Do you have friends who believe themselves to be Great Cooks (simply because they've watched every dull/repetitive show on the Food Network for 10 years?) When you get an invitation for breakfast, lunch or dinner from these folks, your stomach cramps. You imagine their latest inventions (atrocities): Scrapple Swirl Chocolate Ice Cream, Dirty Corn (on the cob) slathered with a molasses and sardine oil glaze, Summer Lasagna, complete with pineapple, carrots and shredded toasted coconut nestled between Greek yogurt-smeared noodles. Oh, and sriracha sauce on everything!
As I've written before, I get the same sour stomach when I read note lists from Calvin Klein men's colognes. What inept "cook" comes up with these mismatched ingredients? This "creative"/scent director, or panel, must have a lotto-type wheel where perfume notes replace numbers: spin the wheel and you get...pear brandy! MELON!, agave nectar, SAGE!, tonka bean...sweet crystallized ginger, VETIVER! (All 100 percent artificial.)
Those notes are part of the new Calvin Klein Reveal Men* scent (with additional notes of suede, lentisque and amber). Robin Here at NST(R) said it best when she posted the announcement for Reveal Men: "The notes sound absolutely dismal."
Calvin Klein Reveal (for women) got some respect from perfumistas; so I gave Reveal Men a try.
Reveal Men starts with aromas of sour-vegetal "agave," melon (calone/ozone) and sage (my stomach started rumbling immediately). Joining this jarring mixture is a chemical/ink-y scent (stick your nose into a new magazine and inhale). For a minute or two, there's something food-y present: a choco/coffee-like accord (but very diluted, and unable to obliterate the melon). I was surprised, but grateful, that Reveal Men started to fade quickly, leaving behind the sheerest (and cheapest) sweet amber imaginable; the extreme dry down reminded me of sniffing a stale box of Animal Crackers. To put it into cooking terms: this recipe didn't deserve a second chance — let alone a place on perfume counters.
Calvin Klein Reveal Men is available in 30 ($42), 50 ($62) and 100 ml ($80) Eau de Toilette.
*Reveal Men was developed by perfumers Marypierre Julien, Olivier Gillotin and Rodrigo Flores-Roux.
I do not know anything about the perfume, but noodles, pineapple and Sourcream are classic ingredients of “lockshen Kugel” (along with egg and cottage cheese). Yes one can substitute a good yogurt (esp. Greek) for the sour cream and add a little shredded carrot. Believe me it is delicious.
Dilana: the only lokshen kugel I’ve had was made with apples and lots of butter…but I was not a fan (we, perhaps, can blame it on the “cook”).
I knew fragrances could be nauseating, but this one sounds like it could be the genesis of the runs! Another great review, Kevin, and thanks for the alert! I also look forward to hearing from the offended chefs.
Holly: HA! It’s bad. Take a Pepcid AC before sniffing!
Kevin, this review is wonderful and the fragrance must be truly horrible!
And I am going to take Pepcid before my next trip to the mall, just in case the SA will come to close with the bottle, or sprays it on me 🙂
Behemot…imagine a poor SA having to spray this one all day!!!!
Unless she is the Grumpy Cat 🙁
The only thing I remember about this one was the fragrance the ad portrayed: a fragrance for a man so jaded he is bored senseless by naked models dry humping his leg, Calvin Klein Reveal Men. This sounds even worse than the ad suggested. Thanks for taking the bullet for me.
monkeytoe: I’m looking at the print ad CLOSELY…it really looks like the woman has been superimposed on the zombie-guy! Her profile is the giveaway. Maybe it’s just one model’s head on another model’s body. What a world!
Reveal for women..it just smelled like another sweet musk scent to me with a bit more woods than usual. I actually didn’t get much salt at all. Reveal Men, another CK men’s scent that I sniffed and said, yep, I won’t be sniffing that again.
There’s a friend of my MIL who really believes she’s a great cook. She ‘catered’ the last get together, yes, she referred to herself as a caterer. When in fact, she just brought stale bread to dip in some kind of Velveeta-shrimp sauce. It was obviously Velveeta or some Easy Cheese that she threw some frozen shrimp in. Her other ‘specialty’ was sticking frozen meatballs from a bag in a crock-pot and throwing in some grape jelly..and let’s it simmer for like 20 mins. Finally, she had bars of cream cheese and poured sweet chili sauce from a bottle on them. Sweet chili sauce is her sriracha.
And yes, just like meatballs and grape jelly don’t mesh, nor shrimp and an artificial cheese product..the same can be said about many CK recipes. I agree. lol.
Omega: good grief!!!!!!!! HAHA! You know, there’s a Chinese restaurant here in Seattle that serves beef with a variety of hot fruit-jam sauces! On the menu, I remember seeing beef with strawberry, grape or plum sauce.
I would imagine that the Chinese sauces-or the meat- would have some spice to them -or something and that they would be more palatable than lukewarm ‘meat by-product balls’..that seem to have just perspired in a high fructose corn syrup sauna. I have also seen canned pineapple added with these grape jelly balls. You know, for a tropical twist.
I have an “underground cookbook” from 1971 called The Grub Bag, by Ita Jones. It has a recipe for sweet and sour meatballs that she said her mother had developed. The sauce is equal parts grape jelly and hot catsup, and along with onions, bell peppers and carrots. The meatballs were home-made, and both they and the vegetables were browned before adding the sauce. It seemed revolutionary at the time, LOL.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/mkocher/kirschner/2013/03/the-grub-bag-food-and-metaphysics.html
Seeing the simplified recipe on so many websites reminds me of bemusement when my father, who was horrified when I got hippie wire rim glasses in the 70s, ended up wearing wire rims himself in his sixties. 😉
NOZ: this grape jelly and meat! I guess the jelly can be thought to represent “wine” in its non-alcoholic state?
That book is worth it for the cover alone. Freakin’ awesome! It reminds me of a fake book from a skit on David Letterman in the 80s. It was called “Grub: 101 Ways to Make it Look Like Food.” The author was named “Wishbone.”
LOL – whoever wrote that might have seen this book! 🙂
This review made me lol, literally! Wish I could use the laughing til you’re crying emoji right now.
Laura…I am laughing today…but not on the days I wore Reveal!
Never mind Reveal Man! I would like to know when you last smelled a box of stale Animal Crackers and why? 🙂
Hajusuuri…even fresh Animal Crackers smell stale, I know…but I recently bought a box when I had jury duty and was starving…could not resist that cute box with a handle!!!
I’m still scratching my head at all the positive reviews of the women’s Reveal.
D: not sniffed that one yet…and probably won’t.
Who knew my feathers would get ruffled by digs at “great cooks.” I come from a line of amazing cooks on my father’s side, and live in the foodie ghetto of the nation…so harrrumph (but have only watched a handful of cooking shows–a woman from northern Italy with thinning hair–I forget her name but her cooking was magnificent). BUT I have been taken out to eat at a place called Shoney’s when I was visiting relatives in Atlanta many years ago. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet and I marveled at the platters folks were carrying back to their tables of mashed potatoes, fish fingers, fried chicken, cream of spinach, lime jello, and Red Velvet cake… and now I know what fragrance to try to revisit that occasion!
Thanks for the grouchy but illuminating review. I’d be grouchy too!
Oakland: I remember Shoney’s!!!!! I always got their hamburger “caked” with onion rings! I think the cook you’re referring to is Lidia Bastianich.
That’s her! Swiss/German influenced Alto Adige cuisine.
The very idea of a “caked” hamburger anything…. but that still beats some of the Shoney’s combos I witnessed… meat lasagna with a side of cool whip…. hmmm… however that could be the next Etat Libre d’Orange,”Bad Buffet…”
It most be so embarrassing for the perfumers to have their names associated with this mess. Kevin, it’s definitely your turn to review something great next time!
Noz: I’m already on it…next week!