I guess I prefer Hot Oprah to Iced Oprah.
Hot Oprah is comforting, rich and easy to stomach. Iced Oprah shuts you out. It seems cold and indifferent, content to coast on its promise. That said, the official name for the new Oprah Winfrey drink at Starbucks and its Teavana stores is Teavana Oprah Chai Tea Latte. It comes hot and it comes cold, and the reason for the long name, one must assume, is because Starbucks bought the Teavana teahouse chain in 2012 and wants it to do for tea what Starbucks did for coffee; serendipitously, Oprah-branded chai latte could be the ideal way to have Oprah do for Teavana and chai what she did for Elie Wiesel and Dr. Phil.
See, when talking Oprah, nothing is as simple as a cup of tea: Twenty-five cents of every Oprah Chai purchased ($3.80-$4.80) is donated to the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation. And rather than slap her name across cups, Starbucks says that Oprah herself developed the drinks with “teaologist” Naoko Tsunoda, presumably straining against mountains of cinnamon dust and refusing to go home early.
Not even sitting in a Starbucks on a quiet weekday morning to sample Oprah’s tea is so simple. Each cup comes with a pale olive-green sleeve and a gentle, squishy, aggressively insistent message such as “Teavana and Oprah invite you to take a few moments to pause and reflect each day. Your own personal ‘steep time.’ ”
OK.
So I considered Oprah’s drinks, one hot, one cold, then dived in. The official description for Hot Oprah is: “Spicy chai blend of cinnamon, black tea and rooibos, lightly sweetened and finished with steamed milk.” The Guardian newspaper of London’s description was: “Absurdly precious, unerringly pretentious, wholly underwhelming ambergris spewed from the belly of a corporate leviathan.” But really Guardian, come now. …
Neither Hot Oprah nor Iced Oprah are so offensive. Or even as insistent as the drinks’ branding. If anything, Hot Oprah and Iced Oprah are the first satellites of the Oprah universe that I would describe as vague and unsure. Especially Iced Oprah, which offers only the faintest hint of chai, content to come off as a murky cold facsimile of thoughtfulness, topped with notes of artificiality, ultimately not concerned with nuzzling up.
This could be anyone’s branded chai — Kate Hudson’s, Zach Efron’s. It’s an air kiss. It doesn’t need you in its life and has already forgotten you’re here. Not like Hot Oprah, which at least makes an effort to seem spiritual and interested. The first thing Hot Oprah delivers is, well … a hint of chai. Not as spicy as promised, not as bracing as good chai. But sweet and creamy noncommitment — chai without feeling that you had to make an honest call between your usual drink and an exotic blend. Which is perhaps both the strength and the problem of Oprah’s Starbucks adventure: You don’t know what it’s trying to say but it seems important.
Tidbits: Bigger, odder M&Ms
Two strange things have been launched from Mars. (The candy company, not the planet, although some folks might see the two new versions of M&Ms as almost unearthly.)
First, and probably most likely to become a permanent member of the M&M constellation, is Mega M&Ms. These are M&Ms so large that each contains, according to the bag, three times the chocolate of a regular M&M. Mr. Tidbit dug out his micrometer and measured a Mega M&M at 0.81 inches in diameter and 0.38 inches thick at its center, while a regular M&M is more like 0.53 inches in diameter and 0.25 inches thick. (Of course, there are manufacturing variations, as well as potential error from Mr. Tidbit’s care not to crush the thin, thin candy shell.)
Cranking in the formula for the volume of an ellipsoid — see Mr. Tidbit after class — and not bothering to account for the thickness of the non-chocolate shell (it is thin, thin), the volume of a regular M&M is some 0.035 cubic inches; that of a Mega M&M is more like 0.13 cubic inches — indeed more than three times as much.
The other new item is Birthday Cake flavor M&Ms, which Mr. Tidbit would say taste pretty much like regular M&Ms, with maybe a hint of vanilla. The package acknowledges this to be an artificial flavor; maybe natural birthday cake flavor would be more distinctive. Birthday Cake M&Ms are also slightly bigger than regular M&Ms, but who cares?
It might not be as significant to some people as the differences mentioned above, but the bags of both new versions are notably smaller than that of regular M&Ms. The bag of regular M&Ms contains 1.69 ounces; for the same price you get just 1.48 ounces of Mega M&Ms (87 percent as much), and only 1.40 ounces of Birthday Cake M&Ms — just 82 percent as much.
—Al Sicherman, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Energy clocks in
The ever-expanding list of varieties of Honey Bunches of Oats now includes Morning Energy, with 6 grams of protein per substantial (one-cup, 2-ounce) serving. Morning Energy is available in Cinnamon Crunch and Chocolatey Almond Crunch. That makes 16 kinds of Honey Bunches of Oats.
—Al Sicherman, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Best Bite: Klondike Kandy Bars
What would you do for a Klondike bar? Now, double those things for a Klondike Kandy Bar, which adds elements of candy (is it OK if I spell it with a “c”?) to the traditional Klondike ice cream bar of vanilla ice cream coated with chocolate. The three flavors are Caramel & Peanuts (think of those Snickers ice cream bars, but with less peanut flavor), Cookies & Cream (cookies and cream ice cream, with more fudge) and Fudge Crunch (chocolate ice cream, fudge and crispy puffed rice for crunch). Oh, my.
Size: 4 (2.75-ounce) bars
Price: $3.59
Available: Supermarkets
— Daniel Neman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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