Written by TG on Monday, 31 October 2005 at 3:28 pm
There’s rich guys whose only goal is to get richer, and then there’s Richard Branson, a rich guy interested in something other than making more $. Virgin Megastore, Virgin-Atlantic Airlines, it all seems innovative and value-adding to consumers. So now wine, too: Virgin Vines, finally available at yr local boozery, officially aimed at young folk or those who find wine pretentious. There’s shiraz & chardonnay, red & white, $9.99/bottle or $8.99/4-pk of small plastic bottles. And instedda corks, these have cool screw tops you open w/ a pull tab.
Category: drinks, beer & wine
Written by TG on Monday, 31 October 2005 at 10:40 am
Category: Odds&Ends
Written by TG on Friday, 28 October 2005 at 9:46 am
It’s w/ dread that this item about Ben & Jerry’s In a Crunch ice cream gets posted. I mean, right on to B&J for finally intro’ing a new ice cream; it’s been a while. And this one sounds intriguing: “PB ice cream, fudge-covered peanuts, crispy fudge swirl” (sorry, no personal testimony, but jeez, it’s 350 cals-per-serving and horror of horrors, it wasn’t on sale). Peanut butter = trending up as an ice cream flavor, so you might think “hey, what’s the problem“. But hello, B&J already has 2 other PB flavors: Peanut Butter Cups and Chubby Hubby, an awesome contrast of fudge-cov’d pb-filled pretzels in vanilla MALT ice cream w/ pb & fudge swirls. Can one company sustain three PB ice creams? Will the clearly superior Chubby Hubby take a fall?
Category: snacks, ice cream
Written by TG on Thursday, 27 October 2005 at 11:00 am
That Hershey will eventually do a permanent coffee-themed choc bar seems inevitable. It keeps dabbling w/ the flavor in ltd editions (all lovingly documented on NYCE): The revered coffee Kit Kat, the luscious Hershey’s caramel cappuccino bar, and this, Hershey’s mocha almond, a coffee-flavored choc bar w/ chopped almonds. Like its mocha-esque peers, this has a potent long-lingering coffee flavor. Meanwhile, hey look, factoids: In 2004, nearly 1,000 new candy items were intro’d - 20% of all new food prods, sez the Natl Confectioners Assoc. These all moved from the jrs to the big-leagues: Reese’s Big Cup, Reese’s white choc, white choc kit kat, Snickers almond, and most recently M&M Mega peanuts.
Category: snacks, candy, hershey's, choc
Written by TG on Wednesday, 26 October 2005 at 8:50 am
Tea keeps threatening to become the next you-know-what … dream on. But tea-rooms, tea-houses, tea-whatevers are nonetheless sweet, innocuous places that sometimes also serve coffee. So: a new chain, Teavana, is about to open at the Galleria. It’ll serve tea, teapots from all over the world, sushi gear, books, music, but it’s also a tea bar, so you can sit down and have a cup. (NOT “cuppa“! That’s so annoying.) Based in Atlanta, Teavana has 15 stores in GA, calif, fla, boston, chic, & minneapolis w/ another dozen on the way. In other tea news, Tempest, the home-grown tea-er on Lovers, is opening a 2nd branch in jan on mckinney & pearl in the glitzy uptown district.
Category: restaurants, tea, new
Written by TG on Tuesday, 25 October 2005 at 10:46 am
That Choc Factory movie came out mths ago, so obviously this Wonka Donutz bar isn’t brand new. But it hasn’t been universally available (IE, not at my local store). It’s donutty in shape only - not a baked good - but a circle of choc w/ subtle crust & slightly softer fudge ctr. Admittedly, it looks shlocky w/ the sprinkles & stuff, and ok, it’s made for kids. But the quality’s not bad, all choc, none of that dreaded palm kernel oil, tho in the end, it is just a Nestle product and, oddly, made in brazil
Category: snacks, candy, choc
Written by TG on Monday, 24 October 2005 at 11:51 am
They’re calling this Kit Kat extra crispy but honey it ain’t all that extra crispy. More crisp, yes maybe, but extra choc too. To put it scientifically, the wafer:choc ratio doesn’t differ much from regular KK. It’s one big oversized stick instedda the 4-plex you get w/ a regular KK. Formerly a ltd edition (and was it not called “extra thick” back then?), this so-called extra crispy got promoted to permanent status. Methinks better candidates mighta been KK mint or KK coffee; but the biggest disappointment, Kit-Kat-wise, is the fact that it contains a big dose of evil palm kernel oil, highly saturated-&-bad-4-U.
Category: snacks, candy, choc, kit-kat
Written by TG on Friday, 21 October 2005 at 12:27 pm
Bubble tea still hasn’t hit Dallas, but if you live 15 miles N, you’re lookin at 2 new bubbleterias TK in Nov: 1. Boba Tea, next to (and from the owners of) new sushi spot Café Japon 2. Tapioca House, in the Asian shopp ctr on Greenville in richardson. Boba Tea focuses primarily on drinks. Tapioca House, a raved-about chain outa Houston w/ a branch in Austin, does more: smoothies + Taiwanese meals & snacks. Stating the obvious: Bubble drinks, which for at least 5 yrs have been called “the next Starbucks”, originated in Taiwan 20 yrs ago and are made w/ tea, coffee, or fruit drink, ice, & chewy tapioca balls aka pearls aka bubbles. That strip of Greenville is bubble heaven, w/ Boba Latte @ Greenville & Main and some old-school places whose names I can’t recall
Tapioca House 400 N. Greenville Ave. richardson 972-437-3065
Boba Tea 4933 Belt Line Rd. addison no # yet
Category: restaurants, tea, smoothies, new
Written by TG on Thursday, 20 October 2005 at 12:23 pm
Atoning for decades of stodginess, Hershey’s has been releasing new prods w/ a vengeance. None very tasty, but intriguing nonetheless if you’re obsessed w/ new. One kinda-new line of bars has four perforated squares filled w/ sweet goo (most of which have been too 1-D to write about, i.e. “Double Choc” w/ zzz plain choc goo). The exception: Hershey’s Caramel Cappuccino bar. Four squares, yes. Filled w/ goo, yes. But delicious COFFEE-flavored goo. Not only duzzit support one of the foundations of NYCE, but the coffee flavor’s potent & complex, almost as good as the legendary Coffee Kit Kat.
Category: snacks, candy, hershey's
Written by TG on Wednesday, 19 October 2005 at 3:32 pm
1+1=2: Pillsbury wanted to extend its reach (beyond refrig pie crusts biscuits dinner rolls frozen pancakes waffles toaster strudels cookie dough breadsticks etc.) and Kemp wanted to establish a presence outside its hometown Minneapolis. In January, the duo intro’d co-branded ice creams. Now, a line of novelties: choc chip cookie dough bar, cookiewich (like an ice cream sandwich), and ice cream brownie bar, a layer of brownie glued next to a rectangle of ice cream. Frozen novelty confections are said to be the big growth area in ice cream. These looked good, but one bar = 370 calories.
points to the pillsbury/kemp publicist for sending this great jpeg in about 10 seconds flat
Category: snacks, ice cream
There’s rich guys whose only goal is to get richer, and then there’s Richard Branson, a rich guy interested in something other than making more $. Virgin Megastore, Virgin-Atlantic Airlines, it all seems innovative and value-adding to consumers. So now wine, too: Virgin Vines, finally available at yr local boozery, officially aimed at young folk or those who find wine pretentious. There’s shiraz & chardonnay, red & white, $9.99/bottle or $8.99/4-pk of small plastic bottles. And instedda corks, these have cool screw tops you open w/ a pull tab.
