I returned to Orlando, Florida and its theme parks and
attractions after 20 years for a holiday. Going to Florida on holiday is a big
thing for Britons and requires much saving and lots of effort (and lots of
sitting watching whatever Virgin Atlantic put on their little screens). Letter
From America is the blog-based fallout from this, we left the day before
Hurricane Matthew hit and these posts are not meant in any way as a middle
finger to those were killed, injured or even inconvenienced by the hurricane,
we at AFB send our deepest sympathies to you all.
One of the things I was
determined to do while in America is eat as many America-only snacks as I
could. I have a long running affection for British snack food that should show
itself on this blog from time to time, it’s kind of a mix of a hobby, an
interest and a point of pride so I’m always keen to eat other country’s snack
food and see what they have to be proud of. I’m rarely disappointed, even
though I firmly believe that Cadbury’s is the best chocolate in the world most
local snacks are tasty as fuck and this definitely goes for America. this isn’t
the first time I’v ebeen to the USA and eaten all of the snacks but this is the
first time I’ve had a blog to tell you about me eating all the snacks so I made
sure to take a picture of all the noteworthy crap I shovelled into my body for
two weeks so I could bore fictional American readers an Englishman’s view of stuff
you see every day and do not think is noteworthy or blogworthy in any way,
shape or form. So are you sitting comfortably? Then OOOH YEAH! *smashes through wall*
Mountain Dew
Pitch Black!
One of the first things I
was dying to try, we do have Mountain Dew in the UK (again) but we only get the
regular green kind and occasionally Code Red if you go to an import sweet shop,
we don’t get Pitch Black and if there was ever a drink that suited me perfectly
it’s a jet black pop. I’ve decided that it tastes like a mix of liquorice and
Ribena and am sad to admit that I didn’t actually finish either bottle I
bought, not because it tastes shit – the unholy pitch black spawn of Bertie
Bassett and a Ribena Berry being fucking awesome – but because of the… affect
that Mountain Dew has on me, I can’t take a whole bottle of that sort of
stimulant. I do want to thank it though for giving me enough of a boost to be
vaguely alive on at least two mornings, going to a Halloween Horror Night then
a water park the next day? Chug Mountain Dew, you won’t be the least bit tired
until lunch.
Monster
Cereals!
I’m not quite sure what it
says about me but one of the best parts of my holiday was being able to eat
Count Chocula for breakfast every day. For the non-Americans it tastes like
tiny Toffee Crisp bites mixed with shit marshmallows (and milk) and it’s legitimately
my favourite cereal. I do get it imported fairly often but due to that being
quite expensive I don’t get to eat it like it’s just cereal but rather like
it’s a precious non-sustainable resource so being able to just get up, chuck a
pile of it in a bowl and woof it down knowing full well I can drive five
minutes and buy some more was so, SO satisfying. I bought Franken Berry for the
box; I don’t like fruit flavoured cereal, in fact I think it’s a crime against
humanity.
Nestle’s
Mickey Mouse Ice Cream Sandwich!
Please ignore the fact that
I looks like Mickey has just finished blowing Goofy in an alley off Main
Street, I assure you that’s just ice-cream.
Good god these things are addictive and Disney are happy to feel your
new addiction at the corner of every walkway, I spent a lot of money on edible
mouse heads. As I’m not a connoisseur of ice-cream sandwiches, they’re really
not that common in the UK, I can’t say if these are especially good examples of
the genre but they are from Nestle so I expect they are pretty high up on the
ice-cream sandwich hierarchy, what they are is the perfect blend of tastes and
textures for me to want to eat them for every meal, and some days that was what
I pretty much did. Also I just need to show you the awesome Halloween soda cups
available at Disney parks; I would have this as my wallpaper:
Ding Dongs!
Or as I call them ‘Twinkies
for people with taste buds’ – Ding Dongs are superior to those gross processed
yellow metaphors for the amount of supernatural activity in New York in every
way, live with this fact. These are another thing you can get fairly easily
imported and they’re usually available at every convention I go to, which gives
me the great pleasure of asking a nice lady ‘can I have a ding dong please?’ –
for people who aren’t Leslie Phillips, ‘a ding dong’ is ancient slang for ‘a
shag’. Anyway these were another thing I
ate way to many of, but then they’re sold in boxes of 10 and it would just be
wasteful to not eat them all, which leads me to this question: why is
everything in America sold in such huge quantities? Why are all chocolate bars
‘two to go’ and not just, y’know, one chocolate bar? Why are all drinks sold in
30 gallon bottles? Why do you need this much food in one packet?
Giant Pizza
Slice!
I know these are more
associated with places like New York rather than Florida but I wouldn’t have
felt like I’d been to America if I hadn’t had a pizza slice the size of a
cereal box and thanks to the Florida Mall and a place called Sbarro (which I’m
guessing is some kind of chain store that has trouble with the proper use of
vowels?) I got my wish; in fact I had two, because I’m a greedy fucker and
because these were so tasty. Tasty and as you can see from my beautiful photo
taken at the mall itself it was also dripping with grease, it’s nice to see
Sbarro is keeping every American food-based stereotype alive.
Shamu Premium
Ice Cream Bar!
See my previous Letter from
America for the moral conflict brought about by visiting SeaWorld but while I
was there – and specifically while I was bored because a huge downpour and
lightning storm had shut pretty much the whole park – I thought I may as well
have probably the best thing about Sea World – choc ices in the shape of a
killer whale. I’m fairly easy to please really; if you make something I like in
a shape I think is cool I will think it is double awesome. Honestly the ice
cream is a bit brittle, not as smooth as I like in my choc ices but the look
and the feel of biting it mostly makes up for this, though it is very weird to
eat a choc ice off a stick. Sea World, this is as close to a Killer Whale as
you should get.
Starbucks’
Cotton Top Tamarin Speciality Cake!
As proven by the above, I’m
as fond of park exclusive food as I am of park exclusive merchandise and Starbucks
does a bunch of Animal Kingdom exclusive cupcakes, well I say cupcakes –
mountains of pure diabetes is a better descriptive really. This thing was
fucking evil, delicious but evil, it’s a cupcake, with a pile of fondant that
doubles its height, and a chocolate lolly in the shape of a tamarin’s face
shoved in the top by its stick. It is a three course meal and all of those
courses are chocolate, which sounds like something you’d want until you
actually have to eat it, then you realise that death by chocolate is still
dying. Anyway the cake was lovely, the fondant was way too much and the lolly
was nice, made all the nicer by being sold to me opposite the actual Cotton Top
Tamarins, meaning I could stand and make them watch me eat their own face. That’ll
teach them to be cuter and funnier than me.
Brookie
Sundae!
Right let’s talk about
Universal City Walk’s new Toothsome
Chocolate Emporium & Savoury Kitchen restaurant please, because it is
the best restaurant in the Orlando parks and I’m not saying that for hyperbole
or to amuse you, I mean it. In terms of theming, food and especially deserts
there no place nicer to eat. It’s a steampunk variant of Willy Wonka’s (I think
they originally intended it to be a Willy Wonka restaurant) and is just a great
place to sit in, complimented by a delicious menu you really shouldn’t need to
eat anywhere else while at the Universal Parks unless you’re severely lactose
intolerant. They even have two
walk-around characters including the owner of the factory, the gorgeous Professor
Doctor Penelope Tibeaux-Tinker Toothsome who walks around and checks that
everyone in ‘her’ restaurant is enjoying herself on a regular basis, Yeah the restaurant
has a whole backstory (that you can read here)
and it’s all the better for it. The place introduced me to pretzel burgers and
brookies, two things that could only exist in America but two things that are
utterly delicious, above is their brookie ‘sundae’ (again ‘mountain of
diabetes’ is a better term for it) that was fucking gorgeous and just what I
needed after having done two parks in one day with a third still to do. A
brookie buy the way is a cookie sunk into a circular cupcake shape brownie and
is proudly on display at the centre of the Sundae in that shot, they are the
shit and I know at least one of my friends agrees with me, don’t you Simone?
Also this place has the
best themed toilets in the Orlando parks, well it’s a tie between these and the
ones in Hogsmede that are haunted my Moaning Mertle.
Speaking of Moaning Mertle, I have way to many nummy treats for one post so we'll continue this shit tomorrow k? K.
No comments:
Post a Comment