4/5 Stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟
In a way, frozen meals have vastly improved my life. But in another more accurate way, they’ve broken me as a person, causing me to stand at my kitchen counter in slippers at 9:15 am, taking overhead pictures of Trader Joe’s boxes and burning my tongue on steaming hot food as I whisper to myself “a little sweet, but still good.”
Taste: ⅘. “Philly Cheesesteak Bao Buns” seems like a food my 7th grade self thought glamorous adults sat around eating at dinner parties, while they talked about very elite, grown-up things, like politics and the TV show Nip/Tuck.
But now, as an adult who has been to upwards of one (1) dinner party, I know the menu is more like “a recipe I saw in Bon Appetit and a cake I’m pretending I made from scratch, even though we all saw the Costco container in the trash.” I wish my 13 year-old self was right, because these buns rule and I wish every event served them.
Ease of Cooking: 5/5. Stop the presses! These little balls of Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate are only 45 seconds to microwave and have that signature frozen meal “I’m burning hot on the edges but somehow still raw in the middle.” My compliments to the chef!
Appearance: ⅘. I tried my hand at food photography in this one to show you the inside (feel free to DM me for your next photoshoot, Kellogg – I charge $250 per hour and am NOT fun to be around on set). They’re pretty enough – I wouldn’t get a prominent tattoo of them, but maybe would consider it on a lesser limb.
Overall: 4/5. I love Trader Joe’s, because it’s truly a lawless Mad Max-style land (I haven’t seen Mad Max, but I’m assuming it’s about a mild-mannered grocer with a love of Hawaiian shirts). Trader Joe’s is a world where opposites can not only be forced together into one (like bao and the Philly Cheesesteak or, as I call it, “America’s Salad.”) – but they can be sold for $4.99. I bought 2 boxes.