I am a pickle lover. One of my favourite flavours is dill. I love the smell, and I love the taste. I am glad that society is finally coming around and offering more dill pickle flavored items.
We were on our way home from our trip to Cincinnati when we needed something to eat before our final journey home. A place of choice for us, if we are not going to stop at Harvey’s along the QEW in Grimsby, is Sonic in Buffalo.
The night before, we finished our day’s activities and settled in for the night at a hotel. We were watching TV when a commercial for Sonic aired, featuring their dill pickle burger and even a dill pickle drink.
My curiosity was piqued.
I have been to places that serve interesting flavours of drinks. I cannot entirely recall my first weird flavour but I know it was from a variety store here in my home town, Orangeville. That store has changed hands and no longer offers a large selection of unusual and distinctive flavours, but I’ve discovered that other places in the world sell these unique creations.
Rocket Fizz in Kalamazoo and B.A. Sweetie Candy Company in Cleveland are likely one of the two best places where we can find different flavours. I had dill pop before at a great store, Le Magasin Général Le Brun in Quebec. I loved it. It was dill, and it was sweet. It’s very rare to have a sweet dill flavour, so I was excited to try this frozen beverage from our favourite American fast food chain, Sonic.
We get to Sonic, and I am overly eager to have this dill pickle-themed meal. Fearful that I was about to miss out on all the dill items, thinking a large crowd would pop in at any moment and steal all the dill that this Sonic restaurant had, I was desperate to place my order.
Ugh.
There is someone in front of us.
Do they want the “Big Dill Meal”? I heard them asking about it.
Man, these people are slow. Slowly, they decided what they wanted to eat. They even asked extensive questions about the contents of each menu selection. Painfully, my stomach growled as I became increasingly impatient to place my order.
What?!
These people are finally done ordering and are paying cash! And this cash register, the only one at the front counter, is all out of coins.
The poor girl who had to endure these customers had to go back and fetch a manager for a roll of coins.
They took forever.
Finally.
I get to place my order. My tongue struggled to say Big Dill Meal since I was now so parched from all my huffing and puffing. She asked if I wanted the dill slush as well.
“Duh!” I thought. “This is why I am here”, I thought more in my head.
I did vocalize that I did indeed want the dill slush.
I thought I noticed an odd glance. As she directed her eyes toward the cash register and put in that I wanted the dill slush, I could have sworn she looked at me as if I was crazy.
The order was placed, paid, and we then sat down, waiting for the meal of the century. Dill pickles on a burger, with fried dill pickles on that very burger, dill pickle fries, and the showstopper: the dill pickle slush.
When the meal arrived, I was presented with this green slush drink that had dark green balls floating in it. I had these flavourful balls before in a different drink and very much enjoyed the burst of flavour they give when they pop in my mouth. I was surprised that in the drink itself were slices of real dill pickles.
Interesting.
I began salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs as my lips formed around the straw of what was going to be the best drink in the world. I ingested the green slush.
Hmm.
Another sip.
One sip is never enough to truly understand the nuances of a fine beverage like dill pickle slush.
Hmm.
A third sip.
With that, I knew exactly what my opinion of this green creation was.
It was gross.
It was wrong.
It was a sin against God, nature and Man.
I struggled for the two hours that it took to drive home to finish this drink. When I got home, I couldn’t bring myself to finish the last bit, let alone eat the pickles at the bottom of it.
I like salt and vinegar chips, but they have a long-lasting, lingering taste in the mouth that takes days to go away. Sonic’s dill slush was just like that, but more intense and more insistent on staying and flavouring everything else that I ate.
I was disappointed.
I wanted a good flavour of drink.
I would rank this as the second-worst drink in the world, right after the mustard pop I got in Cleveland.
- Grass pop was great!
- I was surprised by Dirt Pop being very savoury and satisfying.
