Rosie's #2 Taqueria - Steak Torta

What the Menu Said:

It was just on a blackboard for daily specials. But a torta is like a Mexican sandwich. From Google: A Mexican torta is a sandwhich made with freshly baked, soft bread roll, a meat and a number of toppings including avocado, refried beans, mayonnaise, cheese, onions, tomatoes, pickled jalapeños, shredded lettuce and more.

Price: $10.95+tax making it $12 and change.

$12 is a little pricey for a quick sandwich for lunch. However, this is not a typical sandwich. This particular torta comes with some pretty impressive features. First off there's the bun, it's a very light and slightly sweet bread that's a cross between french-bread and a croissont in texture. The bread itself is pretty good, albeit a bit soft for this implementation considering what is stuffed into it. Here's where the bread adds a whole new level. The bottom of the bun was dipped in birria and a layer of mozzerella cheese was then thrown on and grilled to crisp it up. This adds most of the structure to this sandwich which it will need because it's loaded with about 1/3lb of sauced up steak strips, pico de gallo, shredded lettuce, avocado, refried beans, and a GENEROUS helping of mayonnaise. The sandwich also comes with two cups of salsa (green and red). Don't eat the green one!

How about the taste you ask?

I really didn't want something too heavy for lunch, but also something interesting that I haven't tried before. I've eaten at Rosie's #2 once before and was impressed enough to go back. I got in and ordered what I thought was just a nice Mexican sandwich I could gobble down for lunch until I saw it rang up over $12. They didn't have ANY prices on the menu anywhere. I also didn't want to look like a cheapo so I just went along with it. Well, I got it in a little aluminum foil wrapper, adding authenticity to the meal no doubt. I opened it in the car just to try a bite and I immediately thought: "How in the hell am I going to eat this thing?" It's roughly the size and shape of a nerf football. I double handed it and got in a couple of bites without it falling out all over me. At this point I hadn't realized that it had a layer of crispy cheese hiding in there for stuctural integrity.

My first taste got alot of the sweet bread which was pretty heavily saturated with mayo. I opened it up and saw that they REALLY like mayo on their tortas. There was around 2 oz of mayo on this thing (see in pics). My second bite landed me some steak and a good mix of pretty much all of the flavors in the torta. To say this torta is messy is an understatement. I had to finish eating it with a fork and knife. I know this is NOT how to properly eat a torta or sandwich but if it's messy, I'm going to do just that. It also favored me to be able to taste individual aspects of the flavors.

This puppy is LOADED with some calories! It wasn't advertized how many but I would guess around 1200-1500 calories. The fat content is likely not much better with Cheese, Mayo, and Avocado. As a bonus, you can get your daily recommended allowance of sodium just by breathing in the air surrounding this torta. Keep in mind that the bottom bun is essentially dipped in birria grease, loaded with cheese, then open face grilled on a flat-top grill. This was not just a little bit of cheese, mind you. It feel like 1/3 the weight of the torta is in the bottom bun. Then, because the bottom bun can't get denser, they smother it with refried beans! Yes, I was hoping for a light sandwich for lunch but this is anything but that. I'll admit that I literally left the bottom bun as a plate and ate on the rest and part of the top bun that wasn't swimming in mayo.

In addition to the refried beans, I chose steak for my torta meat. On the specials board you can get about 10 different types of meat including barbacoa, beef tongue, pork steak, fried pork, and chicken. I chose the steak because it seemed the best at the time. Well, the steak was in little cube cuts that were seared at some point, but I am not sure that was today. Its clearly in a consomme (sauce to the uncultured). The meat was seasoned well, but heavy on the salty side. Like really salty. I think I'll need a diuretic at some point to lose the 10 lbs of water weight I'm going to absorb by tomorrow. I'm not finished with it yet and I can already feel my wedding ring tightening on my finger.

Now, they didn't warn me at the restaurant about the salsas. There was a red one and a green one. I made the massive mistake of dunking a whole bite into the green salsa and put it in my mouth. At first there wasn't any issue. I did notice that in contrast to the meat, the salsa had absoutely no salt in it. Funny, right?

I swallowed and my mouth started to warm up. Really warm up. I've eaten Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets before and know the Scoville scale for pepper heat. I used to hybridize Scorpion, Ghost, Habanero, and Scotch Bonnet peppers. I don't know what peppers were in this green death salsa, but it was HOTTER than any pepper I remember eating. I am very glad that I tasted the torta on its own before ramming this unholy nightmare salsa into my gullet. I know different folks like different heats but I can't fathom the gentleman that would knowingly consume this green salsa. I might have just burned a hole in my stomach and am terrified of the next trip to the bathroom for round 2 of the green salsa heat. The red salsa was fine but also had zero salt.

SCORE: 5.1 out of 10

This torta was absolutely satisfactory in many ways. If I would have been more on the hungry side, expecting a pound of crisped cheese on a grease dunked bun, I might have gone higher in the score. This would have been a crazy good dinner. However, I was impressed with the lightness of the top bun (imagining the bottom was the same). I wasn't a fan of the spoonfulls of mayonnaise, but it pretty much all soaked through the entire toppings and meat/bean mix. I imagine that if I hadn't eaten this thing with a fork, it would have been more enjoyable, but I would have to do that outside, wearing clothes I didn't mind throwing away.

This is probably the highest score I could possibly give for what I would describe as a VERY messy sandwich. It's a fresh take on a sad old po-boy or subway sandwich and for roughly the same price as a footlong, you can get this bad boy. If you are worried about calories, please do NOT order this torta. I will not need to eat for roughly 2 weeks now that I have eaten half of this torta. And for the sake of all that is good, do NOT eat the green salsa!

Roly Poly Sandwiches - Chipotle Caeser Salad

What the Menu Said:: Mixed greens, sliced chicken breast, jalapeno jack cheese, avocado, sundried tomatoes, croutons, sides of chipotle ranch dressing & creamy Caesar dressing. The picture of the salad looked really good on the menu with beautiful grilled strips of fajita type chicken and it looked to be reasonable in size for a $10 salad.
Price: $9.45+tax making it nearly $12.: Upon opening the plastic container, you can see that it wasn't much salad at all. There are around 3 ounces of Romaine lettuce, a small gathering of bland croutons, roughly 2 oz of horrible, rubbery, bland, processed (Think John Soules Food) pre-cooked chicken, about 1/2 oz of pepper-jack cheese that looked like cubes that were sliced into thin slices, 1/4th of an avocado or about 1 oz, and about half an ounce of sweet sundried tomatoes. You can see the comparison to my hand in one of the photos. It also came with two 2-oz containers half-full of caeser and chipotle ranch respectively. Keep in mind the half measured was the bottom half where the cup tapers so all in all, I recieved about 3/4 oz of dressing for the salad. Which was enough because there really wasn't much in there for it to cover, but still somehow came up short in the dressing supply department.
How about the taste you ask?: The chicken wasn't fajita chicken or grilled or I'm not even sure it was chicken. It was pre-processed, cooked, mechanically separated and put back into chunks designed to look like chicken. So, I honestly can't say one way or the other if it even was chicken. I'm 100% sure it wasn't 100% chicken though and likely 25% preservative. The avocado wasn't terribly fresh and was starting to brown (store then with a little lemon juice and it'll fix that). The sun dried tomatoes were VERY sweet to the point that they absolutely didn't belong in a Caeser anything. The Romaine lettuce was of the pre-washed and bagged variety and tasted fairly crisp (about the only plus in this salad). The two dressings we had to combine and mix in (that wasn't even a whole ounce) did not go well together. Apart, they each tasted fine, but together, they tasted like abandoned dreams. Combine this with the very sweet dried tomato, the soulless croutons, and the chicken-flavored preservatives and it is an absolute failure of a salad. It had a strange sweetness that tasted like a bloated belly afterburp from a night out at Golden Corral. It tasted like the hot breath of someone who just downed a red-bull and chewed on garlic. I paid $12 for this and I couldn't bring myself to get 1/3 of the way through it. AND I was hungry, and I'm poor!
SCORE: 1 out of 10: This might have been one of the worst salads and worst food purchases I've made in the past month. It is overpriced for the amount of food you get. It tastes like something I pulled out of a sun-hardened dumpster behind a gas-station a week after they've thrown out their expired gas-station salads. I'm giving it a 1 out of 10 in the hopes that it doesn't kill me. (Note, if it kills me, go in and change this to a 0 / 10 review.

Burger King - Big Fish "Sandwich"

What the Menu Said:

White Alaskan Pollock with crispy panko breading, sweet tartar sauce, and crunchy pickles on a toasted brioche-style bun.

Price: $3 in the 2 for $6 offer.

Well, I was hesitant to grab a fish sandwich on a Monday during Lent. Most fish sales are on Friday but there was a 2 for $6 deal going on at this particular Burger King when I happened to drop in through the drive through. So, I decided to grab a favorite from my obese childhood, the BK BIG FISH. I opted to get a slice of Tomato on my sandwich because I could at least pretend I wasn't about to eat a fried square of what vaguely can be described as fish.

When I opened up the wrapper, the bun looked nice and smooth but I could already see tartar sauce oozing out the sides of this thing. One thing I remember about the BK BIG FISH, back in the day, was that it WAS HUGE! It used to be a fairly large size fish patty that would fit only on the oversized whopper sized buns. Not sure why they kept the name but removed the reason it was called a BIG FISH. This sad little fried square is about 4" by 4" and maybe half an inch thick and what used to come on it was a 6" x 6" fish patty that was fairly thick. As it currently stands, this patty is more breading than fish, unlike it's ancestor.

First glance taste with the eyes would be a solid 3 out of 5, not burnt trash, but not a great look either. However, upon first taste, it is definitly in the BURNT TRASH category of foods that could possibly be consumed by humans. By burnt trash, take a look at the burnt black crispy lower bun. Did this thing get stuck in the bread toaster or something? I'd like to think this wasn't made just for me, because then it would be obvious that someone hated me very much.

How about the taste you ask?

Now, regarding the taste, have you ever found yourself an hour late to an ad hoc meal of cheap wal-mart great value grade fish sticks? You know, they've reached the point where they are moderately still warm, but beginning to shrink in size and getting quite dry? Well, slap those puppies on a piece of 2 day old bread with one side burnt, dunk the whole thing in mayo, slap a pickle on it, and take a few twigs of lettuce from that bag in your fridge that's been sitting there for 2 weeks and place them gingerly on top. That's the secret recipe to BK's big fish sandwich.

SCORE: 2 out of 10

Do not attempt to eat without proper medical staff at the ready. It's deep fried, dried, burnt, and so salty, Lot's wife would be attracted to it at this point. My score: 2 / 10. I would have given it 0 of a stars if I had not gotten my order fairly quickly and it doesn't appear to be able to kill me (immediately). Also, those jerks forgot my tomato slice. I'd like my 25c back please.

Burger King - Big King "Sandwich"

What the Menu Said:

It's a knockoff of the McDonald's Big Mac sandwich. All you need to know. Pickles, lettuce, onions, thousand island dressing, two "beef" patties, and 2 slices of American cheese with a sesame seed bun.

Price: $3 in the 2 for $6 offer.

Holy WTH? At first glance, this appears to be a deconstructed burger that came wrapped in a grease/cheese wrapper. It is EXTREMELY unappealing to look at because one thing that I am not a fan of is a messy burger. I know, lots of people love messy burgers and subs. "Think Darrels" However, I particularly do not. This confounded big mac knockoff comes with 2 beef patties, pickles, onions, lettuce, and 2 slices of American Ch. Chee.. Petroleum product. I can't even bring myself to call it cheese. But you know what? neither can they because American Cheese is not at least 50% cheese and therefore cannot be called CHEESE!

I'm giving this burger hell, I know. I'll admit that if they wouldn't have put in roblox sized chunks of lettuce it would have been more palatable. However, the big fish I bought with it had normal lettuce...Makes you wonder if they just picked out those chunks of bland, hard, throwaway even on salad lettuce just for little ole me. Additionally, the unneeded amount of sauce on this thing just got absolutely everywhere. The sauce is obviously a knockoff of McDonald's special sauce. Basically it's Mayochup with a touch of lemon juice and relish, so not absolutely horrible with the beef patties. The patties were hot and they tasted fresh, but were quite salty. I've always liked the flavor of Burger King beef with the flame broiling and stuff, but these didn't have that flavor I remember. There's more of a salty seasoning flavor than a flame-grilled flavor to them. So, while they were edible, the entire package these poor patties were jammed into just killed any vibe that made me want to take a bite out of this thing.

How about the taste you ask?

Ok. How does it taste? It honestly tastes like someone tried to replicate a big mac but botched everything up, like a king would do, ROYALLY. The bread was dry, there was this oozing blend of Mayochup melted cheese goop abso-Dang-lutely EVERYWHERE. On my hands, fingers, the side of my face, my nose, and even in my beard. It took longer to clean up after this monstrosity than it did to sample it.

SCORE: 2 out of 10

It wasn't inedible, like that big fish sandwich I tried. Maybe it is because I reviewed that right before this one and I'm more eager to give it 2/10 because I gave the fish mess a 2/10. I don't think I would order this again. Oh, but at least they remembered my tomato slice.

Roly Poly Sandwiches - Key West "Cuban"

What the Menu Said:

Smoked turkey, baked ham, roasted turkey, Swiss & American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onion, dill pickles, with a side of honey mustard

Price: $5.95+tax making it nearly $7.

These come in a half for $5.95 and a whole for $9.95 which is roughly what you'd pay at Jimmy Johns or Jersey Mike's. However, both of these options would have been much better than this thing. I think it was created by someone pondering what would happen when a burrito and a sandwich really love each other. It did come with half a cup of pretty good honey mustard sauce for dipping, since there is no sauce whatsoever on this wrap. They offer somewhat of around 200 different varieties of these wraps either "cold rolled" (Like a wrap) or "hot pressed" (like a grilled burrito from taco bell) with different fillings. Which is great when you have someone in front of you in line that has to read the details about each one before deciding on what they want. Also, after spelling my name to the cashier, I eventually just accdepted that my name is now Bryan, not Brandon.

How about the taste you ask?

I have to say, this wrap does not have the heart of a cuban sandwich. I don't think they understand what a Cuban sandwich is supposed to taste like. Nobody in Florida or Cuba is going to put honey mustard on a dang Cuban. They traditionally come with roasted pork (like from a slow cooker or smoked boston butt shredded), sometimes Swiss cheese, and deli ham with dill pickle slices and yellow mustard on Cuban bread. This little fella does not qualify to be called a Cuban anything.

As soon as I picked this sandritto (sandwich-burrito offspring), it became apparently obvious that whomever wrapped this baby up does NOT know how to wrap a sandritto. I just invented the name and I could do it. As I held it up to take a bite, about a tablespoon of some juicy pickley delimeat yuck juice rolled out the back and onto my work pants. All they had to do was burrito one side of it before hot pressing it so that any juices would remain inside as nature intended while the other side would look (and operate) as a standard wrap. Now, it did taste very good, but not Cuban good. The tortilla was obviously not made in store which you can tell from the transparency and thinness of the tortilla.

There is a high-point to this sandritto, there was ample meat within. The turkey and ham was fairly thick throughout. This was the flag of Switzerland for this sandwich, a big plus. It was also the reason that it didn't score as low as some of the other items I have tried from Roly Poly. Ironically, I didn't really taste any Swiss cheese. Go figure.

Flag of Switzerland

Now, even though the serving of deli meat was sufficient, the meat was also good but I'm sure was full of preservatives. As a fan of dipping things in sauce, I did appreciate the honey mustard they provided with it. It keeps the sandritto from becoming too soggy, despite the yuck juice on my work pants. The cherry tomatoes on there were completely useless as they keep sliding back into the end with each bite, eventually falling out the improperly guarded "back door". The lettuce, as you can see from the pictures was nearly non-existant. Just a single piece of romaine with the big spiny ridge of the leaf giving an audible crunch with most bites. The pickles, spears unfortunately, are not native to this environment and huddled together enmasse on one side. This required taking a bite of the "pickle spot" anytime I wanted some vinegary dilly pickle crunch. Don't make me hunt for the pickles please.

SCORE: 3.75 out of 10

I was not hungry when I finished this order which was nice. Overall, it wasn't a bad price for the food you got. It was hot and tasty. However, calling it a Cuban is an international travesty and they should be ashamed of themselves. I urge anyone that works there to try a REAL Cuban and tell me if this thing even comes close to the heavanly bliss of a real Cuban sandwich.