Hungry-Man Mexican Style Fiesta

July 11, 2006 | Reviewer: Abi

Once again falling victim to my inexplicable desire to purchase all items with ‘Fiesta’ in the name, I picked up this little treat at Safeway last week.

Price: $2.00 (sale at Safeway)
Serving: 1 package, 20 oz.
Calories: 870
Fat: 58%, 38g
Sodium: 93%, 2230mg
Protein: 24g
Carbs: 38%, 113g
Fiber: 53%, 13g

Hungry-Man says: Beef enchiladas in chili sauce with Mexican style rice, refried beans and a brownie.

Abi says: Nicole and I split this meal. We also split a grilled caesar salad from Roberto Donna’s Galileo. I am actually taking pauses between each sentence to take bites of my fantastic cannoli dessert, perhaps also made by the hands of Mr. Donna, though probably not.

Actually, I just decided after writing that to stop messing around and eat the entire cannoli. Yum. It was half chocolate and half plain. The plain side was covered in chopped pistachios and the chocolate side has chocolate sprinkles. Those things are the best ever! Especially when I know that there are people sitting in Galileo right now paying a whole heck of a lot for the same thing I just at for $2.50!

(note to Roberto: I don’t enjoy the candied fruit bits. They are disgusting and take away from the delightful purity of the creamy ricotta)

Unfortunately, this is not a review of a meal from Galileo, one of the most expensive restaurants in DC. This is actually a review of my Hungry-Man meal. We at HeatEatReview HQ get tons of email urging us to eat Hungry-Man meals. Why is that? Could it be that other people are scared to eat Hungry-Man meals? Are the readers completely enchanted by meals that provide 93% of your daily sodium needs in one sitting? Do they want to see if a bunch of girls can handle being
‘Hungry-Men’?

You may have noticed that most of the reviews on this site are written by women. In fact, most of the people I work with are women. Even our IT department (which I am a part of) is mostly women. Does that mean that HeatEatReview.com is only for women? Most certainly not. We review for everyone, including guys. Should guys eat this meal? No. Nobody should eat this meal. I don’t care how much hate-mail you Hungry-Man-Loving readers send me, I cannot in good conscience recommend that any other human being ever consume this meal.

Let’s start with the things my coworkers said before I even heated up the meal…

“That looks good if you want to eat non-denominational meat.”

and

“Can’t help myself, I love Duncan Hines like nobody else…”

Evidently Kate was disgusted by the enchiladas while Josh started singing a commercial to the tune of “Sugar Pie (I can’t help myself)” by the Four Tops. There’s nothing like hearing a grown man sing about his love of Duncan Hines. Unfortunately, the brownie in this meal isn’t worth singing about. First, because it requires that you remove (and essentially destroy) the brownie from the tray halfway through the cooking process. Secondly, the brownie is almost entirely tasteless. My new coworker, Kelly, was quite curious about the brownie and inquired immediately about its tastiness. I was utterly sorry to say that while it was piping hot, it didn’t exactly taste like anything. A Betty Crocker Warm Delights Brownie would have this thing begging for mercy. The only nice thing about this brownie is that you can easily parlay the removal into an eating your dessert first session. If only the brownie was worth eating.

And the rest of the meal? Aside from my coworkers complaining about the extreme odor of the meal (multiple people likened it to body odor. Yes, they claimed this meal smelled like an unwashed contstruction worker), the food was plain old bland. Tomato paste based sauce, dried out corn tortillas, tasteless shredded beef. At least, I hope that was shredded beef. The refried beans, generally a delight when served in my home, gave off a frightening odor that further terrified my cube-mates. I can’t explain the popularity of Hungry-Man meals. Are Americans too lazy to heat up two separate - but more delicious - meals?

Stay tuned for Nicole’s take on the meal, to be posted on Thursday, and stay away from the Hungry-Man Mexican Style Fiesta.

comments

13 Responses to “Hungry-Man Mexican Style Fiesta”

Nicole on July 11th, 2006

I don’t know why this didn’t strike me looking at this meal in person… but it really looks like various types of human waste. No wonder it sucked.
Heather on July 11th, 2006

Abi, this post is priceless. And so magical in so many ways I don’t even know where to begin. Way to paint a beautiful - if smelly and tasteless - picture.
Ace N. on July 11th, 2006

Various types of human waste. What a wonderfully disgusting way to look at it.

Hungry-man meals are essentially Swanson meals with 1.5-2x the portions. Usually all Mexican-style frozen meals are inedible, so I can see where this one went wrong. I do like the boneless fried chicken meal, though.

By the way, never try a Sports Grill Hungry Man unless you want to punish yourself for your sins. Just a heads up.
Susan on August 22nd, 2006

The Hungry-Man Mexican Style Fiesta could use some improvements. Get rid of the brownie ( for one you don’t have brownie with a mexican meal), then add more rice to your enchildas, add fiesta type corn where your brownie is, and you would have a much better meal. I liked the Buffalo Chicken real well. And the Sports Grill Beef Taco with Potatoes is great!
amer dayea on November 7th, 2006

I had 3 plates of these (Mex style fiesta) each time thinking it would taste better;-( its the worst tasting tray ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The rice and enchilada taste like plastic and Clorox, last time i tried to take it out of the plastic plate and put it in a micro-wavable dish still the same ugly taste.
PLEASE get rid of it!!!!!!!!!! remove it off the store shelves! Other dish tste o.k. like the meatloaf! great and the chicken;-)
I htink i’ll stop buying ALL Hungry man dinners!!!!!!! thnks please hear this!!!!!!
S.L.Madison on November 11th, 2006

I have been a fan of Hungry Man meals as far back as I can remember. I am 55 years old.
Today I bought 2 Mexican Style Fiesta enchilada dinners and was deeply disappointed. The Enchiladas tasted TERRIBLE! I’m thinking maybe thay were bad. That or you get letters like this every day. Either way,something needs to change in my opinion.

the end label says:” jan2008 10056 EST 4L 4 1251″

Sorry,
Stu Madison
john on July 6th, 2007

yeah me too i only bought it because it looked so so good on the picture of the box but when i opened it i was aghast at what i saw. When i prepared it i only became more disappointed and to be perfectly honest i did not even bother to finish the this monstrosity of a meal which actually gave me somewhat of a tummy ache. All i can say is people of Swanson Foods what in the world were you thinking.
Amy's Kitchen Apple Pie | HeatEatReview.com on July 24th, 2007

[…] of my classmates accused me of eating this just for the website. While I have consumed food ‘just for the website‘, that is not the case with this apple […]
Andy on August 5th, 2007

I’ll start by telling ya’ll that I am the stereotypical “hungry man”. I physically resemble the guy in the flannel shirt on Brawny paper towells, and cut a tree down as recently as last week.
Anyway, I recently bought 4 Hungry Man meals because they were running some kind of sale on them at the grocery store. I found the portions just about right- I got the 1 pound versions-not the XXL versions.
I just finished the last of the 4 meals, and each time I ate one it made me wonder “Why did I just eat that?” The 4 that I got were sports grill (burger/fries), the Mexican feast, Salisbury steak, and Lasagna.
I just finished the Sports Grille -well, I didn’t actually finish it. The cheesy fries were more than even my bulletproof stomach could take. The burger was on the low side of average for frozen burgers I’ve eaten before -and I’ve eaten my share.
Going back to the other meals..it was the same thing…NOTHING in these tasted as good as if you had bought them separately. For instance, the lasagna - I have had lots of frozen lasagna…none of it is as good as fresh-made, but this is the worst I ever remember having.
I had the Mexican Fiesta…yuck. That was bad all the way around and left me wondering….why did I go to this kind of trouble? Why not just pump this stuff straight into the toilet rather than subjecting my digestive tract to such punishment?
Out of the 4 meals..the only thing that I found tasty were the brownies, which I agree with the previous poster that brownies do not go well with Mexican food…but the brownies tasted ok to me…although you really do have to destroy them to get them out of the package halfway through heating…what’s with that ? Are they too cheap to put them in separate packaging like they did the roll that comes with the lasagna?
Anyway, 4 meals, 4 strikes - no more Hungry Man for this hungry man. Nobody can say I didn’t give Hungry Man a chance. Culinarily, they took most of a week out of my life!
Derek on December 4th, 2007

I am actually a big fan of the Hungry Man meals (To be specific the Hero Sandwiches line, Chicken, Swiss, and Ranch.) and I have eaten and enjoyed the Mexican Fiesta. Perhaps my tastebuds are dead, but I thought that it was pretty good for a frozen meal. However, I must agree with Andy, those cheese fries *belch*
Deb on March 22nd, 2008

I actually liked these Fiesta dinners, but I may have had a different version because mine had coconut pudding (scrumptious), not a brownie. But I haven’t been able to find these dinners in a long time now.
jesse on April 2nd, 2008

The mexican feista was ok, the pudding was sooo good (cocada) the rice tasted so bad I couldnt eat it, but the enchaladas were not too bad, the beans were good. What happened to the quality in frozen food, no flavor?!
patty mann on April 30th, 2008

I can’t beleove that after buying swansan dinners from the day they hit the market, that i could find one soooo,bad. the beans were like soup, the pudding was like paste. those were enchiladas????

wish i had saved the boxes, i’d have taken them back.

The expiration is not until june of 2009. yep, got them on sale at safeway. wish i had found this site with the one star.

sounds like you should try again.

please send replacement coupons. we’ll go back to turkey, where we started.