Famous Dave’s Sweet ‘n Spicy Pickles Review
Thick, spicy, crisp pickles. Yes, please.
I’d never heard of “Famous Dave’s” before these pickles, so I don’t know how famous Dave actually is. I like these pickles, tho, so they get their own blog post as a reward. Or punishment, IDK.
I bought an enormous jar of these pickles at Costco. Sixty-four ounces of pickles. A half-gallon of pickles. I really like pickles, but even I was a bit worried about eating all of these myself. Fortunately, eating pickles alone in my house is one of my wicked-fun hobbies.
The jar said the pickles were “Mild.” They’re spicy. Now I want to know what the truly “Spicy,” five-flame pickles taste like. That sounds like some kind of extreme pickle sport.
How spicy are these? I wasn’t crying or in pain. It’s a pleasant, but visceral kind of spicy.
What I like about these pickles is that they’re very fresh-tasting, and crisp. The thickness gives them a firm, crunchy bite. They taste like refrigerator pickles, even though they are canned and shelf-stable. The flavor is also outstanding — it’s just the right amount of savory and sweet, with a burst of excitement from the herb/spice combination.
Speaking of those herbs and spices, these pickles are brined with all kinds of fun, colorful pickle sludge, like red peppers, mustard seeds, and black peppercorns. You can’t see that in my picture, so just pretend that it is there. Thanks.
The pickle chips are wildly different sizes and shapes. The cucumber slicer at the Famous Dave’s factory must be a free-spirt. It’s kind of like looking at clouds — no two are ever the same. And as you gaze upon them, you might catch a glimpse of a puppy, or a clown car, or even the Virgin Mary.
Some of the pickle chips are boring, predictable normie shapes, like this unfortunate dude. You probably taste great on a hamburger, my man, but you’ve just got no personality.
But others are much more poignant, like this one, which is shaped like an ethereal pickle wing. Perhaps shed from a fallen pickle angel.
Or, this one, who lost his head. He’s doing fine without it, IMHO.
Serving Size
A serving size is 3.5 pickles. I don’t know how to eat 3.5 pickles. Whoever decided that as the correct number to eat is a cruel prankster. In any case, these pickles have a lot of sugar, so if you eat more than a handful, you should cancel dessert. The good news is, there is no high fructose corn syrup. The bad news is, there are artificial flavors. Boo.
Ingredients
Here’s a list of the ingredients, in case you can’t read sideways, like I can:
Fresh cucumbers, water, sugar, vinegar, contains less than 2% of salt, calcium chloride, spices (contains mustard and celery seed), dehydrated onions, dehydrated red bell peppers, natural and artificial flavors, turmeric extract (color), polysorbate 80.
Price
I bought these at Costco, and they were $6.49, but that might have been a sale price. There are “usually 40” servings per jar, so that would be 16 cents per serving. That’s assuming you can figure out how to eat exactly 3.5 pickles at a time.
Author’s note:
Hopefully it’s obvious that Famous Dave’s didn’t pay me to write this, and I have no affiliation with their company, nor with Costco. Now back to my lonely, late-night pickle-eating. Go away.
