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I was in Las Vegas this week and one of my “missions” while I was there was to try the infamous deep fried twinkie, perhaps made famous by the great Anthony Bourdain on his Vegas No Reservations episode.  It was quite the experience so I thought I’d share the photo and description from my Flickr page here on my blog.  You can see the rest of my Vegas photos there as well.

A Twinkie, batter dipped, deep fried, and coated with powdered sugar and chocolate sprinkles.  It was like eating an eclair from hell.  Seriously, this took some bravery.

The counter where you order it was about ten feet long in the very back of Mermaids Casino on Fremont Street.  It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, as you might guess by the table in the picture.  I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lovely things were sitting in the bottom of that fryer.  Also the fact that it’s 99 cents should really just turn you away… but in the interest of science I ate the whole thing.

When it is cooked the twinkie just about doubles in size and becomes kind of gooey and weird.  The stick in it was basically useless, you gotta go in full bore and just pick up this molten mass with your bare hands.  And that pile of powdered sugar on top does not exactly make it easy to eat without making a huge mess.  I’m not going to say it tasted bad, it was just very sweet and extremely greasy.  I’m pretty sure you would die if you ate more than one of these in a year… and even that might be too soon.

Anyway, the next day on the flight home I had some serious stomach pain.  I can’t be sure if it’s the twinkie’s fault but if I were a betting man…

Well there you go.  Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. Bourdain.