While sitting at the bar, the staff seemed intend on trying to butter me up with a bevy of alcoholic beverages, no doubt in an attempt to dull my keen tense of taste and put me in a mood fit for jovial spirits, and more inclined to give the onion rings a more favorable review. Not tonight, sir. Not tonight.
Here is a review of onion rings from The Holiday Bar.
Presentation and Appearance: 4/5
Plain brown paper rests between a hearty mound of onion rings and a metal tin. My eyes are immediately drawn to the green and white specks dusted delicately atop the batter. Experience has taught me that seasoning onion rings past the fry, and in such a visible manner, was something of an oddity, and it immediately piqued my interest.
While most of the rings are decently plump, a handful of shrunken and malformed rings lurk in the shadowy recesses of the tin, desperately seeking to avoid my gaze. Much as I imagine the humble roadside onion seller tries to hide the desiccated and rotten onions from their more photogenic siblings, the Holiday Bar clearly didn't want me to find these reject rings. It does not work.
A paper cup of ketchup (which I find to be a vile concoction) rests precariously near my precious rings, daring to pollute them. All in all, the appearance is refreshingly classic and homey, though the precarious ketchup placement and malformed rings are to their detriment.
Taste: 3.5/5
Even before I get a hint of the tantalizing seasonings resting atop the batter, my first bite reveals a greasy world of onion juice. With the grease comes a decent and solid onion flavor, which is just present enough to deliver a good taste without being overwhelming. The weak onion rings in the back, however, lacked the same flavor profile.
While the batter itself isn't tremendously flavorful, the seasoning added after the cooking, certainly including some ground salt and a dash of a number of savory herbs, adds a wonderful dimension to these onion rings that many others lack. This is a splendid example of how the appearance of an onion ring (the mottled specks of green and white on top of the batter) can build anticipation for the flavors yet to be unearthed, as a great apocalypse.
I cannot vouch for how the ketchup may or may not have affected the taste, as I refused to touch it. The thought of ketchup touching the glory of an onion ring makes me shudder, and weep for the poor souls this horror has been delivered to prior to my arrival.
Texture: 3/5
When you've been in the hard game of onion ring reviews as long as I have, you start to recognize patterns. An onion ring that tastes mightily of onion juices is typically accompanied by a mushy onion, with the juicy flavors coming at the expense of structural integrity of the onion itself. This was the case here, as the onions were soft and squishy, and mildly overdone.
The beer batter managed to provide a reasonable and soft bite, while my mastication delivered the sound and sensation of a slight crunch. It makes up somewhat for the onion, as providing a good texture with soft battered rings can be a tricky beast. The gnarled rings in the back are far too overdone to say the same of, though.
The slippage scourge returns, as soft batter and mushy onions make are a potent recipe for separation of the constituent components of the rings. While they has a number of good textural elements, these onion rings failed to meaningfully combine them into a positive whole.
Value: 3.5/5
For $6, I got a tin packed with reasonably thick cut rings.While $6 is a little steep for the amount of onion rings I received, they were certainly made in-house and with a reasonable degree of precision. All in all, these onion rings provided reasonable taste at a reasonable price, with an almost-stellar appearance, barring the reject rings in the corner.
Total: 14/20
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