Synsepalum dulcificum

Miracle Berry in Restaurant Form

/ Shane / 2 Comments

iNG Restaurant is a new restaurant in Chicago, specializing in synsepalum dulcificum, otherwise known as the Miracle Berry. Billing itself as “the worlds only restaurant that specializes in a flavor changing experience”, the menu is built around the taste-modifying fruit.

My own experiences with synsepalum dulcificum have been documented, and I can tell you it’s pretty nifty stuff. However, as I discovered, you do need to have the right food to make it work right. So there’s definitely something to having a set menu of things that will work well with the fruit. On the other hand, part of the draw is taking something that you know how it tastes, and seeing how it tastes while “under the influence” as it were. But if you’re eating something amazing at a restaurant you’ve never been to before, then you don’t really have that baseline comparison.

Anyway, it’s a cool idea. A little pricey for my blood, since it essentially hinges on a gimmick, but if anybody checks it out, you’ll have to let me know. Judging by the pictures, it looks to be as interesting visually as it is orally.

Berries: Miraculous After All!!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So, after yesterday‘s less-than-stellar trial, today I came armed with several things to try that would be more appropriate to test the properties of the pills.  Yesterday I only had my lunch and it was not really geared towards the type of thing that the fruit is supposed to affect.  Also, as pointed out in the comments by someone from ThinkGeek, the fats in my cheese and oatmeal cream pie were working against me and breaking down the proteins that make the whole thing work.

Trial II was nothing short of a rousing success!  You have to get a hold of these things, it was as amazing as I could have hoped it would be!!

1) A lime – Absolutely delicious!  I tried it before hand to make sure it was not some secret delicious sweet variety of limes and I assure you, it was very sour.  After letting the tablet dissolve, the lime was just so sweet and delicious and sugary like candy.  The weirdest part was that you could feel a feeling of citrus in your mouth but you couldn’t taste it as sour.  Very odd.
2) A plum – I had to prove that yesterday’s delicious plum wasn’t a fluke.  Sure enough, it was super ripe and sugary tasting.
3) A tangerine – This was crazy.  It was so sweet I almost couldn’t eat it.
4) A cherry – Mostly like a cherry still, but definitely sweeter, almost like cherry pie.

We had about 4 people from work trying it and every one agreed it was pretty cool.  One person was impatient and chewed his tablet and he didn’t notice any difference.  So the lessons learned are:

1) Make sure you dissolve it fully on your tongue.
2) Make sure you have the appropriate items to try (i.e. sour things and fruit).
3) Sweet things don’t really get sweeter, so don’t bother with those.

There are several items I would still like to try such as Tabasco sauce and sour cream.  The guy from ThinkGeek also recommended beer.  I would absolutely try it again at home when I could gather some more items together.

As a side note, why do people from companies only comment when I bash their products? 🙂

Berries: not so miraculous

/ Shane / 3 Comments

And now the berries finally ARE in my grasp.  A co-worker bought some tablets from ThinkGeek.

Unfortunately I didn’t have anything prepared to give them a fair try, so I will probably need to try this again.  This is what I had with me:

1) Oatmeal Cream Pie – It tasted about the same, I really didn’t notice a difference.  I was warned it could be super over sweet, but I didn’t notice.
2) Plum – At first I thought it tasted the same and I thought the pills were bogus.  But after eating it for a little bit I thought, “Either those pills are working or this is the finest, ripest plum ever picked!” By the end it was almost too sweet!  But I didn’t taste it before the pills, so I don’t know how much improvement there was.  It could have, in fact, been the finest, ripest plum ever picked.
3) Venison and Cheese sandwich – It seemed to taste extra delicious, but I think I am chalking that up to my heightened awareness of taste as I scrutinized every bite for the effects of the berries.
4) Diet Dr. Pepper – It had a sort of bitter taste at the end.  Definitely not an improvement!

Nothing was that dramatic however.  I’m wondering how much of it is a placebo effect, meaning, I know this is supposed to taste different so now I’m thinking it tastes different.  The Emperor’s New Clothes in pill form.  To be fair though, the pills are supposed to turn sour things sweet and I didn’t really have anything sour.  I will need to try again with some lemons or the like.

I will, of course, keep you posted.

Miracle berries, almost in my grasp!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

As I have previously reported, there is a crazy Miracle Berry that messes with your taste buds such that everything you eat tastes totally different and delicious.  I really wanted to try it out and a berry only costs about $3 a pop, but I couldn’t really find a place in Chicago to get them.  You could import them by the hundreds, but that was pretty expensive!  I even considered buying a plant and growing them myself, but they sounded pretty difficult to take care of.

But finally, a light in the darkness!  And from who else but my favorite store, ThinkGeek?  Now available for purchase, you can buy Miracle Berry Tablets, which work the same as the berries.  I am really itching to try them and now they are affordable (even if they are on back order).

So, anyone up for a flavor tripping party?

More coyotes and magical berries

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I stumbled across this old article from 2006 the other day and as Chicago’s leading coyote informant, I had to share.  Basically it talks about why Chicago is so full of coyotes!  The main reason being that, unusually for a city its size, it has a lot of park land and all of it is more or less connected.  This lets the coyotes travel around the city at will without being spotted.  The most interesting statistic is that coyotes raised in Chicago have a two times better chance surviving than they do in the wild!  So it is actually safer for them than in the wild.  That’s just…wild.

Going in a completely different direction here, Sara sent me this link and it was amazing.  There is this crazy berry that you eat and then it temporarily spazes out your taste buds making everything taste crazy.  It sounds so weird, I would love to try it sometime!