2/5 Stars 🌟🌟
I know “Margaritaville” has grown far beyond just a hit song that your Uncle Jerry relates to a little too much. But I like to think the Margaritaville Frozen Food line is led by Jimmy Buffet himself, as he methodically weighs out the correct amount of pimentos for the recipe (which is 7) and hisses at an intern to make the oven preheat faster. In my dream, Jimmy Buffet still very personifies the chill island lifestyle – it’s just that when it comes to plastic bags full of frozen appetizers, he is NOT here to play your silly little games.
Taste: ⅗. Okay, so these are good (because, cheese) but the shrimp is harder to find than that pesky little man in Where’s Waldo, a children’s book that sought to answer the question, “What if we made a game that was both boring AND hard?” Where it loses a couple of stars is because my body full-on rejected these. I mean, we don’t have to get into the details (because I write these little reviews for sodium bombs so y’all will think I’m very hot), but 5 minutes in, my guts were like “that doesn’t GO IN HERE!” and back out it came. So, eat at your own risk
Ease of Cooking: -a trillion/5. Like all frozen appetizers, you need a Masters Degree in Biomedical Gastronomy to cook these. But an alarm does sound inside me that it’s only 8 minutes for seafood. In my head, all seafood should be boiled for an hour, because of germs and also just to be sure it’s not going to come back to get you.
Appearance: -two trillion/5. Oh no, oh no. So at first glance, like all frozen apps, these just kind of look like a mini cornmdog, right? Uh, until you zoom in and see the terrible-looking bright red pimentos trying to burst out of the breaded exterior. It gives the horrifying effect of making these bites look like they’re bleeding, like you’re the Freddy Krueger of Margaritaville. (Wait, yes, I would watch that.)
Overall: ⅖. Now look, I know these were in the clearance section in the back of the grocery store’s freezer because people can’t get enough of them – what sounds more appetizing than “Crunchy Pimento Cheese and Shrimp Bites,” except maybe…absolutely anything else? But if I were you, I’d avoid these, unless you’re throwing a Frozen Hors d’oeuvres party for your enemies, in which case, get 2.