Dang, I need to start being more adventurous when I go to Thai restaurants. If it's a place I've never been to before, nine times out of ten I'll get the pad thai on my first go around. On subsequent occasions, I might try some sort of curry or soup, but I rarely grab appetizers or desserts that I've never heard of. I've apparently been missing out.
So...people seem to be calling these "Thai pancakes." I guess I can see where that comes from. But to me, a pancake is a breakfast food—something carboriffic that you'd eat first thing in the morning alongside juice, toast, and milk. These do have a thin, crispy, doughy exterior layer, but that's just the outer shell.
It would be more accurate to call these "Thai coconut cream pies" in my opinion, because the main attraction here is the sweet, smooth pudding-like filling in the middle of the little dome-shaped treats. It's über-coconutty and utterly superb.
The packaging says they're a good "balance of salty and sweet." Yeah, no. I'm not saying there's no salt in them, but you wouldn't reach for these if you wanted something salty. You'd reach for these when you want a blast of dessert-o-riffic silky coconut perfection—like a coconut cream pie, but better.
There's not much in the way of actual coconut texture. If you're one of those folks that doesn't like the feel of coconut shavings, you're in luck. The custard filling is fairly thick but extremely smooth. The beautiful wifey likened the creamy filling to the coconut version of sweetened condensed milk.
$3.29 for nine kanom krok, which are about two bites a piece. I really wish they sold a larger pack because it took Sonia and I about 90 seconds to demolish this entire box. If you enjoy the taste of coconut, these things are amazing. Incidentally, this was the item my Trader Joe's cashier chose for her obligatory "compliment one of the customer's choices" on my last TJ's run. No wonder. Four and a half stars a piece from the two of us for Trader Joe's Kanom Krok Thai Coconut Pancakes.
Well, this product looks a bit like the recently-reviewed Chicken Shawarma Bowl. It's still a microwavable serving of poultry straight outta the Great White North, but now we've got Mexican-style burrito ingredients instead of Middle Eastern cuisine. Hey, at least we're on the right continent this time around.
And while this isn't the most flavorful burrito con pollo I've ever tried, I'll give it an "A" for effort and a passing grade if you're hungry, on a budget, and/or pressed for time. At $3.49, this product is significantly less expensive than any comparable offering from Chipotle, Qdoba, or Moe's Southwest Grill. It's also not quite as tasty and obviously not fresh, but sometimes those are necessary sacrifices for those of us living life in the fast lane.
Just 4-5 minutes in the microwave yields a piping hot single-serving meal with plenty of chicken, rice, quinoa, and bits of tomato, corn, and pepper. It's not a terrible dish by any means, but it lacks that piquant kick that an authentic burrito provides. We've got some chili powder and chipotle pepper paste in the ingredients, but those flavors are way too faint in the final mixture.
Even if you're not looking for something spicy, you'll want to dress this bowl up if you can with more sour cream and cheese. If you're consuming this product at home like me, it might be prudent to break out some tortillas, lettuce, and salsa and make little tacos with this as the base. You could probably stretch the single bowl to at least two servings that way while greatly improving the taste at the same time.
If I still worked in cubicle-land, I'd consider buying this product once in a while for a work lunch, provided I could slather it with Tapatio, Cholula, or Texas Pete. Let's be nice and say three and a half stars a piece on Trader Joe's Chicken Burrito Bowl.
Never heard of "figo" before, pronounced like "fee-go." Apparently it's an Italian word that means "cool" or, according to Google Translate, "sounds cool." I guess the idea is kinda cool: two desserts in one. One half of the treat is like a Dove bar or what have you with vanilla ice cream and a thin chocolate coating and the other half is an ice cream sandwich.
I'll tell you right now I like the chocolate coated half better. It's definitely chocolate-forward. That coating is rich and full of cocoa flavor. The ice cream is decent, but it could be more vanillatastic...you know with vanilla beans and a heavy marshmallow vibe. It tastes sweet but any actual vanilla taste is overshadowed by that chocolate. That's fine. It still works.
The vanilla ice cream is the same in the sandwich half, but there's something off-putting about the texture of the "chocolate wafers" to me. It's like oddly starchy—almost chalky. Like it makes me want to cough. Even the flavor is slightly bland in the wafers.
If you space out your bites strategically, you can have a couple mouthfuls that contain both chocolate wafer and chocolate coating. The chocolate coating continues to steal the show in these instances. However, you'll still be left with a few bites of nothing but chocolate wafer and ice cream at the end. And I don't know why, but it just feels a bit like fancy Italian sawdust to me.
Sonia entered the room just as she was getting to the second half of her bar. "I really like these cookies!" she exclaimed, in reference to the items I just likened to the byproduct of a high school wood shop class.
"Well, now that we agree on that..." I said.
Despite their shortcomings, the wafers didn't completely ruin my enjoyment of these imported desserts. But would I buy them again? I dunno. I'm on the fence, but the beautiful wifey sure would.
$4.49 for six bars, found in the frozen section. Three and a half stars from me, four and a half from Sonia for Trader Joe's Figo! Half Dipped Chocolate & Vanilla Flavored Sandwich Bars.
