Editor's note - is it mouths? Or mouthes? Mouthi, perhaps?


One of the biggest reasons I bought my house is that there is a Moe's Southwestern Grill right down the street. Ok, that's not true, but living so close to one of the tastiest and fast-growing Mexican chains in America can't be hurting property values. They have an eclectic menu, naming burrito meals after pop culture reference like Art Vandalay and Joey Bag of Donuts, and also have other tradition Mexican and Tex-Mex favorites (your tacos, enchiladas, quesdillas and such). They are basically Taco Bell without the slimy feeling and loss of dignity. Now there are many Mexican joints out there, and as such, many hot sauces that claim to be the best of the best. They claim to cripple your senses and liquify your tongue.

Well let me tell you something - I have been to a few Mexican joints in my day and nothing, repeat, nothing has wrecked my mouth worse than Moe's hot sauce. I just had lunch there and poured on their hot sauce on my Homewrecker chicken burrito and after one bite, it was like the park scene in Terminator 2 when Linda Hamilton's bones get shattered by the nuclear shockwave. I was literally dizzy and had to take off my glasses and close my eyes or I thought I would pass out. Pussy, you say? Please. Hot sauces is like one of my food groups. IO go dairy, grains, fruits and veggies, and hot sauce - on 'em all. I sleep with Frank's under my pillow. Every meal that crossesd my plate gets the hot sauce treatment. But this was unlike I had ever experienced. The Moe's hot sauce was lethal. I seriously thought it was going to leap out of the burrito and rape my taste buds.

I'm putting Moe's hot sauce to the test - far and away the hottest, most pulverizing sauce you can get on your burrito this side of the Ghost Chili.

Am I right?

-Reece

A top story on Yahoo News is spotlighting an eccentric art project being conducted by a New York City artist and photographer of the shelf life of a Happy Meal, by taking still life photographs of a meal she purchased over 6 months ago and documenting its decomposition (or rather lack thereof) on her Flickr account. According to the pictures, the burger and fries have not changed at all - no decay, no mold, no smell, no issues other than "it has become hard as a rock." Sally Davies' Happy Meal Art Project began as a friendly bet - a friend wagered that any burger left out after two or three days would grow mold - but her project is now sparking concerns that McDonald's food is so chock full of preservatives and sodium and chemicals that they would survive alongside twinkies is a nuclear holocaust. A McDonald's spokesperson has fired back, but the damage may already have been done as over 250,000 viewers have seen Davies' project.

Another attack on McDonald's food....what a refreshing take by Sally Davies and the art community. As if Morgan Spurlock and Fast Food Nation and Food Inc and the jackasses at retireronald.org didn't do enough, Sally Davies has finally exposed McDonald's for what they truly are! My God, the scandal! The outcry! McDonald's food - not healthy?? The horror, the horror! Hey Sally - no fucking shit. Welcome to the party, you're about 10 years too late. Of course a McDonald's hamburger wouldn't fall apart after a few days. You would need a death ray to fully obilerate an entire McDonald's burger. Haven't you ever eaten McDonald's before? The shit hurricane starts brewing in your stomach before you can pull the wax paper off. That's just how McDonald's rolls. They make cheap ass subpar burgers and sandwiches that taste great going down and send your asshole into Thunderdome twenty minutes later. It's the unwritten contract your ass enters into when purchasing McDonald's food. You're poor, you're drunk, you're drunk and poor - do you really give a fuck that your sandwich might not properly mold like a sandwich from TGIF's or D'Angelo's?

And guess what? People love it. Have you seen any changes on those "900 Billion Served" signs outside your local Mickey D's? If anything it keeps going up. They are gonna run out of numbers to count all of McDonald's satisfied customers and just start saying "a bazillion, kajillion, fajillion served." McDonald's isn't going anywhere. Fast food isn't going anywhere. So the Sally Davies of the world, keep coming with the ridiculous ways to make McDonald's look like they manufacture their hamburgers in terrorist camps and use Nazi cows. I'll still keep trying to see how many McNuggets I can fit in my mouth without passing out.

 Say hello to the newest culinary disaster - the spaghetti taco. Apparently on the kid friendly Nickelodeon show "iCarly" - 18 yet Carly? - the spaghetti taco is a featured dish that kids go wild for. Thanks to iCarly, the spaghetti is now being requested by kids at dinner across the nation. Facebook pages are popping up left and right to support the craze in Mexitalian cuisine and people are swapping recips for their favorite spaghetti taco dishes and style.

This is what's wrong with kids today. I really never thought I'd start sounding like my Dad in blog form, but what the fuck, kids of 2010? Spaghetti tacos? I think we all just need to take a step back here and consult our pastors and our reverends and our spiritual advisors, because I don't know what the hell happened to our world, but if spaghetti tacos are going to The Norm, that's a world I ain't gonna be living in. I'm not even insulted as an Italian kid, I'm more insulted as a fat kid. Combining two great dishes like spaghetti and tacos is just food blasphemy. It's something the producers of Fear Factor would do. I hate to sound like a gay marriage critic but spaghetti and tacos, they just don't go together. It don't fit. Wavy noodles don't belong in a hard tortilla shell. I don't even think my dog would take a poke at a spaghetti taco I left on the floor for him, and I've seen him eat actual shit before.

If my kid ever resquested this shit at the dinner table, he'd feel my back hand like he was in the ring versus Ric Flair. So, friends of iCarly and other corrupted youths, please stop this madness. Keep tacos and spaghetti separate, but equal.

-Reece

I am a big fan of the fall season. Between football, the weather change, slutty halloween costumes, and all the great autumn beers, I could strongly say fall is my favorite season. I mention autumn beers because it may also be the best season of the beer calendar year. You have Octoberfest, Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale, Shipyard Pumpkin..it is a murderer's row. But something weird happened the last time I imbibed a nice refreshing autumn beer. I popped a Shipyard Pumpkin ale this weekend along with some friends, and noticed that some people were coating the pint glasses with brown sugar along the rim of the glass as you would salt or sugar with a margarita. It was the oddest thing I had ever seen, but apparently this is standard practice for pumpkin beers. So I figured what the hell and ran it on the brim of my own glass. And wouldn't you believe this shit - it was fucking delicious. The flavor crystal combined with the pumpkin ale to create a sugar smooth ride in my mouth and it tasted like an alcoholic sugar cookie. But the more I think about it now, did I just pull off a super foofy move by de-filing my pumpkin beer with brown sugar? You;'re not supposed to sugar coat a fuckin beer. Beer is beer. I have begrudgingly accepted orange slices in Blue Moons and lemons in Sam Summers, but brown sugar in beer now? Have we gone too far? I know I said it was delicious, but I feel like a broke an unwritten rule of Beer-dom.

Brown sugar on pumpkin beer - super gay and lame or just another wonderful advancement in the world of beer drinking?

-Reece

This weekend, on the heels of our report that by 2020 three of four Americans will be obese - I decided to get a head start on those numbers and check out the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival. A feast of epic proportions, the Food Fest gathers 80 restaurants and vendors from around New England, lines them up, and has them stuff your gullet on a beautiful autumn day in September outside Fenway Park. Restaurants all across the area set up tasting booths and give out good-sized samples of their signature dishes, and you are able to wash down those tasty treats with moderately priced beers and wine. Much like my adventure at the Barbeque Beach party, I had an agenda and I hoped to stick with it for optimal fatness and to experience as many delicious foods as humanly possible. Well, Mother Nature had other plans. This last Saturday, thanks to Al Gore, it was roughly 900 degrees out in the fair state of Massachusetts, a bit odd for late September. Phantom food go-ers were dropping like flies due to heat stroke and dehydration amongst the festival. I don't know about you but I find it tough to stuff my face when its a billion degrees out. Food vendors were imploring people to chug water all day so they wouldn't die. Still, the chubbinski inside me marched on, and together with the rest of the Phantom Phans, we helped destroy over a half million pieces of food on Saturday, smashing fat records left and right and making the entire continent of Africa pissed at us. 

Overall, the festival had some great spots, while other parts missed their mark. Here, in no particular order, are my thoughts on this year's Festival....

The Good: Like I said earlier a half million piece of chow went down. I'd like to think I ate most of that, but alas, I probably only threw down a few pounds at best. There is just so much to choose from, from so many different styles and cuisines. Chicken wings, chowder, pizza, pulled pork, ribs, chili, sandwiches, sausage, soup, hot dogs - it was just a stomach beatdown. I honestly thought I'db be able to stick my gullet in everything they had to offer, but with the weather and the sheer amount of vendors, it was next to impossible. There was just too much food. Again, sorry Africa.

Some things that stuck out - the Chicken Bone which had great boneless fingers of buffalo and bbq chicken that were the perfect sample size. The line was pretty stacked at this both all day. Hey - people love chicken. KC's Rib Shack gave out great tasty pulled pork sliders and Jimbo's had great slices of pizza with barbeque chicken. There was tons of pizza - both Flatbread Company and Upper Crust were slinging pies left and right. You can never go wrong with pizza. It's like un-fuckable. Harrow's had great chicken pot pie that was really delicious. When I was a kid I hated chicken pot pie for some stupid reason and refused to eat it. I don't know what I was thinking all those years. I'd like to go back and punch 8 year old me in his face if I could for being such a stuck up weenie.

Other big winners for me - AJ Kitchen's meatballs. C'mon! Who didn't see that coming. This guy loves the meat-a ballsa! Sandbar Grill had stuffed quohogs, which I had no idea what they were but tasted delicious - think a weird combination of crab meat and seafood stuffing with a splash of hot sauce.  And I had never had a Spike's Junkyard Dogs before even after living in Brighton for 2 years. What a colossal fuck up on my end. Great dogs and even better homemade mustard.

- Some things that bombed - seafood just didn't cut it today. Both Joe Fish's shrimp lolipops and Exchange Street's oyster bar just didn't mesh well. I don't know if it was because it was too hot or what, but both went down like I was drinking bad medicine. Also, the Maine Diner Lobster Mac n Cheese didn't bowl me over like I thought it would. Maybe my expectations were too high. But I found it a little bland and unappealing. Probably go better on a plate in an indoor setting.

The Good: So many goofballs populate Fenway as it is  but come Food Fest time, they are bursting out of the woodwork. The event encourages you to dress in purple, but some people take it to the extreme. Purple haired hippies, dudes in capes and Phantom of the Opera masks, there was even an Aztec Gino sighting. But this guy takes the prize:

I have no idea what Mr. T has to do with stuffing your face full of food and beer, but amen, T. I love this shit.


The Good: Reasonable priced beers and alcohol. When you head to Fenway you are prepared to spend a shitload of cash for beer. It's just a law of nature, like gravity or physics. The Fenway zone instantly makes beer triple in value. So it was refreshing that the Festival handed out full 20 ounce drafts at only 5 bucks a pop. Not the greatest price when drafts are usually $3-4 bucks in normal value zones, but for Fenway, I'll take it. The absurdity of being thankful to only pay five bucks a beer is not lost on me, friends. Let's just move on before John Henry and Co. charge me for saying the words "Fenway" again.

The Bad: I find a hard to gripe at an event where I willingly paid good money to attend, and the entire day consists of me being able to eat, drink and enjoy a beautiful afternoon, but I think the Festival sold maybe a couple hundred too many tickets. I mean, we showed up at quarter to 2 (started at noon) and there was a still a huge swell of people looking to mow and chow down. The lines really didn't die down until about 3:30-4pm, either due to food running out, people being too fat or hot to continue, or the event had run its course. By then it was perfect for beer lines, bathroom lines, dessert lines, and optimal people watching. But maybe next time, they cut the event down by like 500.

The Bad: Ok this has nothing to do with the food festival itself, but in one of the Lansdowne bars - Bill's Bar - there was a karaoke event set up. And the guy who ran it was the biggest fucking diva asshole on the planet. We headed in for a cool down and to grab a few non beer and wine drinks and stumbled upon the karaoke scene; now it is no secret that the Reeceman crushes one karaoke song, and one song only - Loveshack by the B-52s. I fucking own that song like I wrote it myself. I dominate that song each and every time I'm hit the stage. All I need is a capable girl for female vocals and it's serious karaoke magic. Like I fully expect to have a karaoke album deal at some point of my life due to my ability to hammer this tune. But what happened when I slip my request to the karaoke MC and get ready to light the world on fire? The fuckin guy gives me the "throat slash"/"party's over" move, saying somebody already requested the jam. And what follows is the biggest karaoke clusterfuck I have ever witnessed in my life - two lumpy dumps hit the stage and churn out the FUCKING WORST rendition of Loveshack that I have ever heard in my life. My soul literally was crying at the end. They missed all their cues, they didn't do the guy's weird half British/half robotic voice, and they basically gave up half way through and let the background vocals and cheesy fake Musik take over. It was criminal. Seriously. What happened on that stage was a fucking hatchet job. I wanted to call in Dexter Morgan for a blood splatter crime scene recreation because the blood of the B-52s was fucking everywhere after that sad excuse for a 'roke.  


So there you have it. The Phantom Gourmet Food Fest as a whole gets a rousing fat thumbs up for this guy. The food, the drinks and the purpling were all top notch. I couldn't have been fuller or had a better time than Saturday's extravangza, save for that karaoke holocaust. The Phantom does it right. Next up is their Beer & Food Fest at Suffolk Downs and you know that's gonna be a sloppy one. And you know I'll be there right in the middle of it.


-Reece