Preaching truth to packaging. Pictures of packaged food, cooked to specifications, compared to the photo on the box.
Looks: Using the shrimps as a measuring guide, the bowl they used on the packaging is only about 4″ (four shrimps) wide, and every shrimp in the meal is pictured on top of the noodles, implying the unkept promise of more shrimp below. (To be fair, the package clearly states “Shrimp Over Pasta,” not “Shrimp Uniformly Intermingled With Pasta.”) 3 out of 5
Taste: Small rubbery shrimp, soft overcooked noodles, bland watery sauce. Just like Mom used to make. 2 out of 5
Looks: See those shrimp? Yeah, neither do I – they’re, at best, 50% of the size of the shrimp on the box. The noodles and peas though (which are in there; they just sunk to the bottom) match up pretty closely with the packaging. 4 out of 5
Taste: Respectable. The shrimp were a little rubbery, and for being a “lobster cream,” I didn’t taste anything special in the sauce. The noodles were fine, but the peas, as all peas are, were inedible. 3 out of 5
Looks: It was hard to get a good picture of this due to the reflectiveness of the sauce (any photographers out there have tips for me?), but besides the prominence of the shrimp, it looked very much the same in real life as it did on the package. 4.5 out of 5
Taste: Anyone who has visited this site for a while knows how much I love meals from Bertolli like the Chicken Florentine or Fettucini Alfredo. They’re great frozen pasta meals that you just toss in a skillet for 10 minutes. This meal is like the poor man’s Bertolli. You don’t have to use a skillet (just microwave the entire bag), and the quality is about 75% of that of a comparable Bertolli meal – the noodles are a little softer, the sauce isn’t as rich, and the peas just get in the way, but it’s still a very good meal for how easy it is to prepare. 4 out of 5
Looks: As you can see, the egg roll filling lacks the vibrant greens and pinks depicted on the box but instead displays all the liveliness of day-old baby food. Neither do the egg roll crusts match their advertised color; they didn’t hardly darken at all from freezer to oven. 2.5 out of 5
Taste: I would be hard-pressed to tell the difference in a blind taste test between these egg rolls and egg rolls from any nearby Chinese restaurant. (Whether this indicates that these are quality egg rolls or that I have never eaten truly delicious Chinese takeout is unknown.) The outside is crispy and the inside is meaty and flavorful, but the rolls do drip quite a bit of oil as you eat them. (Side note: I have also tried the chicken version of these rolls. They don’t suffer from the excess oil problem; rather, they are exceedingly dry. Stick with the Pork or Pork/Shrimp versions if you decide to buy them.) 4 out of 5