I honestly don’t know what happened with these. It seems these Phoenix Rolls and me weren’t meant to be.
Vegetarian Phoenix Rolls
They looked and sounded delicious. Only the “vegetarian shredded pork” that was listed on the ingredients list had me a little startled. It said, however, that is was made from textured soybean, so I believed that. I guess the problem here for me is, that it is listed as pork first, then in brackets as soybean second. The little history part sounded quite nice aswell:
“The October Fifth Street (Rue de Cinco de Outubro in Portuguese) first known as Si Meng Street a hundred years ago has always been a bustling street in Macau selling a full array of local products. To date, the October Fifth Bakery of Macau takes pride to offer you these local flavours for your enjoyment.”
Okay, fair enough. Sounds like these guys know what they are doing. The box contains two of these:
“single” packet
Here is where it went wrong first. Once I opened it this greeted me:
a crumbly mess
Yes. A crumbly mess. I don’t know where it happened, if it was during import or during transportation from store to my home, but this is what I saw once I opened it. Not very appetising to begin with, right?
a phoenix roll
Since crumbs don’t really stop me from eating something, after all it all ends up in my stomach, I braved on to see how these rolls would tingle my taste buds.
more crumbly mess underneath
And tingle they did. They were really, really dry and I didn’t have something to drink with me while trying them (lesson learned – always have something to drink with you, when you taste test something). The convincing pork flavor of the textured soybeans tickled something else though. When I tried to finish the roll pictured here the dryness and the flavor worked together and I just couldn’t swallow it.
This made me really sad. They really sounded like a delicious treat that would, for once, not be sweet. For now I don’t think I will try them again. I haven’t even finished the box so far. Maybe I will try a different type if they offer it, but this particular one I am afraid to try again. Do you know those times when your stomach develops its own memory and once it sees something it triggers a reaction? Yes, this is happening here, sadly.
As for the ingredients and the delicious shredded pork:
| Ingredients: | Wheat Flour, Sugar, Eggs, Vegetarian Shredded Pork (Textured Soybean), Vegetable Shortening (Palm Oil, Coconut Oil), Margarine (Palm Oil, Soybean Oil, Butter, Vitamin E), Sesame, Dried Seaweed, E450(i), E500(ii), E341(i) |
| Net weight: 75g (2.6oz) | |
Maybe these vegetarian rolls are more suited for people who aren’t actually vegetarians. The pork is really convincing! But I still advise you to have something to drink with you when you try these.
| Nutrition Information | ||
| Items | Per 100g | Daily % |
| Energy | 2059kJ | 25% |
| Protein | 10,2g | 17% |
| Total Fat | 24,5g | 41% |
| Saturated Fat | 9,1g | 46% |
| Trans Fat | 0,6g | — |
| Total Carbohydrate | 57,4g | 19% |
| Sodium | 196mg | 10% |
Interested in October Fifth Bakery? Click this link! The homepage is entirely in Chinese though.
Living with Food 