Trader Joe’s Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon
Posted: January 21, 2014 Filed under: Bacon, Meat, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: apple smoked, bacon 6 Comments
God bless you, apple wood smoking process. You’ve done it again.
To date, the only bacon I’ve had from Trader Joe’s has been the healthy, if middling, Turkey Bacon. In fact, so devoted have I been to the concept of being healthy while eating bacon that turkey bacon is the only bacon that I’ve ingested for the last two years. So biting into Trader Joe’s Uncured Apple Smoked Bacon was like a spelunker emerging from cloistered subterranean depths to thrust his head into the sunlight again, like a skin diver coming up for air after a crushing 120′ dive, like Dr. Manette emerging from the Bastille to be recalled to life. It was, to be blunt, really good.
This is, quite simply put, some knock-out bacon. And it’s not like I haven’t had bacon before guys. I was raised on Oscar Meyer brand, I enjoy a slice or two with the occasional Denny’s Grand Slam, but there was never anything really and truly memorable about the long train of sizzled bacon slices that came before. Certainly nothing to make me buy into the still white-hot bacon mania that has gripped the nation lo these past few years.
Folks, I’m telling you this bacon has turned me all around.
I’m going to start out with my one quibble, my one insignificant little quibble, then commence with the waxing rhapsodic. The bacon, as you can see above, is all layered on top of each other – not fanned out as in most bacon packages. This makes it a little more difficult to pull the bacon slices apart – especially considering how marbled with thick bands of delectable fat they are.
Manage to pull off a couple thick slices of bacon, however, and you are in for a treat. The smell, by itself, is enough to get you drunk. It’s almost hard to find a bacon in this country that isn’t “applewood-smoked”, or “mesquite-smoked”, or appended with some other marketer-inflated appellation that means, essentially, nothing at all. Believe me when I tell you that this bacon has been smoked – really and properly smoked. It smells so richly of the savory curls of smoldering wood that you will swear you’re smoking it yourself as you cook it. It smells so good you’ll have to fight off the urge to shove raw strips of meat into your mouth with both fists.
Once your nose has feasted to satisfaction, it’s time to take a bite. Friends, every promise that the sizzle and smell of that bacon made to you the taste more than delivers on. Is it fatty? Yes, tremendously fatty – packing in 7 grams of fat per slice, but it is deliciously essential fat, fat which enriches the smoky meat with melt in your mouth, hug-your-tongue flavor. It is a lot of fat, but that, of course, is God’s way of keeping us from eating bacon all the time, non-stop. If you have room in your diet for a little extra fat, this is a fantastic way to spend it.
It’s all so wonderful, that it’s impossible for me to fully describe to you with mere human words how much this bacon pleases me. To top it all off, this wonderful apple smoked bacon is uncured and nitrate-free. Delicious and nitrate free? What else needs be said?
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, please buy this bacon.
Would I Buy It Again: As frequently as my diet allows.
Final Synopsis: The tastiest, store bought bacon I have ever eaten.
Trader Uncured Joe’s Apple Smoked Bacon – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Chicken and Roasted Beet Salad
Posted: January 16, 2014 Filed under: Beets, Cheese, Chicken, Feta, Meat, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: Beets, Salad 6 Comments
I should replace this crappy picture with a better picture, but why bother? It’s just beets.
Sure, I tried beet salad once. Once. At the time I compared it to gelatin made from dirt, and nothing in the intervene months and years has done anything to convince me otherwise. So it was in a perplexed, slightly surreal haze that I found myself buying Trader Joe’s Chicken and Roasted Beet Salad.
Why am I buying this?, I thought, bemused, as if watching myself in a dream. Why am I paying this quirky sales clerk good money, money which could literally buy me anything, on beets? Have I truly gone mad at last? Sitting at my kitchen table, staring into the unsealed maw of this uncouth salad, it seemed the only likely answer.
I’m willing to admit that I have never eaten any beet and liked it. Certainly not in their rawest, beetiest form. I can boast that I managed to get down about a pint of Trader Joe’s Beet and Purple Carrot Juice a while back, before realizing that, no, this is terrible. Beets really have no place in my life, and I no place in a the life of beets. It’s an arrangement I think we’re both happy with.*
If you, gentle reader, have managed to make space in your heart for this ignoble root vegetable, than you are a better fellow than I, and I would ask you to keep in mind that I’m prejudiced against these things from the start.
This is a terrible salad. I’ve never really had a bad salad from Trader Joe’s, other than, you know, the ones with all the salmonella in them, but their Chicken and Roasted Beet salad blazes new downward territory. It’s not just the beets which are the bad part of this salad, that much was to be expected. The rest of the salad mix contribute as much to this stinker as the beets. It’s as if the salad engineers at TJ’s just gave up while putting it together.
“It’s got beets in it,” they probably said to themselves, pausing to let out a long, defeated sigh, “It’s not like anyone’s ever going to eat it.”
The salad mix here involves a very nice, snappy mixture of greens, but that one high point is defrayed by a couple factors. One, despite being a big 10 oz. salad, there’s not much in the way of greens or chicken in it. Two, it’s packed with a pungent, yet bland fetid cheese. There’s almost as much feta in here as there is chicken. I’ve got nothing against feta, per se, I think it’s a fine cheese, but this particular feta is on the mild and squeaky side. Cheese in a salad should be the highlight, not the grist you have to chew through.
That leads us to the beets themselves. Though unheralded on the packaging, this salad actually comes with two, count ’em two, kinds of beets – red beets and white beets. Isn’t that a pleasant surprise! All too aware that leaving beets in prolonged contact with wholesome food will ruin it, both kinds of beets come packaged in their own individual tubs. It’s these tubs, plus the considerable water weight of the beets, that accounts for the bulk of this salad. Such a sad waste of space.
The beets themselves are typical beets, which is to say: wet, cold, lumpy, drab, unpleasantly musky, and repulsive to the taste. It’s amazing to me how something can be so bland, yet so disgusting at the same time. Mother Nature must have been in a particularly creative and dark place when she came up with beets. It was probably the same day she figured out slugs.
All that said, Trader Joe’s did choose a good dressing to pair the salad with. The balsamic vinaigrette is well formulated, hitting all the rights notes of viscosity, acidity and sweetness. It does a good job highlighting the flavorful notes of the salad while masking the weaker ones. Good, but not good enough to rescue the salad from the beets.
In the end, if you, like all right minded people, dislike beets, then avoid this salad. For good measure, maybe consider avoiding any salads it happens to be touching as well. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind beets then why not eat this, as it appears you’re willing to eat anything.
*I take all this back in the face of borscht, which is one of the most delicious soups in existence. How such a charming son came from such a damned sire, I can’t imagine.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend This: Ha ha ha.
Would I Buy It Again: Ha ha ha ha ha, no.
Final Synopsis: A subpar salad with some beets thrown on. It’s like someone was trying to get fired.
Trader Joe’s Roated Beet and Chicken Salad – Nuitrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Gone Bananas
Posted: January 14, 2014 Filed under: Banana, Chocolate, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: banana, Chocolate, chocolate banana 3 Comments
The serving suggestion involves laying them on top of a half-eaten, non-chocolate banana? You have gone banana’s Trader Joe’s!
Apparently, Trader Joe’s has gone bananas…one bite at a time, which sounds harrowing but, going by the package graphics, actually seems to be quite a wacky adventure. Admissions of madness aside, someone at Trader Joe’s must have a pretty damn good idea what’s going on, because these chocolate-covered, frozen banana bites are delicious. Munch-tastic I might even say.
The strangest thing about this this banana snack is that we don’t see it in freezers across the nation. Covering sweet, frozen banana in a thick coating of sweet milk chocolate is as brilliant as it is tasty but, outside of certain episodes of Arrested Development, it’s rare to see a really good frozen banana in this country. Let’s get on this, America! The Bluth’s don’t have a monopoly on frozen banana stands – they don’t even really exist!
The second strangest thing about Trader Joe’s Gone Bananas is the very non-traditionally Trader Joe’s packaging. The Trader Joe’s MO is generally something austere, psuedo-victorian, and plastered with at least one bit of vaguely congruous stock clip art – an approach they take to everything from minestrone to salmon jerky. This package, on the other hand, is bold, features an honest-to-goodness product shot and a playfully cartoon-ish sock monkey. I keep having to look at the Trader Joe’s label to remind myself that it’s really a Trader Joe’s product.
But a Trader Joe’s product it is, and it’s one of the simplest products they have on the shelf. Exactly two ingredients go into it, bananas and chocolate. Thankfully they decided to go with milk chocolate instead of trendier, and more problematic dark chocolate. The result is a sweet, thick chocolate shell, that gives way to a surprisingly sweet and creamy banana core. It works together so well that there’s no need for anything else – between the two you’re taken on a voyage of mingling, complex flavor with every bite-sized bite.
As the cute name, cute packaging and bite-sized portions may suggest, this is a great snack/desert for kids. The portion size is easy to control and, as far as deserts go, it’s a natural and healthy alternative to more sugary food. The only real caveat? The frozen bites tend to stick together in hard to separate clumps. Letting them thaw a little helps get them apart, but leave them out a few minutes too long and they start to go mushy on you. Get distracted or pulled out of the room and you might come back to find that you’ve got some soft, chocolate-covered banana lumps on your hands.
That said, these still aren’t exactly health food. Four of these little bites packs in 130 calories, 70 of that from fat. In fact, one serving has 34% of your daily saturated fat allotment. That’s not unexpected for something with so much chocolate in it, and all else considered it can still boast that there are only 14 grams of sugar per serving.
Really though, the sell here is on the amazing taste. I’d buy these again even if they were twice as bad for me. In fact, for those of you looking to get really decadent with it, Trader Joe’s has published their recipe for the Gone Banana’s Split – a gooey, sweet mess of chocolate covered banana goodness.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes – these are great for kids or adults.
Would I Buy It Again: Absolutely – they’ve got it all figured out.
Final Synopsis: Who would have thought simple chocolate covered banana bites could be so good?
Trader Joe’s Gone Bananas – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Lemon Chicken and Arugula Salad
Posted: January 9, 2014 Filed under: Quinoa, Salad, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: couscous, pimento 3 Comments
Nice colors. Looks rather like the flag of Sri Lanka.
I’ve always been intrigued by Trader Joe’s Lemon Chicken and Arugula Salad, squatting in the lower reaches of the salad aisle, mostly because I assumed it had a big piece of salmon on it. That particular misconception came about due to the unusually enormous salmon pink bag of spicy pimento dressing that lays, slug like, on top of the salad mix. While there’s no salmon on this salad, what it does have to offer is tasty and intriguing.
This is, as Trader Joe’s itself is quick to point out, a Moroccan style salad. Morocco is home to many types of salads, both hot and cold and beet derived, and while this isn’t a traditional type of Moroccan salad per se, it does bring together many wonderful, traditionally Moroccan spices. These include parsley, mint and smoked paprika, all of which show up along side the lemon zested chicken.
This medley of spices is mixed into a bed of couscous and red quinoa that makes up the unspoken third component of this chicken and arugula salad. It’s anyone’s guess why the grains didn’t make it into the title, they’re certainly the most notable part of the salad. The arugula is perfectly acceptable and the lemon chicken is nicely lemoned, but it’s the couscous and red quinoa mix that infuses it with rich and savory flavors, in addition to adding a little exotic texture. Add to this a scattering of sweet currants, and you’re talking about a complex combination of flavors that could easily go all wrong. Fortunately, Trader Joe’s manages to strike a good balance here. The simple flavors of the zesty lemon chicken and the stridently piquant arugula are foregrounded here, with the other more nuanced tastes leaping out at you from the curtains from bite to bite.
This leads us, as all human inquiry must, to the spicy pimento dressing. My first reaction to this dressing was, really? A dressing made out of pimentos? What did they do with the rest of the olive after they got the pimentos out? It turns out, however, that the pimento is more than just the hilarious name for a specific type of olive stuffer, it’s a little red pepper with a life all it’s own. The pimento is a smallish chili pepper, rather like a dwarfish, heart-shaped bell pepper, known also by the name cherry pepper. In the world of chili peppers, as we all know, there’s no rating so important as your place on the Scoville scale. While the juggernauts of the chili world, the ghost peppers and scotch bonnets and such, battle it out for position Supreme Pepper President at the top of the scale, the pimento suffers the indignity of having one of the lowest ratings on the books, ranking below even the banana pepper. Life in pepper school must have been hard for the poor pimento.
All this means that, despite being billed as such, this dressing is not particularly spicy – at least not in sane quantities. TJ’s seems to be suffering from the same spicy dressing over compensation here as they did with their seaweed salad. The single bag included in the tub could easy cover two to three salads of equal size. It’s a bold paring for such an already complex dish, but the creaminess and mild fire only add to the intrigue rather than detract from it – just be sure to play it on the safe side when putting it on.
On a final pimento note, it is my understanding stuffed green olives are made by a hydrolic pump shooting the pimento into each olive, blasting the olive pit out the other end at the same time with what, I am sure, is a very satisfying noise. While that has no bearing upon this dish, I just wanted to share that rather striking image wit you.
More than anything, Trader Joe’s Lemon Chicken and Arugula salad reminds me of TJ’s other quinoa salad – but unlike that one, this salad fails to fill you up. Once you remove the dressing packet, there’s not a whole lot left in the salad tub – just a handful of knotted arugula leaves, a little hill of couscous and, depressingly, a tiny portion of chicken. If this salad was a little more robust, I’d be a frequent buyer. As it stands, it’ll have to be content to exist as a savory side dish to go along side a larger meal.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, but not as a meal in itself.
Would I Buy It Again: Probably someday, when I’m not too hungry.
Final Synopsis: A savory, Moroccan inspired salad that’s a little on the small side.
Trader Joe’s Lemon Chicken and Arugula Salad – Nutrition Facts
Trader Joe’s Spiced Chai
Posted: January 7, 2014 Filed under: Drinks, Tea, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: chai 8 Comments
We’re either in India, or that elephant is one freaky-deaky hippy.
After rebuffing, then falling in love with, then losing Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend Tea, I nearly leapt with joy when I saw Trader Joe’s Spiced Chai on the shelf. Could it fill the hot drink void in my life? Certainly I’ve enjoyed just about every cup of chai I’ve ever drunk, so it was hard to imagine that a Trader Joe’s tea wouldn’t manage to clear that rather low bar. I’m delighted to report that Trader Joe’s does manage to hit that rather easy target, and earns a few bonus points to boot.
The first thing to know about chai tea is that chai literally means “tea” in numerous languages, so any time you say “chai tea” you’re actually saying “tea tea” and that’s just silly so, you know, knock it off.
Trader Joe’s nimbly side steps this common error by naming their tea Spiced Chai, which is a very deft bit of wordsmanship. They avoid the sort of nit-picky redundancy grammar jerks like me enjoy pointing out, while simultaneously being exactly technically correct (seeing as this is a spiced tea) and drops in a neat descriptor that makes their chai sound quite tasty. I go pretty hard on TJ’s marketing wonks around here, but whoever came up with this one deserves a sweet cash bonus.
The chai we commonly think of in America is more accurately called masala chai, or “mixed-spice tea” in Hindi. Like most folk foods, such as ajvar, there isn’t one official spice mix that makes up “real” chai. Despite that, Trader Joe’s chai mix would undoubtedly pass snuff on chai wallah carts up and down Assam. No sooner do you flip open the box then that redolent, nose-twitching bouquet of bewitching spices bursts out, screaming chai left and right. Trader Joe’s Spiced Chai hits upon all the usual chai notes – cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom, star anise – and adds their own special mix of nutmeg, roasted chicory, black pepper and vanilla bean. All this is mixed into the background of a very satisfactory black tea from the original stomping grounds of masala chai, Assam.
I ran this tea two ways – with milk and straight black. Both ways satisfied. You have to give the bag a good long steep to be sure – at least 6 minutes, particularly when mixed with milk – but once you do the strong, complex spiciness of the chai blooms to fill the cup wonderfully.
The least I can say about TJ’s Spiced Chai is that it delivers exactly what it promises. There aren’t any surprises here, but there don’t need to be. The tea is flavorful and warming, and priced at only $1.99 for 20 tea bags. What more can you ask for?
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes indeed.
Would I Buy It Again: At least until Harvest Blend comes back in season.
Final Synopsis: A great way to get your at-home chai fix.
Eating At Joe’s – Best of 2013
Posted: January 3, 2014 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand 2 CommentsHi, folks. Hiya.
We’ll we did it – we managed to crawl, skip, flounce, trudge and otherwise make our way through to the end of one more year. Congrats, man! Let me be the first to give you a firm handshake and a hearty slap on the back.
I, like you, experienced many new and wondrous things in 2013 – many of which came from the well-stocked larder of our good friend Trader Joe. 96 new and wondrous things, to be exact. I hope you enjoyed reading about them as much as I enjoyed eating them, which would mean, I suppose, that usually you thought they were really good, but sometimes they were just weird, and occasionally there were a couple stinkers.
In any case, the end of the year is a time for retrospection and in that spirit I’ve assembled my Best of 2013 list. These are not, necessarily, items that were new to Trader Joe’s in 2013, just items that were new to me. It was hard reducing this list to a mere 10 items, and many worthy items were left off simply for the sake of space. Nevertheless, I’d recommend any of these items to you with minimal to no reservations. If your New Year’s resolution is to splurge more on food, consider yourself set.
Please, go forth, eat and prosper in the new year!
10 BEST THINGS I ATE AT TRADER JOE’S IN 2013
Trader Joe’s Speculoos Crunchy Cookie Butter
It’s Cookie Butter, what more can I say. Hopefully they’ll come out with an even newer type of cookie butter in 2014 so I can put it on the list again. Well, a new type other than Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter and Cocoa Swirl which, while tasty, couldn’t fill regular ‘ol Cookie Butter’s shoes.
Trader Jose’s (Joe’s) Pizza Al Pollo Asado
One of the most genuine surprises of the year. I have low expectations in general for frozen supermarket pizza, let alone pizza that stunt casts it’s crust for a corn mash. This quasi-pizza was a delightful taste sensation from the word go.
Trader Joe’s Roasted Butternut Squash, Red Quinoa and Wheat Berry Salad
I’m a lover of salads, so Trader Joe’s is something of a Mecca for me. Out of all the delicious salads to choose from, however, I found myself returning to this one again and again. The bold, contrasting flavors and textures made this the salad to pick up when I was tired of “normal” salads. Plus the nutritional profile is nothing to sneeze at.
Trader Joe’s Hake en Papillote
Not just an education in a unique way to cook fish, but a delicious and satisfying entree to boot. More than just a tasty dish, Hake en Papillote was one of those rare meals that somehow transcends from frozen dinner to classy.
Trader Joe’s Grilled Balsamic Vinegar and Rosemary Chicken
My personal most-bought dish of 2013. Nothing fancy, just a workman like dinner for a tired man, but one that left never failed to make me sit up and pay attention to the bright, savory flavors packed in that unassuming plastic tray. A life saver on more than one occasion.
Trader Joe’s Vegetable and Grain Country Salad
I’m still not sure if this is really a salad, but if s0 it was the tastiest salad I ate all year from Trader Joe’s – and that includes the Spinach and Bacon Salad! There’s a sort of countryside simplicity to this salad that absolutely belies the rich flavors and satisfying heartiness you get from it. Another frequent purchase of mine.
Trader Joe’s Cold Brew Coffee Concentrate
The first and only time I’ve had to go back and add an update to a post. I started off cold toward this cold brew concentrate, but a couple weeks of drinking it and I was hooked for good. All the wonderful flavor and caffeine of a bold coffee with none of the acidity. You won’t get it until you try it. Simply smooth.
Trader Joe’s Balela / Trader Joe’s Dukkah
Even I’m surprised by balela’s inclusion on this list. A sort of Mediterranean-ish dip/salad made with whole chickpeas, the mellow tang of this dish has lingered on my tongue for months since I bought it. It’s a little expensive for few ounces you get, but it’s worth it.
Dukkah is the other Mediterranean-ish dip I tried this year that never really left my mind. Where balela is probably good just for a single meal, the hearty nut and spices mix of Dukkah is perfect for any party or big dinner where olive oil and bread are present. Turns pre-appetizer bread into a whole new thing.
Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend Herbal Tea
Like the cold brew coffee, this tea snuck up on me. I may be a little flip about the packaging in my review, but the spicy sweetness of this herbal tea has kept me coming back for more. My little stockpile of tea bags is running low already, and it is with fear in my heart that I await the seasonal disappearance of this wonderful, winter tea.
Trader Ming’s (Trader Joe’s) Kung Pao Chicken
I never knew that Kung Pao Chicken had such an interesting history until I started looking into it for this post. Just as interesting, the way Trader Joe’s managed to make such a refined tasting dish so easy to cook. Like the Hake in Papillote above, this entree may come frozen in a bag, but once you take your first bite you’ll feel like a world class chef.
That’s it folks for me folks, and that’s it for the year. I’ll see you in 2014 – until then, be bold, be adventurous, and try some new things!
Trader Joe’s Ruggedly Adventuresome Cowboy Bark
Posted: January 2, 2014 Filed under: Candy, Chocolate, Snacks, Trader Joe's Brand | Tags: chocolate bark 6 Comments
Well, we’ve seen some good names from Trader Joe’s before, but Trader Joe’s Ruggedly Adventuresome Cowboy Bark may take the cake for over-the-top product naming. Some marketer somewhere is recovering from a spraining their brain muscle after coming up with this one.
Calling a pretty standard chocolate bark “cowboy bark” to begin with is already a wildly out of the box move – it’s not like there’s anything particularly “cowboy” about this chocolate bark in the first place. In fact, a decadent, dark chocolate treat sprinkled with cookies and toffee is one of the harder things to imagine a weather-beaten cowboy pulling out of his saddle bag on the range. Consider that, on top of this, they’ve added not just a self-aggrandizing adjective, but a totally unnecessary adverb as well and you’ve got my attention.
I really wanted to like this chocolate bark -not just because I’ll seize any excuse to buy junk food again and again, but because almost nobody is tossing adverbs into their food titles anymore. Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup is a dime a dozen, but good luck finding a can of Superbly Chunked Chicken Noodle Soup. Who doesn’t feel for the poor, overlooked adverb, ignored step-child of the parts of speech family? Who doesn’t wish they encountered more deftly modified adjectives on their daily errands? I definitely do.
So it’s got a good name – a crazy name, but a good one. It seems like we’re dealing with a shoe-in for next years best of list, right? After all, it’s dark chocolate with toffee, pretzels, Joe Joe’s Oreo Cookie knock-offs, peanuts, almonds and, to top it all off, a sprinkling of salt – what’s not to like?
The problem, as you may perhaps have guessed, lays in the dark chocolate base. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but dark chocolate is not a confection to be tossed haphazardly into just any dish that you’d normally use milk chocolate in. Dark chocolate isn’t just some joke of a candy you can slather on whatever, dark chocolate is a high-yield plutonium warhead to be deployed only after considerable soul searching. Use it too frequently or in too great a quantity, and nothing else you add to it is going to matter. Case in point, despite the tantalizing selection of toppings included on the bark, you only taste two things – dark chocolate for days, and a hint of salt. That’s certainly not bad – dark chocolate dusted with salt is a wonderful treat – but it makes the rest of the bark vanish into pointlessness. If Trader Joe’s was simply selling a bar of “dark chocolate with salty bits” I’d be singing it’s high praises – as it stands, there’s little reason to waste your calories on Oreo cookies and toffee you can’t taste. It’s a pretty good snack, but it’s not going to blow you away, and certainly isn’t worth the money when there are some many other amazing treats at TJ’s.
Trader Joe’s, I’d love to see a milk chocolate version of this that lets the rest of the flavors shine through – until then, there’s no reason to come back.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: It’s okay, but there are better buys out there.
Would I Buy It Again: Not until there’s a milk chocolate version.
Final Synopsis: A great idea, drowned out in too much dark chocolate.
Trader Joe’s Ruggedly Adventuresome Cowboy Bark – Nutrition Facts
Europa ChocoVine – Original
Posted: December 26, 2013 Filed under: Alcoholic, Chocolate, Drinks, Trader Joe's Brand 4 Comments
Europa Chocovine
Imagine, if you will, the taste of dutch chocolate and fine red wine – only blended together into a brownish gray fluid and packaged in a bottle calling itself “ChocoVine”. Can your imagination handle that?. Try again – close your eyes, imagine that crisp alcoholic taste of a fine red wine, then imagine blending that with a couple chocolate bars. Could you do? I couldn’t. So it was with mouth literally agape that I stood facing the aisle-wide display for Europa ChocoVine at Trader Joe’s the day before Christmas.
I really feel like this is an amazing find, if only because it’s one of those products that makes you question your sanity and the sanity of all mankind. It’s the classic case of “A is good, and B is good, so naturally if we just smash them up into each other they’ll be great!” Occasionally this works, occasionally it doesn’t, but just looking at ChocoVine the deck is stacked against it. Using the “judging a book by it’s cover” approach which, contrary to the advice of Levar Burton, I generally find pretty effective ChocoVine does not have a lot going for it.
For one, I have a hard time telling people the name of the product without feeling stupid. It’s the sort of name that feels like it was brainstormed during a marketing meeting between an unimaginative person and a lazy person. “Wait a minute – it’s chocolate and wine? Why not ‘ChocoVine’! That clumsy, obvious portmanteau does a great job conveying our core principals of elegance and decadence, right?” I don’t know, maybe it’s just the stripped down efficacy of the Dutch.
The name is not the first thing you’re going to notice about ChocoVine, however. The first thing you’re going to notice is the bottle. Behind the stock photograph of tulips and windmills is 750ml of fluid that looks, to put it generously, like ditch water. This is a bold move. I feel like normally, in the R&D process, someone is supposed to bring this up, maybe suggest that it’s going to be hard to sell a drink that looks like it was scooped out of a wet pothole. Europa went to market with it anyway – that shows some confidence.
So if you can get past appearances, what can you expect? What, to return to our thought experiment, does red wine blended with chocolate taste like? The answer, surprisingly, is a mudslide. That’s not to say the two taste identical, but they’re shockingly close. This is due in part to the large amounts of chocolate that have gone into the drink, but also thanks to a large amount of cream or, as the website puts it, “the finest Dutch cream”, that goes in as well. There’s almost nothing of the wine taste left in this drink by the time Europa has finished with it. Take a sip and you’ll be hit with a sharp bite, then swept up in a very sweet, very chocolaty liqueur taste, which finally fades into a subtle, almost imperceptible wine tail. It’s enough to make you wonder why Europa is so big on billing how fine the wine is that they’re using. They would be just as well off if they we’re using some of Trader Joe’s two buck chuck. That said, there’s nothing untasty about this drink. It’s sweet enough and chocolaty enough that you’ll be able to finish your glass.
If you’re looking for a substitute for a creamy, sweet, mildly alcoholic drink this would be a great stand in for your Kahalua or Baileys – as long as you don’t mind the somewhat dismal look. Just don’t confuse it for a wine.
*The Nutrition Facts below are based on website data only. There is no nutrition information posted on the bottle so, you know, be a little dubious.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: A good gift for lovers of sweet liqueurs.
Would I Buy It Again: No thanks, I prefer mixing my own drinks.
Final Synopsis: Perfect if you like mudslides, pointless if you like wine.
Europa ChocoVine – Nutrition Facts
Merry Christmas 2013!
Posted: December 25, 2013 Filed under: Trader Joe's Brand Leave a commentMerry Christmas everyone! I’ll see you all next week!
Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Brew
Posted: December 19, 2013 Filed under: Drinks, Trader Joe's Brand 10 Comments
Cool bottle, cool label. The contents? Also pretty good.
Oh wow – just wow. I think I may have dreamed of something like Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Brew at some point, but never did I imagine it would be made a reality. A strange but non-alcoholic beverage, bottled in a giant, green glass jug with the sort of stoppered cork that makes you feel like an old timey sailor, sold at rock bottom prices? There was no way I wasn’t buying this the second I laid eye on it.
Even better, if Trader Joe’s marketing copy is to be believed, this was a product that they felt compelled to make from scratch. On their website, Trader Joe’s states that they simply could not find a drink with enough ginger in it to suit their tastes, so they made their own. Really? Out of all the outlandish products that people might hypothetically be hankering for (pizza bagels the size of a real pizza, ice cream sundae pies, etc) TJ’s decided to hitch their horses to a Triple Ginger Brew? Now that’s a level of unorthodox thinking that I can really get behind.
While I certainly like that Trader Joe’s went and threw the word “brew” in there, what we’re basically talking about here is a ginger ale. A super intense ginger ale that comes in a giant, re-corkable jug, but a ginger ale nonetheless.
Look, I’ll level with you there, they had me at the bottle. It didn’t matter what they put in there, – super intense ginger ale, regular ginger ale, a different type of ginger ale – anything, I was going to buy it. A bottle with such cool, classic styling just doesn’t come along every day. Owning a bottle like this is like getting an honorary degree in Cool from Rad University. Basically, I would recommend you buy this product on strength of the bottle alone.
The fact that a tasty beverage can be found in the bottle is really just icing on the cake for me. I say “can be” found, because you opinions on this brew are based entirely on your fondness for ginger. I really like ginger. I always put extra ginger on my plate at sushi restaurants, I sometimes buy crystallized ginger to snack on, and when offered a choice between a ginger snap and a thin mint I’ll take the ginger snap every time.
In other words, when Trader Joe’s set out to make a super gingery brew, I was basically the target demographic. On the other hand, if you hate ginger and the thought of it makes you gag, you might want to consider not buying this product all that often.
For ginger fans, there’s a lot to love about this drink. What’s particularly nice, is that they upped the ginger flavor, not the sugar, so unlike some other ginger ales on the market, it’s quite mild. This really lets the ginger come to the fore or, more accurately, the rear. A gulp of triple ginger brew rolls quite easily across the tongue, only to light up the back of the throat and tongue with that warm, tingling, searing feeling.
In terms of potency, the brew is almost as strong as Reed’s very potent Jamaican-style Extra Ginger Brew, although it should be noted that Trader Joe’s bottles theirs in 750ml bottles which, at the price of only $2.99, makes it the clear winner – no matter how strong you like your ginger ale. In my opinion, the bottle alone is worth at least that much.
The Breakdown
Would I Recommend It: Yes, if for the bottle alone.
Would I Buy It Again: I might step out for some right now.
Final Synopsis: Super strong ginger ale in a super cool bottle.
Eating At Joes 
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