Cigar Review: Room 101 Big Delicious

Originally published at Tiki Bar Online

Torpedo, 6.25” x 52 ring gauge / $8.95, Smoke Inn

The Room 101 Big Delicious is the sixth installment in Smoke Inn’s Microblend Series, a series dedicated to limited runs of premium cigars by some of the top blenders in the industry. This Microblend was accompanied by its own website, http://room101bigdelicious.com, which featured caricatures of Smoke Inn owner, Abe “Big Delicious” Dababneh (a character with more than a slight resemblance to the Kingpin for you Marvel Comics fans out there), and Room 101 brand owner, Matt “Swanky White” Booth (featuring Boofy playing an accordion and accompanied by a dog that looks nothing like the one I saw him with a couple years ago). The website featuring the “mostly fictional” chronicles of the two in a comic strip format and the whole affair seems about as campy and tongue-in-cheek as the Adam West “Batman” series. The blend is “based off of Room 101’s last successful Limited Release” which may mean the Namakubi Ecuador, which came out a few weeks ago (and was based on both the OSOK and the original Namakubi), but it’s more likely they mean the Daruma, released last August. The filler/binder is listed as Brazil, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic, while the wrapper is “a very special and limited high grade Habano 2000” leaf, with no indication of country. Thank you to Abe and the crew at Smoke Inn for sending me a couple samples of this cigar for this review.

First off I have to say that the marketing campaign for this one is excessively campy and silly…but I would think Matt Booth would be down with that. It’s also fun and original, reminding me a bit of the Austin Powers Goldmember film with its ‘70s-era parody. The cigar itself looks well-made; the wrapper was slightly oily and very smooth with the softest of box-press rounded corners and a fold-over foot. The aroma from the wrapper was sweet with hints of molasses and earth; with the wrapper folded over the foot, I didn’t get anything different there. I clipped the pointy end and got a very good draw…something you can’t take for granted with a covered foot. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are bad…and many times when a covered foot has a bad draw on the prelight, it is fine once you get it lit. This was good, though. The flavor was earthy with some dried fruit sweetness and more subtle notes of hay.

One advantage to the fold-over foot is that they are often easy to get lit initially; the disadvantage is that they are more difficult to light evenly. After achieving that state, though, I got a mix of mild sweetness, earth and hay on the palate, along with a medium-level pepper spice on the retrohale. With the charred overlay of wrapper tobacco at the beginning of this smoke, I have to say that the draw was less than optimum…I seemed to get enough air through, but it didn’t produce a huge amount of smoke until the 2nd or 3rd puff in rapid succession. In the future, I would probably just trim of that extra tobacco before lighting. Before too long, I started to get a slightly citrusy sourness as well. By the time I had burned through a half inch or so, the draw was appreciably better.

The second third of the Big Delicious started out a little less than delicious, unfortunately. Not that it was bad…it was just sort of…dull. I’m not sure what happened there. It was going along pretty good and then just hit a spot where it wasn’t doing anything for me. I kept it burning and by the end of the third it was quite good again, delivering some nice hay and earthy notes, with just a touch of the sweetness from earlier. There was still a pretty good amount of spice. Also of interest: at the same time as the flavor went a little downhill, the ash got very flaky, getting all over my keyboard and pretty much everything else; but it firmed up again before the third was over. The draw was spot-on and the burn line only needed one minor touch-up.

The last third of the Room 101 Big Delicious was more hay, earth and spice, much the same as the end of the second third. In the end, I found the Big Delicious to be a good cigar, but for me it didn’t reach the level of great that I’m sure the Microblend Series is shooting for. I read one comment about the cigar this morning where the reviewer stated that this was the first Room 101 blend that had done anything for him since the original; most people I have talked to felt the original was probably the weakest of the 101s. So maybe that’s who this stick would be recommended to: those who found the original very enjoyable (for the record, I like the original blend in the 213 vitola, but not so much in the other sizes). Being a fan of smaller ring gauges, I wonder if this cigar would have been more “Delicious” if it were not so “Big.” Ultimately, you’ll need to make up your own mind. It was medium-plus in body and moderate in strength, so it should be a pretty accessible smoke for all but the most novice of cigar enthusiasts. The price is good which should make it easy to try out and see if you like it.

Body: 7/10
Strength: 5/10
Complexity: 5/10

AFP Scale

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10