| Cafe Rio Pork | Gary’s Chicken | |
|
Prep time/ease of ingredients (15 pts) |
10
|
15
|
|
Likeliness of making it again (20 pts) |
20
|
2
|
|
Overall Flavor (50 pts) |
48
|
3
|
| Value $ (15 pts) |
14
|
15
|
Final Score:
Cafe Rio Pork 92 Gary’s Chicken 35
Jody, this was a total blowout! What the heck happened?
 |
| Gary’s Italian Chicken |
I was very excited about these two recipes after reading all the reviews on 365 days of slow cooking. However this round was to say the least a HUGE letdown as far as dinner goes. Gary’s chicken did not fare too well against the Cafรฉ Rio pork. Gary’s chicken was very easy to throw together and was quite affordable. I had most everything in my pantry. I did have to buy the bone in chicken thigh and legs pieces. It was very cheep and the kids were very excited to get a bone. Who knew food could be FUN to eat. The chicken did turn out very moist! The sauce on the other hand was very thick, and the flavor was to say the least bland. My kids had to scrape the “pasty tomato stuff,” as they called it, off the chicken before they could choke it down. If I were to make this again I would use my own spaghetti sauce that I know my kids will eat. Sorry Gary’s chicken you just were not a winner this round.
 |
| Cafe Rio Pork |
The Cafรฉ Rio pork on the other hand was a SUPPER star! My family LOVED the pork tacos we had for Sunday dinner. It was very easy to put the pork in the crock in the morning and let it do it’s thing all day. It was so tender by dinner time it just fell apart, and I mixed the sauce in. I had to knock off a couple points for prep time because you do have to time everything just right if you are making the rice and dressing to go with the dish. That is the tricky part. I was very surprised at the ease of it all coming together with all the different parts in the end. I really liked the lime rice, and tomatillo dressing. It just brought the whole dish together. The flavor was VERY close to Cafรฉ Rio, but not exact. What copycat recipe is? So it lost a couple points there also. I had most of the ingredients for this in my pantry so I felt like the value was very good for the amount of food there was. I knocked some points off just because there are a lot of ingredients, and if you had to buy EVERYTHING this would be a very costly meal. We will for sure be making this one again!
Cafe rio pork will be up against the Zuppa Toscana next round. So it should be a very close game. We’ll see how it goes…
We had the Gary's Italian chicken tonight for dinner. The chicken was super tender, the consistancy of the sauce was fine…but I agree it was very bland. I think I should have doubled the amount of all the seasonings I added. Or maybe I'll just use our favorite spaghetti sauce instead. But those bone-in thighs really were tender.