- My grandma would not even touch it.
- Your grandma's nice, mine would like
get a chancla out and like throw it at Joe.
(upbeat mariachi music)
- I'm Oscar.
- I'm Ricardo.
- Hi, I'm Eli.
- And I'm Teddy.
- And we're going to be trying
authentic Trader Joe's Mexican food.
I love me some Trader Joe's, don't get me wrong
but I'm just not going down the cultural section
for Trader Joe's.
Like, I'll get my greens and my proteins
and maybe the free cup of coffee,
but I am not about to get
some authentic tamale frozen dishes at all.
- I've been to Trader Joe's once and that was by accident.
- I'm more of a Gelson's, Pavilions type of guy
'cause that's what's near me,
but Trader's is good from what I hear, like,
they have really good frozen food?
- They do.
From experience, I am very
familiar with Trader Jose's, very good.
- I'm half Puerto Rican, half Mexican,
but on my Mexican side is my mom's side,
so I grew up having her cook for me,
my grandma cooked for me, and being that I'm from Chicago,
now I gotta go to the taco trucks.
The best spots are taco trucks, in my opinion.
So I make sure I get my fix on the corners
or the gas stations, wherever they're serving it up.
- Yeah, you always gotta look out for like the hands.
The greasier the hands, the better, sort of.
(laughs)
But yeah, I'm 100% Mexican.
So like, when it comes to real Mexican food
or real Mexican dishes, we normally just cook it at home.
- I think Mexican food is pretty much good anywhere.
- Yeah, I feel like, obviously,
Mexican food is good, but nothing beats, like,
your grandma, your mom, or your dad.
- When abuela's in that kitchen.
- So I feel like as a Mexican,
I feel like if we're gonna be trying
a Trader Joe's Mexican food, like,
we know what we're kinda getting ourselves into.
We know it's not gonna be like traditional,
like what we are used to.
But like, I mean, I feel like it should be good.
(upbeat mariachi music)
- Oh man, is this the illustrious taquito
or what are we callin' this here?
- Is this Joe's version of a taco
or a taquito?
'Cause I can't tell.
- These are doggie biscuits, yeah.
- Doggie biscuits, yeah.
I think this is what, yeah, yeah, you're like,
hey, here you go.
You throw it for the dog and the dog goes,
grabs it and gives it back to you,
and like, why are you wasting my time?
- First off, this tortilla is like, dude.
- I'm just sad right now, I'm like really depressed about.
(groans) I thought it would be good.
- It does its job, but these aren't Mexican taquitos,
if that's what we were going for.
- They're super dry, it's so dry.
I mean, the pride is in the tortilla.
In how that is prepared
and where you're gettin' it from,
and the fact that this was been frozen
for God knows how long, it's just super dry.
You need something to put it on.
I mean, I get it, hey, it's three AM,
you just left the bar, you see these puppies in the freezer,
have at it.
There's no other reason why to eat this, in my opinion.
In comparison, there is no comparison, I don't feel.
- Can I have a trash can please?
- It just doesn't have any crunch, so like,
actual taquitos or fried taquitos,
you'll get like a nice crunch to it.
This is just like the sogginess
and then the rim of the tortilla
is just like an extra stiff piece of tortilla
that it just, it just doesn't work.
- Yeah.
- I'm like speechless, I don't even know what to say.
- [Producer] Yeah, yeah.
- Other than it's really funny.
- The thing that I think they get right
is just the style they shredded the beef
that might be like the closest thing to authentic.
- This dish gets nothing right.
- Right, no.
- I don't like, first off, tortilla, it's like,
you gotta make that good.
And the inside is like,
when you open it up it looks like solid meat,
but it's like a paste.
- If you open it up, it looks like tuna,
the kind of tuna you get at Subway.
That's what that looks like,
it doesn't look like chicken or anything else.
- The taquitos that we have or that we would, you know,
get served at home are more of a longer,
they sort of look like the flute, you know,
and they're deep, they're fried in a pan,
but they're not folded like this.
- My grandma would not even touch it.
- Your grandma's nice, mine would like,
get a chancla out and like throw it at Joe.
A hundred percent.
If I was drunk, this would be good.
- There you go.
- Couple of tequilas in you.
- If I'm blacked out and I don't remember
what happened the night before,
this is exactly what I probably ate,
and I won't remember
because I was blacked out.
This is just not working.
- No es bueno.
(upbeat mariachi music)
(laughing)
I mean, the wrapping itself is kind of funny
'cause like, usually when you get tamales from home,
it's like covered in like, you know, sauce or something,
I don't know.
- Okay, first off.
- First impressions, I love it.
- I mean, I love it, but I'm scared.
- No, I'm not.
- You're not scared?
- No. No, this looks good.
So far this looks good, the corn husk is on point.
(record scratch)
- This is not acceptable in any kind of way.
First of all, the husk, it doesn't even have any color,
like, it looks like it hasn't even
been in the pot to like boil.
And clearly this is frozen.
- I'm glad there's corn husk.
- Yeah, good job, Trader Joe's.
- I'll give you that, yeah,
but I mean, yeah, you know, let's figure this out.
- Oh man.
I like, oh that's so funny.
They have like a fake burn mark,
like they grilled it up a lot.
Can you see this? (laughing)
It looks like they tried--
- It's for aesthetics.
- It looks like they, (laughs) you tried to--
- Trader Joe's like, let me fool all of these people
buying this and make it seem real with all these burn marks.
- Oh, it's a green chile tamale.
- Interesting.
- So you have your red and your green chile tamales,
and sometimes it indicates like pork or chicken.
Green normally means chicken, red normally means pork.
- It looks like there's like chicken and cheese maybe?
- It looks like they, it's like they piped it in.
Oh, they definitely did pipe it in.
(laughing)
Yeah, they got the machine.
- There's the hole, where they probably piped in
the stuffing which obviously that's
not how it works because tamales,
you're supposed to spread the masa,
add the topping, fold it in.
This is clearly, the hole was poked into this poor tamale.
- I will say the corn part of it is like not good,
the masa is pretty bad, it's dry.
- The inside's not bad.
- The inside is not bad,
the masa is not supposed to crumble in your mouth.
And it's definitely crumbling.
- I'm done with this one.
- I don't, I really don't wanna like it.
So everyone's very particular about the tamales
and I thought it would be a lot worse, honestly.
- This is really good, great job, Trader Joe's.
- I'll give it to you.
- I actually think they got the flavors.
- Yeah, the flavor's actually good, like--
- The cheese ain't bad.
- Looks like there's jalapeno in here
and like chicken and cheese, which is good.
It's just the masa is just not cute whatsoever.
(buzzer)
But the inside's good.
Like, I would eat the inside
if it wasn't wrapped in this masa.
- The ratio between masa and filling,
that's pretty key and they got it spot on.
- I would say that, you know, yeah,
the masa is not bad, the masa's not too bad.
- [Teddy] Well-cooked.
- Well-cooked masa, I'm actually quite surprised.
- I will definitely have again.
- Ah, I mean if they gave it to me, yeah, sure.
I might if my friend, if I was like hungry
and I was at their house, and like,
hey, I got some Trader Joe's tamales,
I'm like, eh, all right.
- Yeah, I would recommend it to my friend Skylar,
who probably doesn't know the difference
between tamales or what a taquito is.
(upbeat mariachi music)
- Well, I will say this first of all.
Burritos are not Mexican, this is an American thing, so--
- What an educational fact that was.
- Yeah, if you go to Mexico,
nobody, like, there's no such thing as burritos.
It's not a thing, it was something that we created here.
Which, I love burritos, but this is not a burrito.
- It just like, looking at it makes my mouth dry.
- I wanna run, I mean,
this feels like I have a date with my toilet
in 20 minutes after I eat this.
- You know what?
First impressions, first looks.
This kinda reminds me of my mom's burritos.
- Oh, now I feel like an asshole.
- Yes. (laughing)
- The tortilla, it's like falling apart.
Which probably it's what's making your mouth dry.
- Yeah, this is the classic like school lunch
you get on a Wednesday at like elementary school.
Like, this is what they put in the ovens for ya.
Okay, so there's like arroz,
you got some beans in there.
- There's frijoles, queso.
I think more chicken.
- I don't, is that chicken?
I can't even tell.
Bon appetit.
(ding)
I'm not gonna lie, this is actually, it's pretty good.
- They sell a good frozen burrito.
- This actually might be one of the better
frozen burritos I think I've ever had.
- Yeah, I do love frozen burritos.
- That's rough. (spits)
- You know what's funny is like
the tortilla is kind of like doughy,
which like, I like it in this because like the filling,
the consistency of it goes with it,
but the flavors are actually pretty good,
it's like not like--
- I think it's a really good version
of a breakfast frozen burrito type of thing.
- [Ricardo] Yeah.
- Like, I wasn't expecting carne asada,
frijoles, arroz, all that stuff.
But like, it's actually more tasty than what it looks.
- Dang, Joe, you're invited to the quince,
that's what it is.
(laughing)
- Usually when you're biting into a burrito, like,
oh, okay, I taste the ingredients,
I know this was put together,
I know there is a more and like, extra investment in this.
Whereas like with this is,
you could tell this was like factory, poosh,
like, it was probably a mush
and just squirted it in a tortilla,
and they did a wrap machine.
There's no love,
there's no abuelita's hands making this,
and that's what made me spit it out.
- If I were to offer this burrito to my grandma,
she would definitely toss the chancla right in my face.
- It's pretty bad, but I'm not a big fan
of most frozen burritos.
I mean, that's like last case scenario, like,
you know, I'm starving to death.
- You know what this is?
This is a total college burrito.
That's what it would rank in.
- I guess.
- I would buy a box of this (laughing)
and like bring a burrito on the days
that we don't get lunch.
Like, I would eat this at work.
- Yeah.
- Sure.
- This is good, like, my payday's like two days away,
then when we go to Trader Joe's.
- Yes, this is, I'm broke, and I can't afford a whole meal,
so I'm gonna live off of this for the next three days.
That's what that is. (laughing)
- It's good!
- It's good.
- Joe's thinking of us during those hard times.
Gracias, Jose.
- So my final thoughts would be,
the first dish, the taquitos,
I would if I'm hangin' out with the homies, you know,
I like drink a little bit too much sauce on a Saturday night
and I just wanna like nibble on stuff
so I can wake up and not be hungover.
I would eat those for in that situation.
The tamales were actually not bad, I mean,
I would eat it as like a snack or like a dire lunch, sure.
But the burritos, no thanks.
Overall, there are elements in there that I was like, okay,
I would, but it wouldn't be like a go-to.
- Yeah, the only thing that I would bring
into the office and say, hey guys, I brought Mexican food
from Trader Joe's, would probably be the tamales.
Like, everything else I wouldn't put that label behind it.
I would just say, hey these are some frozen taquitos
and frozen burritos.
- I wouldn't recommend any Mexican food
to any of my family members, coming from Trader Joe.
- And that's just for safety,
'cause I would love to still have a family
and not have them disown me.
- I was expecting a lot more because everyone
is always like, oh, Trader Joe's
has really good frozen food.
Maybe the other stuff is good,
which I would be open to trying,
but like, the Mexican dishes are not good.
I mean, the first dish was like--
- That was not a good taco.
- It was like I couldn't stop laughing.
It was so bad.
- You couldn't finish it!
- I had to spit it out.
- They actually have a really good salsa.
They have these lime tortilla chips
that are really good
and some like spicy salsa that's legitimately good.
- I, the only thing that I actually do like
from Trader Joe's is they have
this tub of small chocolate chip cookies that I love to eat.
I could eat like a whole tub.
But they're like tiny little chocolate chip cookies
and they're really good.
- Do we have those here?
(upbeat mariachi music)