Today on Food on Fridays it’s a seasonal look at pumpkin, American-style.

Pumpkin is a traditional food found in autumn in the U.S. Jack-o-lanterns, which are typical decorations for Halloween, are made from pumpkins.  Pumpkin pie is traditional dessert for the fall festival and holiday of Thanksgiving, but it’s definitely not a dessert you typically find in Europe although they do grow pumpkins there. But growing up as a kid, pumpkin pie is about the only food I remember eating that had anything to do with pumpkin.

But at the moment, everywhere you turn around here,  restaurants and chains seem to offer “pumpkin” anything, and not necessarily in a way you’d expect.

For example, you can get a pumpkin doughnut at most doughnut places. We tried one at the local Ladybug Bakery chain a few weeks ago. It was pretty good as a doughnut, but it didn’t taste like pumpkin. So today we tried one from Dunkin’ Donuts, a national chain. It didn’t taste like pumpkin either. And it wasn’t made better by the fact that it was a rather not-quite-pumpkin orangey color:

Pumpkin Dunkin’ Donut

Color comparison (pumpkin donut on the right)

Another big trend that in the U.S. is to have favored coffee drinks, so I guess it makes sense that if you’re offering pumpkin anything that pumpkin coffee is now available.  Dunkin’ Donuts offers so many different kinds of pumpkin coffee drinks that it takes two signs to advertise them all:

Pumpkin Coffee Drinks, Dunkin’ Donuts

Sign for Pumpkin Macchiato, Dunkin’ Donuts

I decided I needed to try one for the blog, and so I chose the latter; I mean, how could I pass on trying  “handcrafted perfection”,  right? Particularly since, according to this other sign, a macchiato at Dunkin’ Donuts actually has espresso in it. Well, theoretically, at least:

Espresso Coffee drinks at Dunkin’ Donuts

Of course, in Italy, a macchiato drink has no steamed milk and no double-shot of espresso – it’s just espresso with a little dollup of steamed milk.  So, I knew going in that this wasn’t going to be anything like a real Italian macchiato.  However, in the interest of research, I did actually try a Pumpkin Macchiato today.

Pumpkin Macchiato, Dunkin’ Donuts

Where to begin to describe it? As I commented to Chris, having me review this type drink actually isn’t fair to the concept, because I don’t really like flavored coffees in general. But I would say that this one tasted like neither coffee nor pumpkin. Also, although the sign says the drink comes pre-sweetened, it wasn’t very sweet, either. A failure on all levels, IMHO. I didn’t finish it.

But now I can add this to the wacky pumpkin foods I’ve tried over the years. Of course, while not all the ones at the  the big zucca (pumpkin/squash) festival in Bolzano years ago were all that great, this was the first time I’ve tried something that is nominally “pumpkin” that I couldn’t finish.  Of course, while that festival did offer an odd pumpkin prosecco (sparkling wine) drink, even they weren’t crazy enough to mess with the coffee.