The other week I moseyed on down to the local Supermarket Primavara on Calea 13 Septembrie in Sectorul 5 to pick up some essential supplies from my alma mater, Rahova.

While strolling down the back aisle, I was bitten by infatuation in the frozen food section at the sight of a sadly crushed box referencing Tex-Mex (a cuisine which I consider native to my person, but which is perceived as an exotic foreign specialty when in Romania).

Nail in the coffin? It was on sale. Cha-ching!

Now, one might surmise the crushed state of the box might be related to the offer. Or one could hypothesize the discount as a consequence of the nearing expiration date.

Then again, one should also factor in the possibility of lackluster sales influencing the algorithm driving decisions in the product marketing department at Maheso.

Did I mention promoţie? Yeah, so you already know I picked one up.

Revel in the sophisticated brand positioning: Recetas del Mundo. Gander at the fonts, the feathering, the shadows, and the vibrant color palette. Witness the dinnerware better than yours. Experience the exotic background imagery taking you on a thrilling mental excursion to old Mexico. Marvel at the product photography which surely must accurately depict the food within.

Bet you’re getting hungry now.

Menu Mexicano Para 2 sounds like an imported treat for the romantic couple on a budget. I have little doubt this is the probable intention of the marketing folks. To invoke that light-hearted sense of adventure for the home diner.

While Americans may be puzzled at the usage of the word menu, which in English refers to a list of options usually presented in softcover book format at restaurants (and has been adopted by computer science), Romanians recognize the meaning of menu in Europe as being essentially a pre-selected combination of food (such as “combo meal” is used in US fast food).

Before opening the package, I surveyed the packing list and directions.

Let’s see. Two… tacos? Mmm, don’t exactly look like tacos on the cover. Six golden brown chicken nuggets. The intrigue began to build as I had no idea how these chicken nuggets could be considered “Tex-Mex,” since nuggets aren’t Texan fare (though you could, perhaps, extrapolate a distant relation to southern fried chicken… maybe).

In any event, chicken nuggets have absolutely no connection to Mexican cuisine. Sure, the socratic method could lead to musings about how the photography shows a nugget being dipped into salsa picante, which is a Mexican food. And therefore…

No. I’ll cut you off there. Not Mexican, not Texan, not Tex-Mex. Let us now move forward, having resolved any doubts as to the facts.

Ah, a notification about the heat of the spices used: medium hot. I suppose in Hollywood such a designation might indicate a relatively pleasing level of heat, but not so much as to detract from subtle flavors. Yet, this product was being marketed in Romania, where “medium hot” generally means it’s terribly bland but they’ve removed most of the ice cubes.

Having dialed down my expectations in the picante department, I hovered my pupils over the brief instructional highlights. Easy and Fast: 8 minutes in the microwave.

Bine, hai. I opened it up.

Perhaps past experience shouldn’t dictate expectations, but I had been anticipating the food to be neatly arranged in one of those seemingly ubiquitous microwavable trays.

Unorthodox presentation? Hey, we’re talking frozen, folks. Still, I did not imagine the individual components would all be individually wrapped as though mass-manufactured in various far flung plants. Oh…

Well, well, now… what’s all this, then? Bonusuri sau ceva de genu asta? It looks like the package contains 7 nugget pieces. That’s one more over the stated quota of six, on the front of the box. Yeehaw, Skippy. Should make up for some sins.

I’m not exactly blind, so let’s just get this out of the way. Those “tacos” don’t look like tacos. Nossir. Very much in the burrito vicinity, methinks.

Lest you call me on it, I must now turn to address my silence hereinsofar regarding the “salsa enchilada” advertised on the front of the box. What a big joke by the folks at Gedesco S.A. (manufacturers and marketers of the Maheso brand). I know what enchilada sauce is for, what it looks like, and what it tastes like.

How about the picture on the box cover? That packaging does not show enchilada sauce. Nor anything even remotely close to enchilada sauce. Instead the photos captures una cosa de salsa picante. False advertising or unfortunate mistake?

Whichever the case is, the box has been mislabeled and prospective Romanian consumers are left to rely on their own knowledge or experience to recognize the photo shows salsa picante, not enchilada sauce. Well, fortunately, I’ve been able to clear up the confusion for you.

Except, um… there appears to be yet another layer of disconnect. The wrapper around the salsa container declares itself not as enchilada sauce nor as salsa picante, but rather as something else entirely.

While I’m not a native speaker of Español, I have had the occasion or two to exercise mi lengua un poco. It is without hesitation that I can lay the truth down for you. There is no such thing as “Salsa Loca Para Nachos” in either Mexican cuisine nor Tex-Mex.

If your gut instinct senses cultural humor here, you’d be spot on. Ignoring the trees for the forest, the basic concept here is something like “Sos Nebun Pentru Straini.” Don’t laugh hard enough for your drink to come out of your nose — you’re the butt of the joke, fraţii.

On details, Americans will have to understand that only a minority of Europeans actually know what nachos are. For example, of those Romanians who have heard of nachos, most of them think it refers just to the tortilla chips because of the various erroneous misinformation around.

Let’s just say that when people who should know better, such as JW Marriot in București, help spread the inaccuracy, then it should be of little surprise to find the definition corrupted across the region.

On a recent trip to Praha, I was amused to find Nachos on the menu at Popo Cafe Petl and flabbergasted to receive an order of Doritos with parmesean cheese sprinkled on top and subsequently microwaved.

As you see, ignorance only drives things downhill.

In this case, the Maheso brand is simply preying on the lack of knowledge by propagating lowered expectations. Apparently this “crazy sauce” is intended for use with “nachos” tortilla chips. Which, as you no doubt guessed, are not included in the box.

Enchilada sauce turned to salsa picante turned to some kind of mystery sauce with a bogus name for chips not even included in the box. Switcheroo!

Okay. Microwave time.

I’d agree that around 8 minutes in the microunde was roughly correct. Except the mystery sauce stayed partially frozen and needed a little additional kick in the pants. The chicken nuggets came out alright, including the extra one. And our burritos… er, uh… “tacos” …survived the radiation.

Gata. Asculta. The charade cannot continue. It’s simply flat out impossible to pretend these are tacos. The contents are burrito and the tortilla folding hackjob is burrito-related.

Uite. A bean paste filling of dubious origin.

That, my friends, is a burrito. Which we’ve known from the start, but the verdict is beyond doubt. What’s even worse than renaming these burritos as “tacos” for marketing purposes is the huge difference between what they look like versus the box cover photo. Scroll up!

Where are the vegetables? The whole beans? The tender chunks of white meat chicken breast? Looks as though all the ingredients were ground into pate.

Yep. Taco, thy name is mass-manufactured frozen burrito. End of saga.

I trust my readers are able to negotiate the labyrinth, but I feel bad for the typical shopper in București who bumps into this product quite accidentally and ends up buying food which is, in fact, completely different from what they were sold.

At the risk of coming across as some high and mighty holyroller in regard to a frozen food product, it must be said one might easily argue this is a reasonable example of the lies which Autoritatea Naţională pentru Protecţia Consumatorilor should be aiming to prevent.

Frankly, Gedesco should be ashamed. They own the Maheso brand and make this Menu Mexicano product. They’re the source of all the errors and falsehoods. They’re effectively hoodwinking Romanian consumers. And it’s not from a lack of knowledge. The company should know better: they’re not from China or Georgia sau oriunde.

Damn it, they’re from Spain!

They should absolutely know how make proper Mexican food. And be able to readily adapt to Tex-Mex. Spanish cuisine is the culinary parent from which these derive. Where’s the pride? Where’s the effort? Where’s the employee sober enough to know a taco isn’t a burrito?

Scandalos.

Interesting. But, Romer!can, you haven’t told us how it tastes.

Gluttons for punishment, I see. Very well, buckle in and strap on a pair for the remainder of the story. If you read further, you’re asking for it.

The burritos were unappetizing. The tortilla came out a little on the stale side. And the way in which they wrapped the burrito provided a very substandard fill ratio. Much of the flavor was stale tortilla with occasional bursts of pasty weirdness. I cannot even name the spices used, as none were particularly recognizable.

But how about that salsa? I won’t claim it tasted like regurgitation as it clearly has far too much sugar to have been processed by an acidic human stomach. It was something like Romanian ketchup, only watered down and then re-fortified with additional sugar. Toss in the rare chunk of partially digested vegetable-based texture chunklet and I think you get the idea.

I couldn’t eat it.

Shall we end with the so-called Nuggets Tex-Mex? You probably wondered why the actual product had so many dark spots in the breadcrumbs, where as the packaing’s product photo shows a far more gentle portion. I think it was to disguise the taste of the dry meat, myself.

Yessireebob. Dry meat with a funky flavor covered in a too-thick breadcrumb coating made with a too-rich spice mix. The more I ate, the more my stomach was sending signals of displeasure back to the brain.

I tried to scrape off some the coating and isolate the meat. Such a distinct taste. Strange. Causing some kind of rejection by my stomach. Odd.

Once I’d cleaned my plate, dumped the uneaten muck in the lada de gunoi, and put my camera away, that’s when I sought to dispose of the box. Like you few who have read this far into the bowels of the tale, I must admit that curiosity got the best of me. Just as I was about to toss the package, I suddenly decided to look at the ingredients.

Mistake.

According to the nutritional disclosure, the chicken was listed as carne de ave. As the rumbling in my stomach began to churn, I thought that “bird meat” seemed somehow appropriate, given that chicken is fowl. Still, it plagued my mind.

I know the old wisdom of yesteryear’s travelers to Mexico used to include warnings such as don’t eat food marked as containing “carne” because that wasn’t specific enough to tell you what kind of meat. Only a fool would assume beef by default, when it doesn’t say beef.

The churn in my gut began to roll into a gurgling.

I was about to let the issue drop and just throw the garbage out, but I dared to glance once more even as three of five fingers had loosened their grip, leaving the box dangling precariously above the trash can. And then I saw it.

Carne de ave (carne de pollo,

Aha! There, you see, it must be a colloquialism of Barcelona to nonchalantly refer to chickens as fowl or birds. No big deal, except… there was a comma. A grammatical demarcation of additional information about the ingredients I had ingested and which were now roiling to full boil in my highly-displeased and near revolt digestive system.

Carne de ave (carne de pollo, carne de pavo).

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Food, Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.