#69 - Chingaderas at Smoqued BBQ

I came in with such high hopes for these. I mean, they just sound down-right delicious - as they are described on the website, they are - cream cheese jalapenos, popper shrimp, and dates, wrapped with smoked bacon then flash fried and served with a spicy berry chipotle. But unfortunately, in practice, I just couldn't quite come to love them like I thought I would.

To start off, the flash frying of them is perfect. The breading is light and doesn't affect the taste of all the ingredients much. However, when you first bite in, you're greeted with a limp, seemingly raw bacon that is wrapped around the chili and shrimp. The description says the bacon is smoked, so in theory, it's cooked enough to serve, but the texture of the bacon just immediately turns you off and since it's so chewy, you can't easily bite through it so you end up pulling the chili and fillings out with the long strand of bacon.

If you can get past the bacon however, the rest of the jalapeno popper is pretty good. There's not too much cream cheese in there and you do get a bit of heat (a few more seeds left in the chili would have been nice). However, maybe because everything's all mushed together and the bacon kind of undoes the whole thing, I never even noticed the shrimp in there. Perhaps they were forgotten in my order? I don't know - either way, I didn't see or taste them at any point.

The highlight of the dish was the berry chipotle sauce. It complements the jalapeno popper nicely with a sweetness that really accentuates the whole dish nicely. I probably won't be having this dish again, but I may ask for the sauce on the side if I go for any other dishes at Smoqued in the future that merit it.