Looking for Chai Milk tea with grass jelly: There’s a Taiwanese restaurant In Bellevue named Looking for Chai where everyone speaks Mandarin, photographs of Taipei 101 line the wall, and they have a handwritten menu of about 30 tea drinks written in traditional Chinese before their English translations. When I ordered a milk tea with grass jelly, I realized I had forgotten to specify the sweetness. But the tea was perfect, with an deep herbal flavor barely sweetened and slippery grass jelly that verges on medicinal but exactly as you ... (read more) 5.0/5.0
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Sprouts Farmers Market Hatch Flavored Cheese Curls: Purchased from the grocery chain Sprouts, these crunchy-Cheeto-like corn snacks feature a generous dusting of green chili and cheese flavored powder that tastes different than even jalapeno cheese snacks – it has a more smoky, peppery flavor that reminded me too much of a salsa I might enjoy in very small quantities on a taco, but not one I would eat on its own. Overall, I found the taste to be too strong to want to eat very much of. 3.0/5.0
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Macfuddy Pepper Elixir: Orca Beverage is a wholesale distributor for vintage sodas, featuring the likes of Dad's Root Beer and Bubble Up. I didn't actually know about Orca Beverage until I had already purchased a few bottles of sodas from Uwajimaya, a Japanese grocery store that somehow also features a wide range of non-Asian beverages. They all had a vintage vibe, and it wasn't until I returned home that I noticed they all had Orca bottle caps. Macfuddy has a definite Dr. Pepper vibe but also manages to have a ... (read more) 3.5/5.0
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Hardbite Eat Your Parsnips Lightly-Salted Parsnip Chips: These are literally strips of parsnip that have been cooked in avocado oil and lightly seasoned. Thin and crispy, golden brown (some a little on the darker side, giving it a slightly bitter, burnt flavor), they taste like portable root vegetables and have the distinct sweetness you'd expect from parsnip. I personally like parsnips a lot, but I don't see myself purchasing these again because they were pretty pricy (close to $5 a bag), and I think I still just prefer baked parsnips (not frie... (read more) 3.0/5.0
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O'Food Seoul Sparkling Yuzu Prebiotic Drink: I'm pretty open minded when it comes to trying new snacks, but this prebiotic drink made from fermented radish is simply not good. Its unusual ingredients include radish water kimchi (pear, green onion, ginger, and garlic), and it contains just 1% juice and 25 calories. It tastes like drinking a watery salad dressing, and the fermented ingredients totally overpower any type of yuzu flavor. Definitely avoid. Purchased from Uwajimaya. 1.0/5.0
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Lopez Island Mint chocolate ice cream: We’ve had some hot weekends in Seattle and I had a sudden craving for mint ice cream the other day, so I decided to treat myself to a new brand I hadn’t tried before. Lopez Island Creamery is based in Anacortes, WA, which I only know from PW Elverum & Sun, and makes, according to the packaging “handmade ice cream one batch at a time.” The ice cream is pure white in color and features bite sized chocolate chips (not the shaved chocolate you sometimes get with this classic flavor). It was exa... (read more) 4.0/5.0
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