The Ugliest Thing Snacktaku Has Ever Eaten

Earlier this week I encountered a food creation so hideous that I set up my camera in the noisy press room at the 2016 Smite World Championship and recorded a Snacktaku video so I could get it over with.

Originally published 1/9/16

The main source of sustenance at the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta, which doesn’t allow outside food inside the venue, is a series of food trucks serving up a wide variety of tasty treats.

Here are two of my favorites, as well as a man in a red hoodie who doesn’t trust my camera. The Pup Truck does some amazing things with sausages of all varieties. Behind it we have the Bento Bus, home of the Japanese nachos, light chips with meats or tofu—they are simply delightful.

There’s a truck serving up burgers, another doing tacos, and then there’s this truck here.

Brooke Lynn’s Own Sticks and Cones is a new addition to the line up this year, offering up a variety of cone and stick-based cuisine. On Thursday I tried out the Cyclone, a spiral-cut potato wrapped about a pair of hot dogs skewered on a stick and deep fried. The potatoes were lovely. The hot dogs were like the fingers of an ancient mummy dusted with salt.

One of my fellow members of the press avoided the Cyclone, instead ordering this:

The man taking orders was incredibly stoked when she ordered it. He gave her a high-five, or possibly a fist bump. Either way, she wound up with something looking like this:

Fancy a closer look?

You might not get this good of a look in the video above, as the camera kept trying to focus on the folks behind me in the press room. I’d like to think this was out of self preservation, or maybe it just didn’t recognize my face as human with something like this so close to it.

What it is is a pair of seasoned chicken fingers on a stick coated with “red velvet” waffle batter, rolling in what looks and tastes like Fruity Pebbles cereal and then fried. Once cooked the whole thing is coated in syrup and handed off to dazed-looking customers, who then wander off to question their life decisions.

It looks, as I say in the video, like the last trip to the bathroom you’ll ever make. If something like this came out of you then you are either on your deathbed or in a science fiction movie after being impregnated by aliens.

It tastes of fruity cereal, oil, syrup and despair in about that order. The chicken itself, a prime flavor picker-upper, has an artificial fruit aftertaste that chicken really shouldn’t have.

What it doesn’t taste like is red velvet. Red velvet, made popular by cakes, is made with cocoa, and generally has light hints of chocolate about it. I got none of that in this Chicken and Waffle stick. Just red. So much red. Red that continued to make appearances later on in a very startling sort of way, at least until I’d remembered what I’d eaten earlier.

I’ve not completely written off Brooke Lynn’s Sticks and Cones. The meatball sub I saw several people chewing on looked interesting, and I am always down for a pretzel dog.

But I will never eat another horrible pizza cone, and nothing that looks like the Chicken-in-Waffle shall ever pass my lips again.

Snacktaku is Kotaku’s take on the wild and wonderful world of eating things, but not eating meals. Eating meals is for those with too much time on their hands.

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