Reviews Of New Food: Chicken And Waffles Oreos

I’m an American, and as such, I believe in free and fair elections. Actually, let me dial that back. I used to believe in them, and I’d like to again. So when I heard the cookie perverts over at Oreo had launched their “Twist, Lick, Vote” campaign, I felt a long-dormant patriotic swell awaken in me. A heroic call to civic duty compelling me to make a decision that will impact the people of our country for potentially several weeks, until the next marketing gimmick comes along. It’s a responsibility I take seriously, and candidly, I’d like to microdose a little democracy—as a treat.

Here’s how it works. There are currently three limited-edition Oreo flavors on the shelves. This immediately gave me pause because all bad things come in threes: the heads of Cerberus, celebrity deaths, witches on the blasted heath. In this case, we’re presented with Banana Pudding, Deep Fried, and most ominously, Chicken and Waffles. Oreo is asking us to vote for which of these flavors we’d like them to continue making. No purchase necessary, of course. That would be a poll tax and a clear violation of the 24th Amendment.

I’m an American, but also a Southerner, a Tennessee native, born and raised. However, I’ve spent my entire adult life in West Coast culinary hot spots, where my southern hometown flavors—from fried pickles to Nashville hot chicken—are regularly bastardized for the delight of the coastal elite. I recently joined the experimental 600,000-person polycule known as Portland, Oregon. Here, it’s only a matter of time before some bearded lumberjack gets off his kayak, blends up shrimp and grits, and serves it as a folksy ice cream flavor at Salt & Straw.

This is all to say that when I got my hands on the Chicken and Waffles Oreos, my expectations were measured for this latest shameful debasement of a southern classic. But I promised to go into the experience with curiosity and an open heart.

My questions about Chicken and Waffles Oreos were probably the same as yours:

1. What kind of god would allow this?
2. Exactly how do you put chicken in a cookie?

I don’t like to blame everything on perimenopause, but since turning forty, I have developed a visceral revulsion to chicken. It’s a hormonal chicken ick. When I’m presented with a piece of its meat, I can’t stop thinking about their lizard faces, their scrotal chin wattles, and those gnarled, diseased feet that strut through their own waste, unbothered, because they’re nature’s biggest idiots. How did Oreo plan to reconcile that with a cookie and make it all work?

Well, they didn’t make it work. I’m not saying I think anyone at Oreo needs to lose their life over this, but they definitely need to lose their job and their freedom. The smell and taste of artificial pancake syrup are so overpowering that I had to remove the box from my kitchen with a pair of tongs and relegate it to a containment zone in my garage. My next step will be to build a Chornobyl-style sarcophagus around the Oreos, but the design prototype isn’t ready yet.

The filling’s syrup smell is so persistent that after a full Silkwood shower and three handwashes with Method brand lavender soap (their most fragrant varietal), I can still smell Chicken and Waffles Oreos on my hands when I adjust my glasses or tuck my hair behind my ears. It’s a modern-day Edgar Allan Poe story, and I cannot escape the beating of the hideous heart. But with syrup.

The hard cookie tastes mostly of brown sugar, and I’m happy to report there’s nothing poultry-flavored in here at all. The ingredient list confirms this. They are using an artificial smoke flavor for a pop of bird. Bottom line: if you don’t hate yourself, don’t eat this.

And what of our other two candidates, Banana Pudding and Deep Fried? Well, remember when I said bad things come in threes? That was foreshadowing. They are disgusting. Banana Pudding tastes like an OSHA violation happened at a chemical processing plant. I say that confidently because I once accidentally made a cloying but putrid chemical that smelled exactly like this cookie tastes in an 8 a.m. organic chem lab in college after being out all night in New Orleans dancing with a day-glo Santa wrapped in barbed wire at a Christmas-themed dive bar.

Deep Fried is the only one that tastes remotely like it’s food for humans. Between two golden cookies are two layers of fried dough-flavored cream, which sandwich a third, black cream layer flavored like an original Oreo. That means the Oreo cookie is actually consuming itself. The taste is abominable, but those sick freaks have finally done what the ancients predicted as far back as the fourteenth century. They created the oreoboros.

The Twist, Lick, Vote campaign is ultimately a painful allegory for American elections. Once again we’re told the decision is ours to make, that we, the people, are the drivers of fate. And then we’re given the ballot version of a ransom note. A diseased-feet bird cookie and then five decrepit white men pushing ninety. Vote or die.

In the end I did vote, sadly and reluctantly. I held my nose with my hand that still smells like artificial pancake syrup, and voted for Deep Fried, the least of the evils. I did it because I’m an American, and I believe in free and fair elections, and the worst thing you can do is stay home.