Audio By Carbonatix
Go anywhere, from high-dollar sit-downs to drive-thrus and you’ll find restaurants digging into seasonal fare. Right now, pumpkin gets the honors. So I drove around town checking out grab-and-go treats that showcase pumpkin’s autumnal flavor. On into December, I’ll look into gingerbread, cranberry, peppermint and more stocking-related goodies, but with Thanksgiving tomorrow, I’m going gourd.
Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte: This little guy
should come with a warning: Watch out for serious nutmeg on the first
sip. As my food-savvy friend offered on her first taste, “Yeah, that’s
sort of…um…meaty.” She was dead on–I felt as if I
should have been ladling this over lamb. But the
drink isn’t a total loss. Just rip the lid off and stir the hell out
of it before drinking and the flavor
profile is much more balanced. The latte doesn’t, so much, taste of
espresso or pumpkin, but of generic spice. It conveys a feeling of
fall, but isn’t necessarily en pointe with the pumpkin.
Jack In The Box’s Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream Shake: It’s obviously vanilla with a liquid pumpkin mix-in, but I was still surprised at the flavor. For around three bucks, you can
get a rich shake that tastes pretty damned close to liquid pie
filling…not that I’ve ever eaten pie filling with a spoon or anything.
That being said, idling in the drive-thru, one still must decide whether to choose an uber-rich dessert over the majestically
so-bad-for-you-it’s-good JITB taco. And even I won’t tell you to do
that when you have a case of the munchies.
Einstein Bros. Bagels’ Pumpkin Shmear/Pumpkin Bagel:
First off, I wouldn’t normally recommend combining two pumpkin items,
but the bagel is so subtle it seems more like just a
slightly spiced version of the store’s wheat version. So you could
actually put pumpkin on pumpkin. The shmear, however, is a stronger
contender. Whipping the cream cheese adds fluff, and the
shmear is lighter on the savory than the sweet, without falling into the “sticky” realm. Slather it on and feel decadent without succumbing to a crazy sugar
rush and falling flat on the desk before noon.
Whataburger’s Pumpkin Pie: The winner. Yes, it’s
fried. Yes, it’s horrible for you. Yes, it’s amazing, as fried foods tend to be. Hand-held and
laden with oil, it’s oddly not very greasy. Perhaps that’s because all that fat soaked into the
paper sleeve while I dined on my burger entree, but I’m not one to quibble. This treat is basic–hot
pumpkin pie filling in a fried pocket totaling fewer calories than
several items in our vending machine (I’ll let you look up the actual
number). When you need a cheap guilty pleasure and pumpkin’s your game,
head toward those 24-hour orange and white stripes…but for your
arteries’ sake, don’t make a repeat pass through the drive-thru until
next year.
I’ve also heard props for 7-Eleven‘s pumpkin muffin, but that was
approximately 15.83 seconds before this was to post, so I guess we’ll
have to take my neighbor’s word on it. (And, yeah, that totally means
I’m going to eat one before the week’s out.) Now, before I turn into a
pumpkin…
–Merritt Martin
