jhlurie

Hey, change the title if you can think of a way to juice up a Fat Guy eating Hot Dogs on TV.

I believe it's a HFCS/Splenda combo, Jason, like the new Pepsi Edge. EDIT - Confirmed by a very tight zoom on that label.

Three words for C2: "New Coke Again" We had a scattering of overlap between similar topics on these new "mid cal" sodas, so they've been merged here in our "Soft Drinks" forum.

As if by magic, this is now one topic! Mmm, Hot Dogs!

A little digging shows this is going to be a trend. Mid-cal versions of Coca Cola (called "C2") and Dr. Pepper (a Cherry-Vanilla flavored version) are also coming. As with Pepsi Edge... the question is... why?

Edge of What?

Fuddrucker's is somewhat notorious for inconsistency between locations. Years back, when the chain was young, they had tight control. That didn't last.

Think of all the Capellini, Vermicelli, Fusilli and Linguine crying out for consumption! The Rotini, Farfalle, Gemelli, Radiatori, Penne, Orecchiette and Rigatoni lingering uneaten in boxes! The poor neglected Fettuccine... Okay, joking aside, do you ever stumble across "fresh" pasta, or only the dried stuff?

Maybe next year.

How many fruit candies actually taste like fruit? Almost none of them. The fruit slices certainly don't. The main difference between the "good" ones and the "bad" ones may as simple as whether or not the mix of artificial flavors is a bad one or not. Then again, I've seen brands which claim to be using fruit-juice derived flavoring too. Those may be the "better" ones too. They are fairly sugary, but the sugar on the outside of them actually IS sugar, not some syrupy substiture--so it's "real sweet" more than "fake sweet". The inside isn't all that different from what's in gummy bears or Swedish fish, although its a softer consistency. Wow. No idea of the actual brand... but this may be the biggest assortment of these I've ever seen. Lemon, Cherry, Orange, Lime. That's the traditional mix. Okay... now this may be going a bit too far with fruit slices--the "gourmet" chocolate-covered approach. One more bit of Fruit slice oddness -- Maple Flavored!. That ain't a fruit.

Actually, I believe that name came from a DIFFERENT kind of candy, although it was also Meg White's last name (Jack took her last name when they got married, just to be contrary). Getting back to the fruit slice debate... I still think they are not all equally awful. We don't all stand at the altar of Manischewitz--in fact, I'm fairly certain that the fruit slices my grandparents always used to buy weren't Manischewitz (neither was the Matzoh--we were a Streit's family).

They got bought, Jason. Under new management and finally abandoning the old label. And apparently they'd grown from the old Sutton Place of those years back in the 1980's, when they were one of the first place in the country to stock Jelly Belly Jellybeans (because Reagan loved them) and by most accounts became pretty sloppy. Although they'd really always been too expensive on "basics", and had that irritating "no prices on the shelves" thing.

Given that the legal battle isn't even over, does that mean we will be treated to a "Restaurant III", where the denouement of this unholy mess is documented for all of us to see (well, at least those who don't already read the NY Post)? Why won't Rocco just go away? Well there is SOME good from it. I mean 52 pages of (mostly) disparaging remarks on the Rock-head and his cronies. We got some fun out of it. Hell, most of the worst jokes in the Hot Topics links during the run of the last "Restaurant" were about Rock-head. The trucker hats ALONE...

Sutton Place Gourmet fed me through 4 years of my life. Balducci's? It just won't be the same. At all. But I will admit that even all those years ago, it kind of sucked to have to flag down an employee to ask a price... And I NEVER bought stuff like Orange Juice or milk from them. Ever.

Yeah, when they were pounding that bread on the rocks back in ancient times, and then were on the run and didn't have time for it to rise, certainly the double chocolate dipping wasn't very far behind...

You wouldn't. But an herb and an actor are not necessarily the same thing.

I spotted this news story and it sort of sparked some curiosity. I have never viewed the guy's show, so perhaps someone can speculate on this trademark he has applied and for and obtained? [crossing my fingers that the links are correct....] Cheers! I'm sure this is the gaudiest cocktial ever.

I like the older entries in the "Steve Don't Eat It" archive. The "Potted Meat" entry alone is worth the trouble of looking. Steve says:

Day 1 Reactions to Stickey's BBQ: Okay, for those of you who are new to eGullet, let me start this off with an adaption of the standard "this is not a review" disclosure which many of us with official sounding titles feel compelled to give when talking about a new restaurant. This is especially important when we talk about a restaurant on it's first day of business. An outfit like The New York Times would be irresponsible almost to the point of criminality if it went into a restaurant on the very first day and then printed a review. But we work in a different mode here, because of the different medium. We can place comments into a context which a newspaper usually can't--time. We can revisit a place and illustrate the evolution in the same format as the original comments--this thread--whereas a newspaper review becomes monolithic and beyond response. Also, people can debate what we write here, so as well as the ability of our own responses to evolve, your responses are present as well. In short... this is not a review. Let's call it... a first look. This allows me to write with a bit more freedom, since I'm hardly a BBQ expert on the level of Varmint or Dave the Cook--I'm just a reasonably informed amateur. Also, there's another basic advantage to the eGullet approach... we can be cheerleaders without pretense. After a look at Stickey's... frankly I'd love for them to succeed. Stickey's, on day 1, has enormous promise. To me, the base of any BBQ--the platform upon which you inevitably build--is the meat. Today I got to try three kinds of meat--pulled pork, pulled chicken and BBQ Brisket--and all three are very solid. The smoking is almost perfect, and they all had nice clean, vibrant tastes. The first tier you place upon that base is the sauce. The basic BBQ sauce is very good, if a bit sweet for my tastes. However, I know that if you fill a room with 100 BBQ enthusiasts, no two of them will agree on a sauce. But the basic division lines usually seem to form around "sweet" vs. "spicy". I just happen to be a "spicy" person. What I'd hope to see eventually to help address this basic divide is two styles of sauce--a sweet one and a spicy one. Since the sauce is added post-smoking/pulling, this seems possible. Jason's comment, upthread, that Stickey's has multiple sauces patented makes we wonder if these variations don't perhaps already exist, but if so the menu and the help need to specify that this is the case. The second tier on top of that meat base, at least for the sandwiches, would be the coleslaw and the bread. Both are pretty damn good here. The overstuffed "pile high" approach ensures you probably aren't going to pick these suckers up... but that's okay. On to the sides... we sampled several: Texas Chili (w. Cornbread on the side), Macaroni & Cheese, Baked Beans, Yellow Kernel Corn, Black Beans & Rice. Here's the other thing about going on a first day... kinks aren't worked out. Stickey's has been having a problem with their steam table, and the immediate casualty of that was that their Beans and Rice were dry. So if you go in during the next few days and notice that, we've got their assurance that this will change. But there was one thing overall which I noticed about the sides. The ingredients are excellent. The preparation is good. But what I hope to see evolve here is the fat content: frankly there isn't enough. The Mac and Cheese was a great specimen, but I felt it needed to be a tiny bit cheesier. The corn was good (not overcooked--it's a pet peeve of mine when corn kernels are), but needed a bit more butter in the mix. The baked beans were excellent, in kind of a unique presentation which gave them a refried bean-like appearance (but a bit more solid), but might have benefited from some pork or bacon bits mixed in. And the cornbread accompanying a fairly solid Texas chili was great in that it was fantastically CRUMBLY, but might have been even MORE excellent if there were some cracklings or bacon fat in the mix. One thing was obvious from our first day visit (as well as from going last night, when they had an aborted opening due to the previously mentioned Steam Table problems). Tons of neighborhood people in Teaneck are dying for a place like this. It's day one, and the take-out line was huge, and the restaurant itself was at least 3/4 full at all times. We're definitely going back to Stickey's. The base is what matters, and the base was well thought out and well implemented. The service, despite the hectic nature of the first day, was cordial and polite--and I'm sneaky enough to have crept around a bit and watched the help with OTHER patrons rather than simply depending on my own experience. Things are at a good starting point here, and admittedly we've only yet sampled a small percentage of their huge menu. Next up will probably be wings and ribs.

Yuck. And "Heh".

Hey, I actually like "fruit" slices, although I'll admit I didn't have last year's crop. Have they gotten noticeably worse in the past decade? Sure they aren't "fruit". But most fruit flavored things aren't fruit. Then again, I know nothing of these new-fangled blue ones. I've had the classic day-glo orange, yellow, red and green. Me, I'm a kosher Macaroon hater... tastes like sewage. And Soba... stop confusing the new folks here by giving a guy who already has a nickname a nickname for his nickname!!!

Although KT and these folks will both do delivery, and there will be some overlap in both menu and delivery area, I'm not very worried about KT, despite the headstart these Green Bamboo people will have. First of all, she's going to do a greater variety of soups. Secondly, she's going to have a considerable-sized seating area (her big challenge will be to get people to realize that there is a parking lot behind the place). Third, while Main street is a crypt in the middle of the day, it's packed on weekends. These Green Bamboo guys are decent though. It doesn't really have to be an either/or thing.

Let me give an extremely sophisticated answer to that. "Eew."

Good lord. I have to butt in here out of burning curiosity and ask what the other places use in lieu of corn...

8 dogs for 10 bucks? That's a freaking ripoff. That's like... the same per-dog price as they'd likely be individually in the vending machines, PLUS you have to pay shipping on top of that!