If there are any weird new fast foods that you would like me to review, let me know.
Chances are I’ve already tried it and can give you a review off the top of my head. And if that isn’t the case, I’m always excited to try new weird fast foods.
Daily Archives: April 17, 2014
Fast Food Review – Domino’s Specialty Chicken
In addition to being a movie lover, I am also a connoisseur of fast food. So I was excited to learn about Domino’s new “Specialty Chicken.”
I first heard about it in this Buzzfeed article, written by someone who hadn’t tried it and erroneously called it “fried chicken crust.” And I realized I had to try it myself.
First off, they have nothing to do with pizza. Get that notion right out of your head. They’re chicken tenders covered in toppings, which include a bit of cheese. They’re available in four flavors: Classic Hot Buffalo, Sweet BBQ Bacon, Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple, and Crispy Bacon & Tomato.
I tried the Sweet BBQ Bacon and Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple. I figured that Classic Hot Buffalo would just be the same as boneless buffalo wings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you already know if you’ll like that. I wanted to try something novel. And I’m personally not a big fan of tomato, so I didn’t try the Crispy Bacon & Tomato flavor.
Appearance:
Here’s the picture that Domino’s food stylists are using:
Here’s an actual picture I took:
So appearance wise they don’t look that great, and they were slightly burnt on the bottom. I don’t know if that’s just something that happened with my order, or if the way they prepare these necessarily leaves burnt bits on the bottom. To clarify, it wasn’t the actual food that was burnt. It was just some burnt bits (most likely cheese) that were stuck on.
But you don’t order Domino’s for its visual aesthetics. You care about the taste.
Taste
The BBQ-Bacon version is pretty tasty. Domino’s chicken tenders (which they refer to as “Boneless Chicken”) are already decent. When you add cheese, sweet barbecue sauce, and bacon, that improves them enormously. We had ordered ranch sauce on the side, but ended up not using it because the chicken, cheese, barbecue sauce, and bacon already combined their flavors perfectly, and the ranch would only upset the balance. I would definitely order this again.
The Jalapeno-Pineapple was amazing. I would say that this is by far the best item on Domino’s menu. You can’t see it from either of the photos above, but in addition to pieces of actual pineapple and jalapeno, it’s covered in some sort of pineapple-jalapeno jelly that’s incredible.
One word of warning: When they call it the Spicy Jalapeno-Pineapple Specialty Chicken, they aren’t kidding about the spicy part. It was fine for me, but my wife found it too hot for her to keep eating. (And that was after her first words upon tasting it were “Holy crap this is good!”) So if you’re sensitive to spicy foods, you should stay away from this. Which is a shame, because you’re missing out.
In conclusion, Domino’s has hit this one out of the park, and I will eagerly order these in the future.
(Until Domino’s decides to discontinue it, because they always seem to have an unfortunate tendency to mess with everything good on their menu.)
Movies We Still Care About – 1984 – Part 1 (A-M)
(For an explanation of this, read the Introduction. Other posts in this series can be found here.)
As I mentioned previously, I am now splitting up the discussion of films for each year in order to keep the length of the posts manageable. This post covers 1984 movies that started with the letters A-M. The full yearly lists will be included with each post.
Movies We Still Care About
- Amadeus
- Ghostbusters
- Gremlins
- The Karate Kid
- Neverending Story
- Nightmare on Elm Street
- Police Academy
- Red Dawn
- Sixteen Candles
- The Terminator
- This is Spinal Tap
Other Notable Movies
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- The Muppets Take Manhattan
- Revenge of the Nerds
- Romancing the Stone
Best Picture Nominees:
- Amadeus (Winner)
- The Killing Fields
- A Passage to India
- Places in the Heart
- A Soldier’s Story
Top Grossing Films (US)
- Beverly Hills Cop
- Ghostbusters
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
- Gremlins
- The Karate Kid
- Police Academy
- Footloose
- Romancing the Stone
- Star Trek III: The Search for Spok
- Splash
Rotten Tomatoes Top Movies
- The Terminator (100%)
- Amadeus (95%)
- Repo Man (98%)
- Blood Simple (94%)
- Ghostbusters (96%
- This is Spinal Tap (95%)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (96%)
- The Karate Kid (90%)
Movies We Still Care About
Amadeus
This is kind of a weirdly structured movie, in that the protagonist is the villain, and the antagonist is the hero. You follow Salieri in his jealous attempt to destroy Mozart, and as the audience you’re compelled by this even as you’re rooting for him to fail.
A lot of the critically acclaimed and Oscar-winning dramas of the 80s have fallen off the radar screen for modern audiences, but Amadeus has remained popular. This is partly because being set hundreds of years ago lets it avoid becoming mired in its own time period, and partly because of the stunning visuals, sets, and music of the film. But I think the stronger reason it endures is because of its universal theme of demonstrating just how destructive jealousy can be.
As an example of how this endures in our culture, here’s a scene from the 1993 film Last Action Hero where the kid warns Arnold Schwarzenegger not to trust F. Murray Abraham because he killed Mozart.
And just for fun, here’s Falco’s song Rock Me Amadeus.
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters combines the Laid-back comedy format that became popular in the early 80s with the stylings and tropes of an action-comedy, and ends up being among the best of both genres. Written by its stars Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, and with Bill Murray ad-libbing most of his lines, it is hilarious while still having a compelling and original story. Of the films to come out in 1984, this by far has the strongest cultural legacy and has achieved a level of Mythology. You can instantly visualize elements from this film such as Slimer, the proton packs, the uniforms and car, the song, and of course, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
As a testament to its legacy, it’s still quite common on the Internet for people to hold out hope that there will be a Ghostbusters 3, even thirty years after the original, when Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray are far too old and Harold Ramis far too dead for that to make any sort of sense.
Side note, my wife and I have had a years-long running argument over who would win a fight between the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and the Michelin Man. I think she’s crazy for even arguing the point. Stay Puft is a 100-foot tall incarnation of the demon-god Gozer. He’s basically Godzilla. While Michelin Man is just a 7-foot tall stack of tires. But that’s beside the point.
Gremlins
If you were alive in the 80s, you remember how stuffed Mogwai were everywhere, and you can recite the three rules of caring for them by heart. The cultural impact of this has faded over time, but it’s a fun movie and worth another viewing.
Also, it contains a rather odd scene where Phoebe Cates tells the story of the worst Christmas ever.
Other Fond Memories
(These are movies that fit the category of “Movies We Still Care About,” but for which I personally can’t think of anything interesting to say. Please don’t take a movie’s inclusion in this category as any sort of criticism. You are encouraged to voice your thoughts on these films in the comments section.)
The Karate Kid
Other Notable Films
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
I think that this is a movie that gets unfairly maligned. It’s nowhere near as good as the other two movies in the Indiana Jones franchise.* But that’s not really a fair comparison, because Raiders and Last Crusade are two of the best action movies of all time. Temple of Doom is still pretty good. I has a lot of fun action and characters you can’t help but root for. I’d say that it’s much better than most action movies coming out today, and is definitely worth another look.
I wanted to embed the mine cart scene, but I could only find it online set to the song Wipeout.
* I continue to insist that there are only three Indiana Jones movies, as I refuse to acknowledge the existence of that alleged film that had aliens, fridge-nuking, and Shia LeBeouf swinging from vines with apes.
The Muppets Take Manhattan
See my comments regarding The Muppet Movie.
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Do you disagree with any of these choices, or think that I missed something? Leave a comment below.
Cinema Badger 