Gardenburger's The Original veggie patty
While the phrase "the original and still the best" may work for some things, it does not work for Gardenburger's The Original. The Original is a flavorless veggie patty that tries to overcompensate for its lack of taste with liberal amounts of garlic and onion - lots of onion. The only explanation I can come up with for the abundance of onion is that the chef who concocted The Original was like me, and when he realized that he accidentally added double the amount of dried onions to hist mixture, he scraped out as much of the excess as possible and then added more ingredients to try and mask his mistake. In the case of The Original, however, the chef apparently used garlic as one of the masking ingredients. When I'm done writing this review, I'm going to have to go brush my teeth, or the next person I talk to may faint.
The Original is not the George Clooney of alt-burgers either. It's a pretty pale, unappetizing looking patty. And it certainly looks nothing like the picture on Gardenburger's website:
The patty on their site looks like it's been lovingly basted and gently sauteed in nuts and peppercorns (something that would probably help the taste of these patties greatly).
I will be avoiding these veggie burgers in the future for sure. If your local grocery store carries Gardenburger products (and it probably does), do yourself a favor and get the California Burgers instead.
