Tag Archives: shrimp tacos

Back with the Fast Food Round-up!

We are back. After what I think has been almost a year, we are back. At least my half will be. Brian’s half will depend on Brian. He is a busy boy trying to help Obama get his budget approved and working on a cure for Voltronioliosis.  It’s a disease affecting most middle aged guys who were big fan of the 80’s cartoon Voltron.  Every now and then they attempt to call the lions, to form up Voltron, to fight the forces of evil.  Most will contort into the shape of a lion and pretend to leave the volcano and join their brethren, yelling at the top of their lungs, ”And I’ll form the head!”.  It’s never the Voltron that was formed by the cars and planes because that Voltron was just stupid.  You’re either down with lion Voltron, or you may just be a communist.  Anyway enough Voltron, lets get into some food.

We will be doing some updates to the bios and such as both of us have undergone a few changes, mostly involving our places of residence or occupation.  I finally found a way to organize the week in order to continue the quest to sort the garbage from the great food and to also watch our favorite TV shows.  It will probably be mostly me for a little while, but B will chime in where he can.

 I’m starting our come back with a new blog I’m gonna call the Fast Food Round-up.  I love trying the new things that these joints come out with.  Always searching to top each other the Carls Jrs, Jack n the box, Taco Bells, and McDonalds of the world are always fighting it out with millions of marketing dollars.  So a couple times a week, or as often as new things come out, I will try them out and maybe save you a trip to the white throne.  As always here at EMC we are willing to take the fast food bullet for you cause well…….we love ya!

FAST FOOD SHRIMP?

Fast food very rarely goes the way of fish. The fillet o’ fish at McDonalds has been probably the one and only regular fish menu item from a straight fast food place.  We are not talking about the fish fast food places that deal with fish. The long John Silvers and Sonics and any fish and chip fast food places aren’t included in what I’m putting together.  I’m talking the big places like the golden arches, Wendy’s, Carls Jr, the Box, Taco Bell and Del Taco.  For this particular round up we are talking shrimp and the recent shrimp tacos at Del Taco and Taco Bell.  I’ve had both now and, as you probably guessed already, they are not great.  The surprise though was that they were better than I thought they’d be.  Would I buy them again? No.  I think I’d rather be in charge of living arrangements for the homeless people in the Ventura river bed. 

Shrimp in itself, at least to me, is an easy ingredient to make fantastic.  But if not done right, is also one of the most bland and flavorless of those that live underneath the depths. The great thing about the tacos at both DT and TB is that you can make them.  Go to your local store, get a bag of those tiny frozen shrimp, thaw them, put them on a tortilla with some cheese cabbage and tomatoes and then stick the whole thing in the microwave.  Fish is not meant to be a fast food.  I know it, you know it, your mom knows it.  Unfortunately nobody is telling the big-wigs or the small-wigs down at the big taco joints.  These bland, limp tacos are being pushed on the public and all we can do is order something different. On a good note, I do really like that Taco Bell is getting crazy with the sauces.  Their verde sauce is actually pretty good.  I always get extra in case I make a quick quesadilla at home.  It’s a great sauce.  The fire roasted sauce is not all that great, but I like that they are trying.  Sauce is everything in food, especially when your product is frozen then re-heated.

Carls Jr Turkey Burger

The fight to make fast food healthy continues at Carls Jr where they introduced their very own Turkey burger.  I understand the desire to make it healthy, but I think everyone needs to really ask what they are pushing.  McDonalds has really been trying to push the healthy stuff too.   Their oatmeal, which if you had it you’d know, might cause the president of McDonalds to be assassinated by the ghost of the Quaker.  Serve apples instead of fries, have juice available, but beyond that you’re just asking for trouble. The turkey burger I had at Carls Jr was dryer than a Maytag.  Maybe you’ve had a better one, but it was actually removing every bit of moisture from my mouth.  The other weird thing was the flavor of the bun.  It was odd.  It was wheat, but not.  It was kinda like it wanted to be wheat, so it dressed in a wheat shirt, but it tasted like wonder bread.  I’m hoping it was just the Carls Jr I went to.  I’m actually gonna try this one again because I wanna like it.  As someone who is dropping weight, but on the run a lot, I want healthy alternatives.  I’m just not sure its going to be from the star.

More to come later this week as we review the start of Deadliest catch, get back into Kitchen Nightmares, and dig into some Man Vs food. Also we’ll have some new places to eat and we will see what B can give us from San Diego.

It’s great to be back boys and girls.  Where have you been eating?  Send us some places you want us to check out!
Mikey

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Filed under Everywhere

Breakfast at Jim and Rob’s Fresh Grill

by Mikey

We need more places around the area that give us a decent breakfast for a good price, that isn’t fast food and isn’t the highly marketed 10 minute “eat it and then get out ’cause we need the table for the next group” kinda place. I think I found a good option in Ventura that has a simple menu, good prices and fresh ingredients.  Plus, it’s next to a cool little coffee joint called Caffrodite’s.

Jim & Rob’s Fresh Grill – Main St not to far from Ventura High school

You’re gonna have to keep a sharp eye out for them, but they are right on a corner. They look more like a taco stand than a place to get breakfast, but they have great outside seating.  Ventura is a place that’s perfect for outside seating.  The weather changes are, for the most part, very small.  So most of the time you actually want to be outside enjoying a great meal.

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There are no servers here.  It’s an order it and then pick it up kind of place, which means you only have to tip the cooks if you want to.  The food is pretty good though, so you’ll probably want to give them a tip.  I enjoyed my breakfast so much that I gave them a great tip. “Never play leap frog with a unicorn!” Now if that’s not a good tip then I don’t know what is. Continue reading

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Filed under Ventura, Ventura County

Our Own Little Kitchen Nightmare.

by Brian

Mikey and I started this blog mostly because we were bored and unemployed.  Now we’re neither.  In the interim we’ve managed to eat some good food, some not so good food, and meet a ton of really cool people.

Thanks to one of our readers, Michelle of ThePeevery.com, we might even get our 15 minutes of fame.  You see, Michelle is an avid yelper and is just generally pissed off about a lot of things (probably because she’s about to pop out a kid any day now).  One of the things that really got her going was her experience at Mama Rita’s in Newbury Park and the producers of a certain Gordon Ramsey fronted show found her review and invited her to come to Mama Rita’s Grand Re-opening.  She was gracious enough to invite Mikey and myself to the fun and it was all down hill from there.  Continue reading

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Filed under Newbury Park, On TV, Ventura County