The next time a cookie craving strikes, do yourself a favor and skip Arby's salted caramel and chocolate chip cookie. While the name of the cookie sounds promising, expectations and reality clash upon first bite. Instead of a textured cookie that offers just enough chew before giving way to a tender center, Arby's cookie challenged our senses. The cookie itself was noticeably hefty and thick, but the baked cookie seemed to crumble like sawdust on the tongue.
There appeared to be no sense of maple to be found in the snack, as it was very cherry-forward. The pieces were very red in color and had a stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth feel to them. The fruity essences were very overpowering, and didn't taste sour or too sweet. But there was an artificial tang to it, and the bites of meat were hard to chomp down on. The saccharine cherry flavor came from juice concentrate and didn't hit the mark.
The official Trader Joe's website describes its Grilled Sardines in Olive Oil as "wild-caught for us off the coast of Tunisia" with a firm, meaty texture in each deboned, split, grilled fillet. Upon peeling back the lid, the sardines were "flat, smushed, and already breaking up a bit. This was most likely due to the fact that they were grilled as opposed to steamed or smoked ..."