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| Singapore Nuggets with Japanese Curry and Basil & Cheese Sauce |
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| Sauces - Far left, along side the range of other World Cup Promo from Japan |
Purchased - May 2014 in Hitachi, Japan
Consumed on 5 July 2014 - Nex Mall, Singapore
Calories - Unknown
Price - Free with Nugget Purchase
Followers of my Twitter feed may have noticed that I tweeted last week before leaving Singapore. I had hoped I could have written a review or two in the lounge before our flight to Dubai, but I just couldn't manage it, so that explains the near 2 week gap between reviews. Over the last week and half I've been not only to Dubai, but also to France for my friends wedding, and then after a nice 2 days in the Maldives (which still doesn't have McDonald's), I'm now in Sri Lanka. I was able to try maybe 4-5 reviewable items in France, 1 in Dubai (I passed on the "Ranchero" World Cup Promo, since it was simply a Quarter Pounder with Bacon on a Football bun, and I've had enough of those already) and 2 items here in Sri Lanka, so I have a lot of writing to do once we are back next week. Until then (and since the internet here isn't all that fast), I'm going to do a quick review of 2 more World Cup promo items, the Curry Sauce, and the Basil & Cheese Sauce that my friend Nick sent me from Japan.
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| Top = Japan Curry. Bottom = Singapore Curry. |
I'll start with the Curry Sauce, since I was able to compare it directly to the Curry Sauce that is a regular menu item here in Singapore. Over the last 2 years, I've been able to review a number of curry flavoured items, and they are all pretty much of the Indian variety, with the exception of the single Thai Curry, so this is the first clearly Japanese Curry. Since I can't read the Japanese on the packet, I can't tell you what the primary ingredients are, but I can tell you that this tasted exactly like Japanese curry should be. Whereas the Singapore Curry sauce is clearly "curry" you aren't ever going to find that flavour coming from any respectable Indian restaurant, but with the Japanese one, it tastes exactly like you would get from any quick curry place in Japan. This is clearly because Indian curry is hand made with a number of ingredients which vary depending on the chef, whereas most Japanese curry comes from cubes, so they all pretty much taste similar. As expected with Japanese curry, it wasn't as spicy, and it was stickier than the Singapore dba Indian variant. That said, both my wife and I were happy to find that this was exactly like you would expect to have in a Japanese curry, and the taste wasn't at all bad. In fact, like most of the sauces we enjoy, it worked better with fries than it did with nuggets, but it just wasn't exciting enough to have a high score. Also, not sure what Japanese Curry has to do with the World Cup, but that can be said with a number of other promos...
Curry Sauce Rating - 3/5
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| Since when is Basil served as little black balls? |
When my friend had sent down this sauce, the thought of Basil & Cheese together was mixed, since we recently had a terrible Basil Shaker, and a rather wonderful sauce both sent down from Japan. For some reason, prior to opening the package I had assumed it was going to be a darker sauce, heavy on the basil and light on the cheese. I was a pretty surprised when I opened the packed and found a light coloured, and to be honest, pretty disgusting smelling, sauce within. Just like the curry sauce, I was unable to read the ingredient list, but I would be interested to see how much Cheese was actually in this "cheese" sauce. It's like the took the powdered cheese mixture to some off-brand White Cheddar Kraft Dinner, and mixed it together in some thick, creamy (and slightly sweet) paste. The Cheese Shakers I've had before also reminded me of Kraft Dinner, but at least that had a taste somewhat resembling something that is called cheese. The "basil" in this sauce, somehow ended up being small peppercorn like balls of something mixed throughout. It didn't taste like basil at all, and since the rest of the sauce was just so bad, I couldn't get around the other taste to try and figure out what it was. Normally, if someone goes through the effort of sending me/bringing me an item to review, I'm going to eat it all, regardless of how bad it is. This one just had 2 dips and made it to the trash...sorry Nick.
Basil & Cheese Sauce Rating - 0/5