When I spotted this Boston Market Pot Roast nestled in the Frozen Food Aisle 12 of Jewel-Osco, I yelled out loud to everyone around me, “Whoa, wait, BOSTON MARKET is still around?!?” Then I yelled it three more times in case people didn’t hear me. (Take it from my thousands of dollars of improv training – the more and the louder you repeat a joke, the funnier it is for everyone.)
I hope we all one day gain the confidence of Boston Market launching a line of Frozen Meals. Not sure about you, I’ve never enthusiastically decided to eat at Boston Market. It’s more like “Well, nothing else is open – I guess Boston Market is okay?” So I’m wishing nothing but peace/love/good vibes to the executives who decided that people are clamoring so hard to eat at “The Ol’ Beantown Market” (feel free to use that nickname, @ Boston Market) that they absolutely have to make an at-home option before protesters take to the streets demanding it.
Taste: ⅖. As someone whose blood is made up of 78% sodium thanks to frozen meals (and 3% potassium!), I can confidently tell you that most frozen foods mess up in the protein. But not here! The pot roast itself is fine. Good even! It’s the potatoes and gravy that are causing chaos for everyone. They’re awful. It’s like baking a perfect, moist chocolate cake, then frosting it with handfuls of sardine oil and Monster Energy backwash that’s been sitting in my car for 3 weeks. Bon appetit!
Ease of Cooking: ⅕. My high pitch scream shattered several windows when I saw this thing needed to be microwaved for eight minutes. EIGHT. MINUTES.
In that amount of time, you could instead raise a calf from birth, enter it in the 4-H contest at the county fair, take home the purple ribbon, wait patiently until the State Fair on Labor Day Weekend, not win an award but have a pretty good time that week eating Fried Snickers and making lifelong friends, and send your beloved cow off to the butcher, as you tearfully wave goodbye and start planning for next year’s fair.
(I think I just turned myself into a vegan.)
Appearance: ⅕. If it’s goal was to look like a microwaved pot roast, then son of a gun, this one hit the nail on the head.
(Sidenote – let’s all follow Beantown Market’s lead here and set incredibly realistic goals for ourselves. My new goal this year is to get overly invested in TikTok drama about celebrities I’ve never before heard of, to the point where I can no longer have a conversation without bringing up the fact that I’m “Team Olivia,” whatever the heck that means.)
Overall: ⅖. This one’s not for me, but I love the idea of B-list restaurants starting their own line of frozen meals. Give me a call when Rainforest Cafe releases their’s, I’m itching for some “Anaconda Pasta” at home. (Is that the best pun they could come up with?)