Thanks for the milkshake, robot.
The Sweet Spot is a weekly Bites feature where sugar addict Megan Seling reviews some of the best, worst and weirdest sweet treats sold here in Nashville.
What it is: f'real Mint Chip Milkshake
Where I found it: Exxon Tiger Market at 1111 Broadway.
What it tastes like: I know, I know — a milkshake at a gas station? Made by a robot? Who would drink that?
Well, I would.
And it was not bad!
The f'real milkshake (the company insists on lowercase — who do they think they are, fun.?) wasn't nearly as chemical-filled and weird as you'd think, despite the fact it's sitting amongst a the landscape of other highly processed gas station foods, like glistening meat rods that spin on heated rollers all day. The f'real milkshake is simply a cup with some ice cream in it.
You choose your desired flavor from the freezer — they have mint chip, s'mores, cookies-and-cream, coffee and various fruit smoothies — and put the cup in the machine's cup holder. You push a few buttons and the machine lifts the ice-cream-filled cup up to the blending mechanism, squirts in some milk and whips the ice cream into a thick, creamy shake. Easy peasy. You have a milkshake in under a minute. You can even control how thick you'd like it. It's as good as any shake you'd make at home if you just blended some ice cream and milk, so it's not so much the product that leaves me filled with questions, it's the invention itself.
Like, are milkshakes so hard to come by and so complicated to make that we really need an automated counter-top appliance at gas stations to be serving them, too? But whatever. People want options. Tiger Mart also offers fountain sodas, Slurpees (or whatever places that aren't 7-11 call Slurpees), every kind of energy drink in the world ... so why not milkshakes, I guess?
Anyway, all weirdness aside, my new life goal is to get rich enough to be able to afford putting a f'real blender in my house. I refuse to make my milkshakes with a blender like an, ugh, pauper. And the machines are a steal at only $8,000!
