Mountain Dew Kickstart Hydrating Boost carries more water than the original

Can the new Kickstart replace coffee?

Happy Saturday morning, foodies!

Some of you are looking a little bleary eyed — a few too many Guinness potato chips last night, eh? Well you're in luck, because this morning I'm breaking down a beverage that seemingly aims to be the perfect follow-up to a long, hard night out: Mountain Dew Kickstart Hydrating Boost.

The formula is similar to that of the original Mountain Dew Kickstart breakfast soda, except coconut water has been added for its supposed hydration benefits. The can's smaller, too, coming in at 12 oz. versus the original Kickstart can's 16 oz. That could be a good sign, because based on my feelings about Kickstart the first time around, the less you drink, the better.

This new beverage mutation comes in flavors humbly titled "Energizing Strawberry Kiwi" and "Energizing Pineapple Orange Mango." The word "energizing" might not technically be part of the name, per Mountain Dew's website, but it's on the can darned close to the flavor. Maybe it's there just in case you didn't get the message that a beverage called "Kickstart" in a skinny can might be an energy drink. Anyway, because I'm a glutton for punishment, I tried both to find out if they might be a decent substitute for my morning coffee.

Energizing Pineapple Orange Mango is underwhelming at best. There's simultaneously too much fake tanginess and not enough real citrus. It somehow manages to taste watery at the same time, too. I've tried a few other new citrus drinks hitting the market lately and had many of the same flavor complaints. Either my palate is off, or someone's mixing flavors wrong.

If you're going to drink one of these, drink Strawberry Kiwi.

Energizing Strawberry Kiwi is better. I could actually keep a can in the refrigerator without shuddering every time I opened the door. It's too sweet, yes, but it's also surprisingly appealing in a bubblegum pop sort of way.

Now let's talk about the fundamental problem with these drinks: They claim to be hydrating, yet they also contain caffeine. It's a conflict of interests, a crisis of self, an oxymoronic existence. And it's especially troubling because the cans play up their hydrating power while listing in much smaller text the fact that they contain nasty dehydrating caffeine.

Even worse, they're relatively light on the caffeine. My can of Energizing Strawberry Kiwi was listed at 68 mg per 12 oz. While I'm no doctor, that seems like just enough to kick the kidneys into overdrive without really waking up the brain. So you get the aqua-robbing power of caffeine canceled out by the hydration of coconut water and very little mental boost to boot.

Still, these are better than early versions of Kickstart. Their fundamental flaws tend to intrigue, rather than offend. Two-and-a-half sporks out of five and a bonus star for an interesting effort.

At the end of the day, though, you only need to know one thing. I'm still drinking coffee as I write this.

Guinness Potato Chips form a lasting memory

Better to eat Guinness chips late than never.

It's still March. That means I can write about St. Patrick's Day food without being behind the times, right?

Even if I am a week or two late to the party, I found one shameless Irish tie-in this year that's worth mentioning a little after the fact. The tie-in is Burts Guinness Thick Cut Potato Chips. Which, last time I checked, is Gaelic for heaven.

Before going any further, it's important to back up and explain how much of I sucker I am for St. Patrick's Day. Green milkshakes make my heart melt like I'm the CEO of a food dye company. Don't even get me started on shepherd's pie or corned beef and cabbage.

Guinness chips, on the other hand, seemed like a stretch. Give me bacon mac and cheese chips, give me mango salsa spuds, even give me chicken and waffle tater slices. But beer? Dublin-brewed black gold? It seemed a stretch.

If it is a stretch, it turned out to be one in the right direction. Guinness chips are savory like you wouldn't believe with an undercurrent of sweetness that flows like the suds at a Scranton St. Patrick's Day Parade. (That parade is, incidentally, the single longest line of Irish dancers, trucks and assorted church-related paraphernalia I've ever seen.) Potato chips are only good at their job if they keep you reaching into the bag for more. These chips are great at their job.

They're thick cut, too, so they have some substance. Eat a few handfuls of these and you'll feel sluggish and full. That might not sound ideal until you think about your average thin potato chip with its wispy body and lack of oomph. You eat those and you feel sluggish and hungry.

The only problems I had with the Burts Guinness chips were that the bag was significantly smaller than your average chip bag and the price was substantially higher. We won't go into exactly how expensive these things were, but it's safe to wonder how they were so stratospherically expensive in spite of the strengthening dollar.

Really, it's too late in the review to worry about little details like that, though. Therefore I'm handing out a belated four sporks out of five to these tasty treats. See if you can get some on a post-St. Pattie's Day sale, and your Irish eyes will be happy.

McDonald's spices up its Filet-O-Fish with Old Bay

The Old Bay is good. The cheese, not so much.

My favorite culinary regionalism in Baltimore is the practice of dumping Old Bay Seasoning on everything.

Yes, you think of Old Bay for crab or maybe some fish. But here you can also sprinkle it on fries, pork, eggs and even steak without raising any eyebrows. So it was no surprise to find McDonald's branches capitalizing on the local love by adding Old Bay to its long-running Filet-O-Fish sandwiches in Greater Baltimore and some of the surrounding states.

A little more surprising is where the Old Bay goes. It's not in the wild-caught Alaskan Pollock patties themselves, as I'm guessing they're prepared en masse in some factory somewhere that can't be bothered to change up the recipe for a few measly states in the Mid-Atlantic. No, the seasoning ends up in the tartar sauce.

I could understand if we were talking Old Bay mayonnaise, which sounds like a delectable idea. We're not. We're talking pickle relish, chunks and all.

Even so, the Old Bay Filet-O-Fish is an improvement over the more mundane sandwich on which it's based. The extra spice is a nice kick added to a crispy if somewhat flavorless square of fried fish. Things would be better if we were talking Old Bay mayo instead of tartar sauce, but they're not bad.

What is bad is the cheese. McDonald's insists on saddling the Filet-O-Fish with a slice of bright orange terror seemingly closer to petroleum byproduct than dairy product. I'd have taken a picture of the piece left sticking to the packaging after I finished my meal, except I feared it would scar any younger readers for life. That cheese is gastrointestinal crime.

The bun's not much better, as it's closer to a sponge than actual bread. As horrific as those two ingredients sound, however, they can be ignored when you have a good bite of fish slathered in zesty Old Bay. And the sandwiches are a relative deal, going at the price of two for $4. So somehow, the Old Bay Filet-O-Fish swims against the current of its lesser ingredients to grab a pretty good rating.

Three sporks out of five. Pair one with a slippery Shamrock Shake and you'll make your Irish Catholic friends happy while having a March meal to remember.

The 2015 Super Coffee Bowl

There's nothing quite like a good Super Bowl-themed food face-off, and this year's big game is perfect for a java joust.

Two of the country's biggest coffee brands come from the cities that are squaring off in this year's football game to beat all football games. Seattle and its Seahawks have their Starbucks. Meanwhile New England and its Patriots have their Dunkin' Donuts, a company based in Canton just outside of Boston.

I don't pretend to be impartial when it comes to these coffees. Starbucks is one of my favorite food brands, while I swore that Dunkin' Donuts was dead to me back in July. One unfortunate franchise ignored my order of a bagel with cream cheese, opting instead to only serve me a plain toasted whole-grain bagel. I discovered the error when I was five miles down the road in the car and had no other option than to lament the dryness of it all.

Who orders a plain toasted bagel? Who serves one?

Dunkin' climbed back toward my good graces by finally deciding to serve their dark roast hot, however. For years now you've been able to get it iced or bagged to brew at home yourself, but the restaurants refused to go beyond that. It was infuriating, since Dunkin's regular blend is basically watered-down Folgers — coffee for people who don't like coffee.

All things considered, I decided to bite the bullet and order cups of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts dark roasts on my way into work over back-to-back days this week. Which one was tastier? Which one provided the better buzz? Read on to find out.

Dunkin' Dark

If I'm doing a drink competition involving Dunkin' Donuts and anyone, you can count on Dunkin' being a dark horse at best. But the place's dark roast is a truly enjoyable experience.

To start, the scent is much richer than what you'd expect. It screams full body and depth of flavor. Sipping the drink is much the same thing, with a ton of toasted caramel coming out before a smooth finish. 

I'm not a big fan of Dunkin's foam cups and bulbous to-go tops, though. It's like drinking from a sippy cup that's bad for the planet. We can do better.

Starbucks Espresso Roast

Starbucks rotates their dark roasts regularly, so my goal was to sample whatever the flavor of the day proved to be. On Friday at my local outpost, it was Espresso Roast — not as good as the complex Christmas Blend or the deeply infatuating Gold Coast Blend in my opinion, but still a solid drink.

The scent wasn't nearly as noticeable with this cup as it was with the one from Dunkin', a fact I found very surprising. But there's a lot of caramel here, so it's probably a good option to face off against the Boston-area brew. Espresso Roast is very sweet, but it has a lot of roasted tones to balance it out. This is rich coffee.

And Starbucks cups are just heads and tails above Dunkin's. Not only do I feel like an adult drinking out of them, but they're tapered at a more comfortable angle, too. Yes, some people sneer at you for being elitist when they see the Starbucks logo, but it's better than being sneered at for not really liking coffee when you're holding a cup of Dunkin'.

As far as other factors go, Dunkin' was a few dimes cheaper than Starbucks, but there's not a huge price difference going on here. Both coffees were served adequately hot. If you're looking for a better caffeine boost, the Espresso Roast probably did the trick a tad better.

At the end of the day, Dunkin' Donuts made a surprisingly good run of it. I'm awarding Dunkin' Dark a very impressive four sporks out of five. It was just edged by Starbucks Esspresso Roast, which I'm giving a quarter of a spork more due to a combination of its better cup, deeper flavor and my better past experiences with the brand. 

Really, though, you can't go wrong with either of these coffees on Super Bowl Sunday — or any other day, for that matter.