The Pizza Underground
One of the most curious additions to the 2014 edition of the NXNE festival was The Pizza Underground, a band who take the songs of The Velvet Underground and change the lyrics so the songs are all pizza-themed.
It is… interesting.
Sarah managed to speak to the band about all things pizza.
To read her story head over to Huffington Post Music Canada by clicking here.
Filed under Food, Music, Shameless Promotion
Supreme Tostada Nacho from Nacho Daddy Downtown
I love nachos. But sometimes I forget which places have awesome nachos and which places suck. So I’ve started keeping track of them…
Restaurant:
Nacho Daddy Downtown
Location:
113 N. 4th Street
Las Vegas, NV 89101
Price:
$12.95. Normally this would feel a touch high for nachos, but it’s fair to maybe even on the low end for Vegas.
Size:
Solid meal for one person, dignified snack for two and a welcome reprieve from the unnaturally humongous “American” portions we experienced at some of our other meals.
Presentation:
Straight off the iron skillet has a certain charm. And layering Queso, then sour cream then all the other stuff on top was a good look.
Ingredients:
Beef, Mexican cheese blend, yellow Queso, refried beans, Pico de Gallo, fried jalapenos, avocado lime salsita, sour cream, guacamole, corn chips.
There was also enough of everything that you didn’t have to ration ingredients or risk suffering the dreaded plain chip finish.
Taste:
If there’s a Platonic ideal for nachos, the Supreme Tostada Nacho approaches it. Classic ingredients cheese, beans, salsa and guacamole… and they all co-mingle exactly as you’d hoped they would.
Craftsmanship:
There was a bit of barren chip deep in the heart of the nacho mound, but attention had clearly been paid to pile things on in a systematic manner. Considering the place is called Nacho Daddy and they had a number of other more exotic nacho forms on the menu it was easy to trust our food was in the hands of people who knew their way around a corn chip.
The Supreme Tostada Nacho from Nacho Daddy
Price: 3/5
Size: 3.5/5
Presentation: 3.5/5
Ingredients: 8/10
Craftsmanship: 8/10
Taste: 12/15
SCORE: 38/50
Filed under Food
There was no Cronut Burger for me.
Yesterday I properly completed my annual pilgrimage to the Canadian National Exhibition to eat bizarre fair foods. Once again it was a full-on adventure.
The marquee attraction this year was Epic Burger’s “Cronut Burger,” a hamburger made from a bun fused from croissant and donut, all with a maple bacon jam atop it. Alas, said maple bacon jam made 223 people ill from Staphylococcus aureus toxin a week earlier and when I went to buy one yesterday it had understandably been banned from sale.
Of note, I was this close to purchasing a Cronut Burger on the day it poisoned everyone into barfing uncontrollably and shitting their pants. That was the same night as the Jane’s Addiction/Alice In Chains concert and as I passed through the Ex to go to the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre for the show I stopped in the Food Building for dinner. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the lineup for the Cronut Burger was too long so I had Jalapeno Poppers somewhere else instead.
I did, however, make up for it by eating some other horrible things which I have photographed and rated below for your vicarious thrills.
Check them out:
Nutella Sweet Potato Fries. For deep fryer food these fries were pretty much perfectly done. There was too much Nutella, though, and I’m convinced this put me into a mild diabetic coma for the next three hours. 6/10
Fountain Cola. The tyranny of Coca-Cola products continues at the Ex. (Try to find a healthy drink. I challenge you.) So we gave in and got that fountain machine refill deal again. First blast was root beer with vanilla. It was ok. 5/10
Breakfast Dog. A hot dog with scrambled egg on it, wrapped in chicken bacon. I’m a bit of fastidious eater, so when food is messy I consider it an insult. For this meal three separate chunks of egg had landed on my shirt before I had even taken a bite. That, and the chicken bacon was gross. 3.3/10
Nutella Jalapeno Poppers. This was one of things I had on the escape-the-Cronut night. The Poppers were standard pub fare, but well done, and the Nutella was more discreetly layered this time. 5. 7/10
Wild Child Kitchen’s Wild Cacao Smoothie. When I was in my diabetic coma I declared we needed a healthy drink. After hunting for ages we found the Wild Child Kitchen, which served up juices, smoothies and vegan dishes. This was Sarah’s drink and it was bammed up with cacao. Too much I’d say. 5.8/10
Wild Child Kitchen’s juice. I had a watermelon/cuccumber/lemon juice thing and it was hella good. Also, as a cost-to-labor ratio, the gals at Wild Child were super-busting their asses to make our drinks compared to the efforts of other vendors. 7.3/10
Corn Dog and Ice Tea. This was also from Cronut night. Standard Corn Dog… 6/10. Fountain ice tea… 4/10.
Mongolian Beef Flatbread. The thing about white people is they’re scared of that thar foreigner food. Like beef, carrots, bean sprouts and onions in gravy on bread. There was no lineup for this Mongolian place and it was great. 7/10
S’more Dog. A chicken wiener dipped in chocolate with graham cracker bits and marshmallows on it. This was wrong. It wasn’t as fundamentally horrible as the Chocolate Eclair Dog I ate last year, it just made no sense. And it was messy. It WAS a conversation piece, though. Multiple people came up and talked to me while I was eating it. 2.3/10
Additional reading:
Things I ate at the CNE in 2016. Bug Bistro’s Bug Dog and Fran’s Blueberry Milkshake with a slice of real blueberry pie.
Things I ate at the CNE in 2015. Including Frosted Flakes Chicken On A Stick and The S&M Burger.
Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2014. Including Cocoa Chicken and the Thanksgiving Turkey Waffle.
Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2012. Including the Chocolate Eclair Dog and Bacon Nation Nutella BBBLT.
Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2011. Including the Krispy Kreme Hamburger and Deep Fried Twix.
Things I ate at the C.N.E. in 2010. Including Deep Fried Butter and Taco In A Bag. I
Filed under Food, Recollections, The Misadventures Of
Cheesy Blasters
Early last year as the show 30 Rock was nearing its final days the Risky Fuel household began experimenting with trying to recreate one of main character Liz Lemon’s favourite foods — Cheesy Blasters.
The recipe was simple:
You take a hot dog
Stuff it with some jack cheese
Fold it in a pizza
You’ve got Cheesy Blasters
We tried to copy this recipe. It did not turn out very well.
Undaunted, awhile back we tried to make Cheesy Blasters again, this time modifying the recipe with one major change: Instead of buying pre-made frozen pizzas and wrapping them around hot dog wieners, we bought a bag of pre-made pizza dough and used that dough instead.
It was… AMAZING. By using the real pizza dough it not only tasted better, but you could structurally engineer something that had better wraparound/pigs-in-a-blanket qualities.
So, to recap, here’s what you do to make rockin’ Cheesy Blasters:
1) Buy a bag of pre-made pizza dough, some hot dogs, a can of pizza sauce and some shredded cheese.
2) Cook some hot dogs.
3) Open a can of pizza sauce.
4) Make a canoe out of the pizza dough for the hot dog, put the hot dog in there.
5) Throw some pizza sauce and cheese into the canoe.
6) Close that canoe’s edges together so the hot dog is sealed right in there.
7) Sprinkle a bit more cheese and pizza sauce on the top of your Cheesy Blaster.
8) Throw it in the oven and bake for about 10 minutes or until the dough starts turning golden brown.
Voila, Cheesy Blasters.
Thanks Meat Cat.
Filed under Food, The Misadventures Of
Shad
The latest edition of my Polaris People column is online over at the Polaris Music Prize website.
Grimes recently told the world she really loves Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I bring this up mostly because the only other person who I know loves Cinnamon Toast Crunch with heartfelt passion is my brother. And he’s basically an aspiring Tommy Chong. So, using transitive properties, well…. heh-heh, munchies, maaaaaaaaan.
To read this week’s column, go here.
P.S. Shad and The Dears got mentioned this week, too.
Filed under Food, Music, Shameless Promotion
I Overcame My Autism And All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder: A Memoir
Risky Fuel 