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Food review: Pizza Luce's Molly Bar.
Mar. 12th, 2012 12:42 pmCAVEAT: I loves me the hells out of Pizza Luce. When looking at new domiciles, I specifically looked for one within their delivery zone. Their pizzas are heaven, love, rainbows, and all things good - baked on a pizza crust. They even have gluten free pizza crust and pasta options, which is where our story begins. I normally do not do food reviews on this site but this.. this needs to be done. For the good of mankind.
One of their gluten free offerings is a dessert called a "Molly Bar", which is described as, "Our delicious gluten free and dairy free chocolate brownie."
"Ok, that's possible," thought I, "if they used cocoa butter instead of regular butter and dark chocolate, which isn't adulterated by milk.. Ok. I can see it. How bad can it be?"
Thankfully, right on the heels of that, the cautious side of my brain went, "Bitch, you are ordering one of their regular brownies, just to be safe. Just in case." The Molly Bar is $3.39, a regular brownie is $2.49. While the prices might seem high, let me inform you that by "brownie", they mean "a slab of frosted, baked chocolate heaven roughly 8"x4"." The Molly Bar was slightly smaller but denser. This turned out to be a good thing.
The super perky delivery dude showed up in a short amount of time. Taking bounty in hand, I quickly began divesting the bags of the goods. The first thing I noticed was that the brownie was frosted and the Molly Bar was not. Then I imagined a dairy-free version of frosting and realized why. It looked like a decadent, moist brick of chocolatey goodness. Eager to try this new treat, I unwrapped the cling foil and inhaled as though sampling a fine wine. It smelled of chocolate. Thus encouraged, I took a bite. My teeth met some odd resistance, a chewy texture that was distinctly at odds with "brownie" and more akin to "mochi". "A'ight, they used them some tapioca starch in this bad boy. A'ight, that's ok, that's common for GF foods. I can muscle through this."
I closed my mouth and gave a chew, savoring the bite. Attempting to savor. Only without any actual savoring taking place. At all.
My very first thought was, "If I bite my tongue off at the root and spit the entire mass out, will it stop? Will the taste of horror.. stop?" It is almost impossible to describe the sensation of creeping disgust that overwhelmed my senses.
But I'm going to try!
The texture.. Imagine a bunch of black tapioca bubble tea pearls, cooked past the point of goodness and into gelatinous mass, but properly soaked in a mix of brown and regular sugars. Then, imagine a very confused termite mistaking this mass for wood and chowing down, and for dessert, finding some cacao and carob nibs to nom on. Replete with pulp, our termite wanders down into the very bowels of Hell and finds there a baking pan. Imagine our termite puking up his bounty into the pan and wandering off, leaving it to steam and congeal.
I am used to mochi. I am used to all sorts of random Asian seafood-or-tapioca goo gels/puddings/food. The Molly Bar is a whole new level of "Jesus Christmas, what the /fuck/ is this?!"
The taste.. So, you've gotten as far as imagining a steaming pile of tapioca-cocoa termite puke, right? Now add brown rice syrup. Add to that the most horrificly bitter aftertaste heretofore unknown by the tongue of mortal man. I had to check the label, but apparently the FDA does not require "hate" to be a listed ingredient, nor "the bile of a thousand evil serpents". The entire inside of my mouth was trying to cringe away from this substance, while everything it touched was being coated with some sort of oily, waxy, bitter film. The chocolate was a lie. There was a vague, tantalizing hint of it, but it was totally smothered by the rest of it.
"Well, this is as bad as it gets. Might as well swallow it and get it over with. 1, 2, 3: Down the hatch!" Because clearly, I was so overwhelmed with abject disgust that I was beyond rational, coherent thought. I attempted to swallow it. My throat closed up around it as though to deny passage to this hellspawned, Satanic goo. It took the chugging of an entire glass of water to force it down. I could feel it, sitting there in an oily, waxy, gelatinous lump in my stomach, repudiating the attempts of my stomach acids to turn it into something digestable.
Brushing my teeth and using mouthwash did not get rid of the oily, waxy feel or the taste.
Garling with hydrogen peroxide, followed by salt water, did nothing except add a piquant salted flavour to the horror that had overtaken my mouth.
At that point, there was nothing left to do except injest copious amounts of alcohol until the nasty taste died or my tongue became so numb that I no longer noticed it. A third option was death by alcohol poisoning, and that was preferable to having this taste in my mouth one moment longer.
Eventually, alcohol-fueled ennui overtook me and the sense of loathing slowly faded. I wound up in a conversation with Kel over whether I should call a priest, a HAZMAT team, those nice people who clean up after really messy crime scenes, Mythbusters, in an attempt to rid myself of the remaining foulness - and whether any of that was preferable to cutting it into tiny pieces and freezing it to have on hand when people didn't believe me about the awfulness of this thing.
I threw it in the trash, because lo, I am lazy.
That's not the end of the story.
Something got into my trash and ate it, leaving behind the tattered remains of the cello wrap and product ingredient sticker.
There was a dead, bloated raccoon in the alley the next morning.
It could be a coincidence.
Right?
Right??
TL;DR - even if you are suicidally depressed and your life is made of tragedy and woe, you do not hate yourself enough to eat this goddamn thing! Don't do it. Really. Truly. Avoid at all costs.
One of their gluten free offerings is a dessert called a "Molly Bar", which is described as, "Our delicious gluten free and dairy free chocolate brownie."
"Ok, that's possible," thought I, "if they used cocoa butter instead of regular butter and dark chocolate, which isn't adulterated by milk.. Ok. I can see it. How bad can it be?"
Thankfully, right on the heels of that, the cautious side of my brain went, "Bitch, you are ordering one of their regular brownies, just to be safe. Just in case." The Molly Bar is $3.39, a regular brownie is $2.49. While the prices might seem high, let me inform you that by "brownie", they mean "a slab of frosted, baked chocolate heaven roughly 8"x4"." The Molly Bar was slightly smaller but denser. This turned out to be a good thing.
The super perky delivery dude showed up in a short amount of time. Taking bounty in hand, I quickly began divesting the bags of the goods. The first thing I noticed was that the brownie was frosted and the Molly Bar was not. Then I imagined a dairy-free version of frosting and realized why. It looked like a decadent, moist brick of chocolatey goodness. Eager to try this new treat, I unwrapped the cling foil and inhaled as though sampling a fine wine. It smelled of chocolate. Thus encouraged, I took a bite. My teeth met some odd resistance, a chewy texture that was distinctly at odds with "brownie" and more akin to "mochi". "A'ight, they used them some tapioca starch in this bad boy. A'ight, that's ok, that's common for GF foods. I can muscle through this."
I closed my mouth and gave a chew, savoring the bite. Attempting to savor. Only without any actual savoring taking place. At all.
My very first thought was, "If I bite my tongue off at the root and spit the entire mass out, will it stop? Will the taste of horror.. stop?" It is almost impossible to describe the sensation of creeping disgust that overwhelmed my senses.
But I'm going to try!
The texture.. Imagine a bunch of black tapioca bubble tea pearls, cooked past the point of goodness and into gelatinous mass, but properly soaked in a mix of brown and regular sugars. Then, imagine a very confused termite mistaking this mass for wood and chowing down, and for dessert, finding some cacao and carob nibs to nom on. Replete with pulp, our termite wanders down into the very bowels of Hell and finds there a baking pan. Imagine our termite puking up his bounty into the pan and wandering off, leaving it to steam and congeal.
I am used to mochi. I am used to all sorts of random Asian seafood-or-tapioca goo gels/puddings/food. The Molly Bar is a whole new level of "Jesus Christmas, what the /fuck/ is this?!"
The taste.. So, you've gotten as far as imagining a steaming pile of tapioca-cocoa termite puke, right? Now add brown rice syrup. Add to that the most horrificly bitter aftertaste heretofore unknown by the tongue of mortal man. I had to check the label, but apparently the FDA does not require "hate" to be a listed ingredient, nor "the bile of a thousand evil serpents". The entire inside of my mouth was trying to cringe away from this substance, while everything it touched was being coated with some sort of oily, waxy, bitter film. The chocolate was a lie. There was a vague, tantalizing hint of it, but it was totally smothered by the rest of it.
"Well, this is as bad as it gets. Might as well swallow it and get it over with. 1, 2, 3: Down the hatch!" Because clearly, I was so overwhelmed with abject disgust that I was beyond rational, coherent thought. I attempted to swallow it. My throat closed up around it as though to deny passage to this hellspawned, Satanic goo. It took the chugging of an entire glass of water to force it down. I could feel it, sitting there in an oily, waxy, gelatinous lump in my stomach, repudiating the attempts of my stomach acids to turn it into something digestable.
Brushing my teeth and using mouthwash did not get rid of the oily, waxy feel or the taste.
Garling with hydrogen peroxide, followed by salt water, did nothing except add a piquant salted flavour to the horror that had overtaken my mouth.
At that point, there was nothing left to do except injest copious amounts of alcohol until the nasty taste died or my tongue became so numb that I no longer noticed it. A third option was death by alcohol poisoning, and that was preferable to having this taste in my mouth one moment longer.
Eventually, alcohol-fueled ennui overtook me and the sense of loathing slowly faded. I wound up in a conversation with Kel over whether I should call a priest, a HAZMAT team, those nice people who clean up after really messy crime scenes, Mythbusters, in an attempt to rid myself of the remaining foulness - and whether any of that was preferable to cutting it into tiny pieces and freezing it to have on hand when people didn't believe me about the awfulness of this thing.
I threw it in the trash, because lo, I am lazy.
That's not the end of the story.
Something got into my trash and ate it, leaving behind the tattered remains of the cello wrap and product ingredient sticker.
There was a dead, bloated raccoon in the alley the next morning.
It could be a coincidence.
Right?
Right??
TL;DR - even if you are suicidally depressed and your life is made of tragedy and woe, you do not hate yourself enough to eat this goddamn thing! Don't do it. Really. Truly. Avoid at all costs.