What good are the processed, mass-produced 7Eleven treats if you can't slather it in some kind of filmy sauce hyper-infused with sodium? My nuked noodle dish with a side of something accompanied by something else should have some kind of sauce to cover it's nakedness. Here are a few of the options at the particular location I wandered into.The flavors are as follows: green, red, pink, brown, yellow and orange. Pretty decent selection, I'm a little upset they didn't have teal or black but maybe they'll have it at another 7Eleven next door. I gathered my options and discretely slid out through the automatic door. It made a loud "ding" - discreteness thwarted.
Green - My Guess - Lucky for everybody, there are sweaty hot dogs and sausages on a meat treadmill - food always looks better when it is in motion. Usually it backfires but I'm going to go with my instinct and say a relish of some kind.
The Result - Bingo! And it was quite tasty, I forgot this wasn't my entree after I sucked out the last of the slime. Great start, 1-1.
Red - My Guess - Well duh! If Green was relish, Red is undoubtedly ketchup.
The Result - There I go again, trying to use my flawed logic. The sauce is red, but it is a chili hot sauce, not too bad and similar in texture to Elmer's glue. I'll bounce back, 1-2.
Pink - My Guess - This is a toughie. The few pink foods that come to mind are shrimp, strawberry frosted donuts, cotton candy - each of which I've never seen in a cellophane bag about the size of a business card. But at the buzzer, I remember that sushi is usually served with pickled ginger, which is sometimes pink and...
The Result - ...I fail! Much to my dismay, it is not cotton candy or strawberry frosted donuts. This is a sweet chili sauce, the friendlier cousin of Red. Tangy and reddish-brown, almost like a sweet barbecue sauce, this will certainly go into my noodle thing which is starting to look like a work by Jackson Pollock. Falling behind, 1-3.
Brown - My Guess - Easy peesy lemon squeezy, soy sauce. If there is some other popular brown sauce in Asia, it should find another agent.
The Result - Great success! I'll give myself credit however I have never seen soy sauce like this. The taste and color unmistakable but the texture is alien; mix tooth paste with jelly and that is lurking in this packet. That was a gimme but I'll take it, 2-4.
Yellow - My Guess - I've been burned on the past 'obvious' colors but nothing really comes to mind besides mustard. Banana sauce? No, way too obvious. Some kind of curry? Too Indian. Mustard it is.
The Result - Nope. And no idea. After sending it to the lab for further analysis, this orangey-brown substance is coined 'oden' sauce. Naturally I consult the world's foremost experts on the topic and Wikipedia informs me that oden is a traditional Japanese dish with a few ingredients boiled in a light dashi broth. No help there but for you American readers, think duck sauce, heavy on the duck. Blast! 2-5
Orange - My Guess - Rounding it out is this mysterious entity. Right away I think marmalade but Andrew learns from his mistakes. But do the Taiwanese like jelly-flavored hot dogs? Maybe. Either way I'm going rogue and thinking mayonnaise.
The Result - Humiliation, the answer we were looking for was ketchup. I know many of you are up in arms, about to march to 7Eleven HQ in Dallas, Texas and demand an explanation but people, I ask you to remain in control. All ketchups are not created equal, this has the viscosity of house paint and the aftertaste of cherries.
A measly 2-6, poor showing this time out. Lessons learned; what might be obvious in your home country could be the opposite abroad and when you mix a few strange condiments on one strange convenience store packaged meal, the result is exactly what you'd think - delicious.
