Here To Eat: Ace Eats America 10 Plates at a Time

Price: $2.00
Rating: ***** / *****

I don't quite get it...if the meals are presented on white bowls and plates, why does it come packaged with black plastic? It's such a waste of the colors of the vegetables that would otherwise cascade over the canvas of bare rigatoni, bringing the dimensions of the presentation into full bloom. A makeshift medley of amazingly mundane mixed veggies made magical in my meal.

Uhh...

I mean...

This stuff tastes good! And the vegetables, no matter how small a serving they actually are, liven up the dish enough to keep it interesting. Included are a few chunks of zucchini, yellow carrots(the future is now!), and regular carrots. I almost felt bad for the regular carrots, as they were easily upstaged by their tangier and more colorful cousins. There was more than enough for the amount of rigatoni in the bowl.

Of course, all of that would mean nothing if the pasta itself tasted like something that came out of Chef Boyardee. Fortunately, the rigatoni comes sealed like little edible presents filled with romano cheese. It was firm, but not enough to be al dente and definitely not mushy. I didn't find a single one that was broken. The sauce is well-seasoned and hearty without coming out like tomato paste...though I do question the merit of calling the sauce "fire roasted" as if they personally tossed hunks of hickory to delicately char it. There were real chunks of tomato which I am grateful for.

The rigatoni went very well with two drumsticks seasoned with lemon pepper and thrown on the Foreman grill. Unlike Tyler Florence, however, I do not claim generic meals such as sausage pasta or grilled chicken to be gourmet. This was, however, a damn good meal that I defy anyone to not enjoy. Hmm...that last sentence probably had bad grammar, but you know what I mean.

Posted by Anthony Nguyen on Wednesday, November 01, 2006 at 3:55 PM | Permalink