A few days ago, Punch Pizza was giving away free Mimis – sauceless Neopolitan-style pizzas with basil, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. Did I get in on that action? Of course I did.

Looks: The pizza I got could very well have been photographed for the ad – except for the size of the basil leaves and normal variations in the char of the crust, it was exactly as advertised. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: When I first started eating it, I was skeptical – no sauce? What is this, Soviet Russia? Due to the lack of sauce or melted cheese to glue the toppings to the pizza, I resigned myself to eating it like a breadbowl salad – toppings, crust, toppings, crust. However, as I continue to work on it, I started to get the hang of grabbing tomato, mozzarella, and basil in each bite, and the more I ate, the better it tasted – something in the juice of the cherry tomatoes combined with the slightly salty crust to produce a delicious combination that was completely unexpected and completely awesome. (I think I would have appreciated smaller pieces of basil, but that could be because I have trouble cutting leafy food with my incisors – long story.)

While there are only six Punch Pizza locations (and they’re all in central Minnesota), their pizzas are the closest thing to authentic Neopolitan pizza I’ve had in the U.S. Definitely try them out if you have a chance. 4.5 out of 5

P.S. Punch regularly announces deals and promotions via their @PunchPizza Twitter account.

Looks: The bun is overly browned (-0.5 points), the cheese is an oily orange and it curls up instead of down (-0.5 points), the sausage patty is overcooked (-0.5 points), and I want to deduct one more thing (-0.5 points). 3 out of 5

Taste: Burger King is advertising this sandwich as being blatantly stolen from McDonalds but offered for half the price, so let’s compare it to McDonald’s Sausage Egg McMuffin.

1. The McDonald’s version is so oily I needed to call in the National Guard to help with cleanup efforts after I finished it, but this is lacking any sort of grease overflow.
2. It tastes more “real” than McDonalds’ too; almost as if I made it myself in my kitchen. (That is, if I had access to pre-cooked egg-like squares and a heat lamp to leave it under for 20 minutes.)
3. The sausage is just a little bit spicy, where McDonalds’ meat is unprovocative.
4. The egg is mostly tasteless and not at all like McDonalds’ version of eggs, which aren’t too far off from the real thing.

Burger King is selling this for just $1, so it gets a favorable rating on that aspect, but for every dollar they raise the price, I’d probably take a point off of my rating. It’s good, but not $2 good. 3 out of 5

Reader Rose Marshall provided this review of tiny little burgers from some place called “Jack in the Box,” which, being from Minnesota, I have never heard of.

Looks: Basically looked “mini” and sirlion-y…but in the thrown together way that all fast food looks. The burgers were thick and not too dry. The biggest discrepancy was the buns, they would have looked like the photo, except they were burnt….like BLACK burnt. I guess my Mom taught me to eat burnt food, so I didn’t really mind. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: Tasted pretty good, actually tasted like real food. Which, in some messed up way disappointed me, because I expect a fast food burger to be a super-greasy delicious sin. But, it was not as sinful as some, meat was thick and meaty. I would eat it again. The cooked onions were a nice touch, different that the standard toppings. 4 out of 5

I don’t know about you, but that last picture is the most appetizing thing I’ve seen all week.

(This sandwich was purchased from the Chick-fil-A in the Philadelphia airport during a 16-hour layover, so take from that what you will.)

Looks: Browner, crispier, and flatter than the advertised sandwich. The pickles were only visible after some exploration. (Although the bottom of that chicken patty makes me want to rethink my rating…) 4 out of 5

Taste: I can understand why McDonald’s came out with their own “southern” chicken sandwich in order to try and replicate Chick-fil-A’s success. The chicken patty is very good – crunchy batter and juicy meat – although it doesn’t taste too different from the chicken that Burger King serves on their Chicken Tendercrisp sandwich, so there’s nothing especially unique about it, but soft bread + good chicken = happy mouth. (I don’t care too much for pickles, so I gave them to my one-year-old son. He had no comment.) 4.5 out of 5

Looks: This walleye must have been the Yao Ming of walleyes, because it’s about 100% longer than the filet featured in their ad. (Not that I’m complaining.) It reminds me of the hobos in cartoons that are wearing shoes that are five sizes too small, so their feet split out the end of the shoes and they wear the shoes more like sandals. Do you know what I mean? The shoe in this case is the bun, and the hobo foot is the fish. 2.5 out of 5

Taste: I’m not sure that Culver’s can make a non-delicious food. Their butterburgers are amazing, and this sandwich was almost as good. Crispy, crunchy breading; moist, delicious fish; soft, chewy bun. At one point while eating this sandwich, I tried to open my mouth so wide that I actually hurt myself. Does that paint a picture of how quickly I was trying to cram this fish into my gullet?

The only deduction I’m taking due to a slight bitter aftertaste I got after two or three bites; I’m not sure if that’s unique to walleye or if it was related to residual cooking oil, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from immediately wanting to go buy another one. 4.5 out of 5

Note: The walleye sandwich is a promotional item and will only be available through Easter Sunday (April 4).

Looks: The wrap in the ad is beefy, the tortilla filled to the point of bursting. The wrap in real life looks like a scared little hamburger turtle, just barely poking its head out of its shell. No lettuce or onions to speak of – just beef and cheese.

If you were to open up the wrap, you’d see this work of art:

I’m getting hungry just looking at this picture, aren’t you? Not even half a beef patty, and even fewer toppings than are visible poking out of the end of the wrap in the ad. 2 out of 5

Taste: It tastes… very much like a Big Mac. Well, until the third bite, when you’ve used up all the special sauce and cheese, and you’re left with three more bites of dry beef and tortilla. I would have given the first bite a four, but the last bite was more like a 1 – I guess I’ll have to go with the average. 2.5 out of 5

Looks: This picture was taken in a rush, so it’s not at the correct angle or anything, but I assure you it’s not too far off from the box. (Also, the box only depicts the standard chicken sandwich; this one had bacon added to it.) The bun is reasonably similar, and from seeing it in real life, I know that the chicken wasn’t significantly different from the packaging. 4 out of 5

Taste: Good, but not great. The chicken was juicy (which is more than I can say for the Angus burger purchased at the same visit), and the bun was nice and chewy. Neither had too much flavor, but the addition of “bacon” helped that a little bit. I’d probably buy it again, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. (For what it’s worth, my wife, whose favorite foods include chicken and bread, said she would have given this sandwich at least 4 out of 5.) 3.5 out of 5

Looks: Have you ever wanted to feel like a giant but didn’t want to undergo painful leg-lengthening surgery? Just pick up a Jr. Frosty from Wendy’s! This thing is seriously small: about 3 inches from top top bottom – that’s half the length of a dollar bill.

I suppose it should be small, since it’s “Junior,” but just holding it in my hand made me feel enormous. (As for the actual food contents, it’s pretty close to advertised, albeit a little more melted, but it had undergone a 10-minute car ride before I could take pictures of it.) 4.5 out of 5

Taste: It was pretty close to the “shakes” I used to make as a kid: fill a cup with vanilla ice cream, add an unseemly amount of chocolate syrup, and then stir until it’s mixed and the ice cream has melted enough to be shake-consistency. (This is not a bad comparison; I loved those shakes.) There’s not much else to say, except that I ate it so fast I got brain-freeze. So, don’t do that. 4 out of 5

Looks: As is normal for fast-food burgers, the sandwich was pretty squished by the time I got home. (That’s how it was given to me; I didn’t set anything on top of it or anything.) The lettuce isn’t substantial enough to hold up the tomato and bun like in the picture, but all of the colors and general proportions of the ingredients are right on. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: For the $0.99 that this burger costs, it very well may be the best value for the money in all of fast-food land. The tomato and lettuce are crisp and cool, but the burger and bacon are meaty and warm. The entire ensemble comes together for very tasty, chewy, comforting mouthfuls, and there’s nothing I would change about it (except for making it free and available everywhere). 5 out of 5

Looks: I apologize for the unflattering angle of this picture; I know I took several better ones, but somehow, they got lost in the shuffle of having a full memory card and wanting to take pictures of babies in Halloween costumes. Anyhow, the burger that I was served look as if they took the burger from the ad and let it sit out for a few days. The patty was dark and dry, nowhere near as thick as the advertised patty. (On the inside, it was so dry it was almost white and reminded me more of an overcooked porkchop than ground beef.) I only got one piece of cheese, and the vegetable toppings were scant, to say the least. 2 out of 5

Taste: The bun was the only ok thing about this burger. The meat was dry: on a scale from 1 to 10, it was a desert. The bacon tasted fake, and there weren’t enough vegetables or cheese to add moisture to the piece of cardboard masquerading as a ground beef patty. 1 out of 5

Has anyone tried the other Angus burgers? Do they fare any better than this one?