid reflux.  In that case, allow me to recommend the perfect solution for your indigestion: an egg cream!  You’ve probably heard of these delightful, deli-derived digestive drinks before, and I’ve even mentioned them in some of my past reviews.  An egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream, but three perfect ingredients to help you feel better after a heavy meal, and to leave a sweet, creamy, refreshing taste in your mouth: seltzer water, milk, and a flavored syrup.  And folks, if you make your egg creams with anything but Fox’s U-Bet Syrups, you’re not living right!

Fox’s is one of those beloved, old-school New Yawk products that is harder to find these days, and costs a little more, but is totally worth every penny.  Founded in Brooklyn in 1895 by H. Fox & Company, the Fox’s U-Bet brand is now owned by the Gold’s Horseradish company.  They do not contain high fructose corn syrup, unlike many comparable brands, and they are kosher for Passover.  The thick, rich chocolate syrup with the yellow label is the standard for egg creams, but I would strongly recommend it for any of your chocolate syrup needs: making chocolate milk, hot chocolate, ice cream sundaes, milkshakes, or anything else.  It tastes better than any other chocolate syrups, and definitely any powder mixes I’ve ever tried.Personally, I like the U-Bet vanilla and coffee syrups even more than the chocolate, which speaks volumes about how good they are.  Both of these are thinner than the thick, sticky chocolate syrup, but they are so good. They are harder to find around here, though.  I found the coffee syrup once at a “bougier” Publix than my normal location, and last fall, I was lucky enough to find some vanilla U-Bet bottles marked down for clearance after Yom Kippur at another swankier Publix, so I grabbed them all.  Pickles Delicatessen in Longwood also sells the chocolate and vanilla syrups.

With any of the three, squirt some U-Bet syrup into a tall glass, fill it about halfway with the milk of your choice and stir well, making sure it doesn’t all stick to the bottom and sides of your glass.  Fill the rest with seltzer, stir some more, and enjoy an effervescent, foamy, sweet, creamy, classic beverage that goes so well at the end of any meal as both a dessert and a digestive aid. 

Our plastic glasses have seen better days, after going through the dishwasher for 13 years, but here’s one of the many vanilla egg creams I’ve made to relax after work.  Hey, as a non-drinker, I take my simple pleasures where I can find them.

Last year I discovered a game-changing new product that completely changed my egg cream game, and it can change yours too.  The Polar brand makes several calorie-free flavored seltzers with all-natural ingredients, no sugar, and no gross artificial sweeteners added.  Sprouts Farmers Market grocery stores in Orlando and Oviedo (but interestingly, not Winter Park) sell a toasted coconut flavor of Polar seltzer that is absolutely delicious on its own, but elevates chocolate, vanilla, or coffee-flavored egg creams to the next level.  Think about how good a toasted coconut flavor would be when combined with any of those flavors, but especially my absolute favorite, the vanilla.  Combine that with 1% or 2% milk (which still taste so luxurious to me, after growing up in a house with skim milk, or vaguely milk-flavored water), and your egg cream will taste so much richer and more decadent than it really is.   I buy every bottle of Polar toasted coconut seltzer on the shelf every time I see them at Sprouts, just so we never run out!

Last year, a really good friend visited Rhode Island and brought me back this huge bottle of Autocrat coffee syrup, completely unknown here in Florida, but a standard shelf staple in Rhode Island, where everyone drinks “coffee milk.”  (Yes, it’s essentially the same thing as chocolate milk, just made with coffee syrup.  And I knew about it because I am obsessed with regional foods, especially anything I can’t easily find around here.)   I despise autocrats in real life, and there are far too many of them these days with too much power and control, but I sure did like the coffee syrup named after them.I almost never drink coffee due to the aforementioned acid reflux, but I like the taste of a sweet, creamy, chilled, coffee-flavored beverage.  Naturally, I enjoyed comparing it to the Fox’s U-Bet coffee syrup and using it in some coffee egg creams with plain and toasted coconut seltzer.  I decided the Autocrat works great for coffee milk, but nothing can touch the flavors of the Fox’s U-Bet products for egg creams.

If you read through this review and still have no idea what I’m talking about, treat yourself to a bottle of Fox’s or find a deli or a bagel shop willing to mix you up an egg cream.  You’re not gonna regret this!

The ‘Dines List 2: Mission to Morocco!

Believe it or not, even though we’re finally into October, it’s still hurricane season, so this lifelong Florida Man isn’t relaxing just yet.  I usually don’t let my guard down until we get to Thanksgiving, so I still have a huge stash of shelf-stable food on hand, including plenty of my favorite quick, easy, healthy, delicious household staple, tinned sardines.

I don’t know if my first installment of The ‘Dines List, the new ongoing Saboscrivner feature where I review canned sardines and other tinned seafood, was a rousing hit among my dozens of readers back in July.  Most people come here for restaurant reviews, but because I don’t go out to eat as often as everyone thinks I do, I bolster those with reviews of other foods I enjoy and want to spread the word about in recurring features like Grocery Grails, Tight Chips, Cutting the Mustard, and now The ‘Dines List.  But the truth is, I eat a lot of sardines.  I got into them when I was a poor student, but now that I make the medium bucks in the high-stakes, high-pressure world of academia, I continue to dine on ‘dines because they’re so healthy, they’re environmentally sustainable (especially compared to most other fish), they’re cheap, they’re versatile, and I just like them.  Plus, as a lifelong collector of things like comic books, action figures, and music, I appreciate that there are seemingly infinite varieties of sardines, so I love discovering and collecting new brands and flavors and sharing information about them.

My first ‘Dines List feature, “Canned Sardines 101,” was a rundown of some of my all-time favorite sardines, meant as a guide for the unfamiliar and the skeptical, to ease new ‘dine eaters into those briny waters and introduce them to the tastiest and least-intimidating tinned ‘dines I know of.  But since there are so many more sardines out there, future ‘Dines List installments are going to have themes to them, and this one is going to be about sardines from Morocco.

Why Morocco?  Perhaps the better question is why not Morocco?  Located in the northwestern point of the African continent, Morocco borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Alboran Sea, which is the westernmost edge of the warm Mediterranean Sea.  This geographical area, where ocean meets sea, has a long history of fishing and trading, and there are commercial fisheries all through the region.  Morocco is right across from Spain and Portugal, and plenty of tinned sardines are products of those three countries.  I’ll cover Spanish and Portuguese sardines in future installments, but it is worth noting that due to European Union agreements regarding fishing rights, many Spanish vessels fish for sardines in Moroccan waters.

The first Moroccan sardines I found were from the Titus brand, which most Asian markets around Orlando seem to carry.  These had a very cool-looking can.  I love how sardine can graphic design tends to be “old-timey,” like they’ve had the same artwork, fonts, and colors for decades, or even longer.  You’ll never see tins emblazoned with a cartoon fish shredding on an electric guitar while riding a skateboard and wearing sunglasses and a backwards cap, because there are no focus groups warning the sardine companies they need to be more “extreme” and “totally in your face.”  And that’s just fine, really.

But the ‘dines inside weren’t the prettiest.  This was after I drained the oil, but don’t worry, you didn’t miss much.   

I just threw these over some pasta and didn’t bother to take a picture.  They were okay.  I don’t think I would get them again, but of course I bought two cans of the regular Titus and two cans of…

HOT TITUS!  I almost always gravitate toward spicy sardines, which are either packed in spicy oil or with some kind of hot peppers, or both.  They usually taste better than plain ones, at least to me.   

This can only included three large ‘dines, and in my experience, the bigger ones rarely taste as good as the smaller ones.  They tend to be drier and flakier in texture than smaller brisling sardines.   These Hot Titus ‘dines came packed with some very hot peppers (dry and full of spicy seeds) in addition to the bright orange spicy vegetable oil.

I made the Hot Titus ‘dines into one and a half sandwiches on delicious Deutsche Kuche soft pretzel sticks from my favorite grocery store, Aldi.  I pronounce the brand name “Douche Cooch,” because I am easily amused.  The pretzel sticks are imported from Germany, and I just bake them in the toaster oven at 350 for nine minutes.  They come out with perfect crispy, crackly exteriors and soft, fluffy interiors, ideal for salvaging sardines (or sampling mustards, as in my Cutting the Mustard feature from earlier this summer).I left off the condiments to get their full flavor… which wasn’t much to speak of, even with the two peppers they had been canned with.  I drained the oil, as I always do, but it didn’t impart much flavor either.  That could have been because it was vegetable oil instead of the superior olive oil.  A schmear of mustard and some fresh and pickled vegetables would have helped turn these into superior sandwiches, even with mediocre ‘dines, but I wanted the full, unadulterated Hot Titus experience.

Earlier this year, I found these Brother and Sister sardines at Tima’s House, a Euro-Balkan grocery store in Longwood, which has some neat stuff.  I don’t think they would have cost more than $3, or I would not have bought them.  You don’t usually see sardines in sunflower oil, but I’m a mark for spicy ‘dines with peppers, so I had to try them.  Plus, they were from Morocco!

They were pretty typical-looking large sardines with dark skin, packed in a deep orange spicy oil that didn’t actually impart much flavor. 

I had these four Brother and Sister ‘dines over a simple salad, since I pack a salad in my lunches for work almost every day.  This salad looks like it was more simple than usual, since I just see lettuce and cucumber on it, but I probably splashed on a bit of a vinaigrette dressing.  They were okay.  I’ve made better salads and eaten better sardines, that’s for sure.  The little peppers aren’t very tasty, and they are full of seeds, so I tossed them after taking this picture. 

I don’t remember if I got these Baraka sardines at Tima’s House or at one of Orlando’s many Middle Eastern grocery stores.  Once again, they are products of Morocco, and they are packed in soy oil with chili peppers, so I was on board.  The price was definitely right on these, but sometimes you don’t want the absolute cheapest canned seafood out there. 

I instinctively drained the orange oil before taking this photo, so they weren’t just sitting in a completely dry can:

And I enjoyed them on some marble rye toast with a schmear of neufchatel cheese (like cream cheese, but low-fat, so the cheese and your life are both less enjoyable) and everything bagel seasoning.  The tin ended up having just three large sardines plus the long chili pepper that didn’t taste very good on its own.

The next Moroccan ‘dines I tried were from the Sultan brand.  First I tried spicy Sultan sardines, in oil with chili peppers.  I believe I found these at the Walmart Supercenter, of all places, in the small Middle Eastern food section.  They were cheap, so I figured “Why not?  I’m already in Walmart.  How much worse can things get?”

They were pretty large ‘dines, as all the Moroccan ‘dines tend to be.

I had these on Ritz crackers (the BEST crackers for any purpose), with dabs of my homemade tzatziki sauce underneath each one — Greek yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, salt, and a dash of dill.  These spicy Sultans weren’t bad at all.  They were very meaty ‘dines, with decent flavor from the spicy oil and some subtle heat.  The chili peppers, as usual, were barely edible.  

I also bought a can of plain Sultan sardines at the same time, and my hopes for these weren’t as high, especially after the relative disappointment of the plain, non-hot Titus ‘dines compared to the Hot Titus.

These were even larger fish:

But I worked some magic, following a Sicilian recipe for pasta con le sarde, a dish that includes onions, garlic, fennel bulb, golden raisins soaked in wine, seasoned bread crumbs, the plain Sultan sardines, and pasta — in this case, some perciatelli, which is essentially the same as bucatini (long, hollow tubes).  Of course I didn’t have any wine to soak the golden raisins in since neither my wife nor I drink, so I just threw them in there unaltered, thinking the sweetness and chewiness would bring something nice to the experience.  It was a tasty pasta dish, especially with that fragrant fennel, which is a truly underrated ingredient.  But I felt like it could be better.

In my first ‘Dines List write-up, I sang the praises of Norway’s King Oscar brand, some of the best sardines you can buy in terms of quality, variety, and value.  King Oscars are readily available at most major supermarkets, and I mentioned last time that they are terrific “gateway sardines” for the uninitiated.  Most King Oscar sardines are products of Poland despite being caught in Norwegian waters.  However, these skinless and boneless Spanish Style ‘dines, packed in olive oil and seasoned with chili peppers and tiny slices of carrot and pickle, are products of Morocco, hence their inclusion here.

In that previous installment, I warned about avoiding boneless and skinless sardines.  That’s just a personal preference, but I felt obligated to try these for a more complete feature on the different varieties of Moroccan sardines.  These King Oscars are perfectly good sardines, but they never look right to me without the silvery skin.  And I think the bones add some interesting texture (plus calcium).

I decided to attempt pasta con le sarde again, to do something more exciting with these boneless, skinless ‘dines.  I started sautéing diced onions, garlic, and more of that awesome fennel bulb in extra virgin olive oil, then added a can of Cento anchovies, which I always stock up on at Trader Joe’s, because they are so good in recipes.  (They are also products of Morocco!)  I mashed up the salty anchovies and their oil in the aromatics and kept sautéing until the anchovies completely dissolved.  That added some saltiness and savory umami flavor, which is good because all boneless, skinless sardines are very mild.  (Although these Spanish Style King Oscars are the best boneless, skinless sardines I’ve ever tried, both flavor- and texture-wise.)

Once the aromatics were translucent and soft, I added sultanas (golden raisins) that I had been soaking in white wine vinegar as a substitute for wine, since I learn from my mistakes.  Then I stirred in the King Oscar ‘dines, their oil, and the tiny sliced vegetables straight out of the can, then some seasoned Italian bread crumbs and red pepper flakes, and let everything continue to sauté.  I tossed it all together with some al dente fettuccine pasta, threw some diced tomatoes on top, and boom: new and improved pasta con le sarde!  This was by far the better attempt, between the higher-quality King Oscar sardines that brought their own flavors, plus the can of anchovies, the red pepper flakes for some necessary heat, and the white wine vinegar-soaked golden raisins for sweetness and tartness.  I’ve never seen this pasta dish on a restaurant menu anywhere, but I am  obsessed with it now.

A long time ago, I bought a can of Alshark sardines from a Middle Eastern grocery store and thought they were pretty good, so I tracked down another can for the purposes of this review, since they are also Moroccan.  

This was the only sardine can I had trouble fully opening, but I was still able to get the four large ‘dines out.  

I ate them plain to really experience the flavor.  These were meaty and pleasantly spicy, moreso than any of the other so-called spicy ‘dines in this review.  I’d definitely get these Alshark ‘dines again.

Last but not least, I decided to try Wild Planet’s “Wild” white anchovies, another product of Morocco.  These are totally different from the salt-cured anchovies most people are familiar with, like the Cento anchovies shown above, which are one of my secret weapons when cooking.  These are more like typical tinned sardines than super-salty brown anchovy filets.  

White anchovies like this are popular in tapas dishes in Spain, where they are called boquerones.  I ate these straight out of the can after draining the oil because I had never had boquerones before, and they were okay.  Pretty plain and bland, like Wild Planet sardines I’ve tried before.  Despite the name of the company, there wasn’t much “wild” about their flavor.  Unfortunately I bought these at Costco, so I have four more cans to get through.  I will definitely jazz them up with more exciting recipes and serving methods to make them more interesting in the future.

So here ends our Mission to Morocco, the second of hopefully many ‘Dines List features right here on The Saboscrivner.  Expect to learn all about sardines from Spain, Portugal, and other parts unknown in the months (and years) to come, but at least I got this one out before hurricane season is over, just in case it inspires anyone to stock up on some sardines.

As always, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, let me know what you try and if you like them or not, and if there are other sardines or tinned seafood you recommend.  I’m always happy to take requests and accept freebies, especially if any of you jet-setters travel to Europe, where grocery stores have mythical aisles of nothing but fancy tinned seafood.  But in the meantime, I’ll be on the hunt (or more accurately, gone fishin’) in Orlando’s many supermarkets and international grocery stores as a connoisseur of the canned, a professor of the preserved, the dean of sardines.