Americano Nuevo: What the fuck is this?

I've only been trying S-bucks beverages for a week and I'm already starting to conclude that anything on the menu that isn't either plain espresso or coffee with a bit of milk or cream is pretty gross. What's worse is that these fancier drinks are precisely the ones with more calories and sugar and I'm worried that my quest to review every beverage at Starbucks is turning into a modern-day version of Super Size Me.

I should probably point out that I teach and as a result feel compelled to explain the plot of any movie or TV show that is more than ten years old, because students do not know about anything from before the global financial crisis of 2008.

Sometimes I'll be teaching and I'll say, "Hey Class! Remember that time when Jack and Mr. Firley got stuck in that meat locker on Three's Company?" Then my class will inform me that, no, they do not, because it is no longer 1983. Then they'll ask me how this Three's Company episode is even relevant to the course and I'll be like, "IT'S RELEVANT BECAUSE JOHN RITTER WAS A GODDAMN NATIONAL TREASURE!"

Perhaps the most important lesson in all this is that roughly 90% of student complaints can be resolved by yelling at one's class about the late John Ritter.

But back to Super Size Me. Back in the day, if you ordered a meal at McDonalds, the cashier would say something like, "Would you like to Super Size that for an extra 39 cents?" If you were American and at all patriotic, you would cough up that extra 39 cents and receive a meal roughly double the size of the one you had initially ordered. This guy---his name was Morgan Spurlock or something---decided to make a documentary in which he ate at McDonalds for 30 days, Super-Sizing his meals whenever the opportunity arose.  About four days in he went to the doctor and the doctor was like, "I hope you're sitting down.  You have six weeks to live."

To this day, I never eat at McDonalds more than three days in a row. I feel a bit like Morgan Spurlock at this point, too, although I haven't had any medical problems so far---at least none that I can pin on Starbucks---so I'll try to keep going, although perhaps with less frequency.  But I did get one more drink in. I had the Americano Nuevo, which was recommended to me by a barista who has a pretty good sense of my tastes and I admit that it sounds great on paper (or on a blog): they take espresso, add some hot water, some light foam, and then throw in some hazelnut syrup. It's significantly less sweet than the white mocha, but is still unabashedly sweet.  I've never eaten actual hazelnuts by themselves, but I can nevertheless tell that the syrup has an artificial quality to it and I really didn't enjoy the flavor of this drink.    I had trouble finishing it and I wouldn't recommend it unless you are a fan of the hazelnut syrup at Starbucks.

Verdict: Not as sweet as some of the drinks, but the syrup has an artificial quality to it.

Score: 3 Stars and 3.5 Bucks out of 10.