Greetings from Mexico City!
Well, greetings from 4 months ago. I’d like to say my fame and fortune from this blog have forced me to be secretive about my travel plans, only posting about it months after the fact so no one tries to track down my location. But we all know the real answer: I forgot the password to my WordPress account.
At the time of this sundae, Lauren, our friends, and I had just endured a hike in Chapultepec in what turned out to be the hottest day of our trip—about 90 degrees F. Now, we were delighted to be getting any sunlight and warmth, after enduring what was the worst Chicago winter for me to date. Very much a “my steak is too juicy” scenario.
So we quickly searched for a sweet, cold treat to cool us down. Our friend recommended Nevería Roxy, which was just a stone’s throw away from the hike.
When we walked in, I assumed this was a single location type of shop—the inside was absurdly charming and felt properly lived-in, surely something that can only be achieved by being a 1-of-1 type of establishment.
Upon writing this I see that is not true—there are dozens of locations across the city. A great reminder that even franchises don’t have to adopt such a sterile aesthetic. Take note, Seoul Taco!
Anyway, before I get to the review, I owe you the third explanation for my absence, this time explaining why 2025 was so dry of content: Pokémon.
Pokémon is not a new presence in my life. In fact, Pokémon predates any other of my interests. Before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I was stomping my rival in the Indigo Plateau. Before I tasted my first hot fudge sundae, I had already collected over 24 gym badges through Pokémon Emerald. Before I realized how artful movies could be, I would always play Pokémon while having my cycle of comfort movies on in the background.
The point is, Pokémon is all consuming, as it is for many boys born in the mid-to-late 90s.
However, I had an on-again-off-again relationship with the Pocket Monsters once I got to my 20s. I almost fully stopped playing after being disappointed by Pokemon Sun after I got home from my LDS mission in 2017 . For the next few years, I would hear disappointment after disappointment with every new release—Dexit, terrible graphics for a game released in 2019, very boring and easy games repackaged as nostalgia bait (which I did fall for).
I would self-medicate with Pokémon Go since my family were avid fans, but it became a much more passive hobby.
Then a game came out in 2022, and my interest was renewed. Then in 2024 a friend told me about a ROMHack called Rogue Emerald, and I found something new to do on the bus. Then that same year, Pokémon released TCG Pocket, and I had even MORE to do on the bus.
I didn’t stand a chance.
Flash-forward to February, 2025. I just released Taskmaster – Chicago to YouTube, and I was looking for a new hobby to command all of my time. With Pokémon so present in my life, I started to think about a fact:
The franchise’s slogan used to be “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”, referring to the (originally) 150 Pokémon that existed in the world. Certainly, an achievable feat. Then that number grew to 250 with the release of Gold & Silver. Then that grew to 386 in the third generation of games, and the “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” slogan disappeared from the franchise.
We can interpret this to mean the Pokémon Company no longer expected us to catch every creature, that it was a task too tall for anyone to attempt. And now, as that number has ballooned to 1,025, it seems like it’s not worth the effort.
However, I’ve been playing these games for nearly three decades. “Surely, I’m close,” I thought to myself, oozing with hubris.
So I checked, putting every Pokémon I’d every caught across every game I still owned into Pokémon Home, the franchise’s cloud-based storage system. I was at around ~640/1,025. A little over half. Impressive, I thought to myself. Then came the cursed thought, “how long would it take me to catch the rest?”
As it turns out, nearly a full year.
I won’t bore you with (more of) the details, but virutally every day from March 2025 to my wedding in October, I put time in to catch ’em all. Sometimes it was fun. Most of the time it wasn’t.
The real rub? After all of my efforts, I’m still missing one. A dumb Pokémon that was released as an event-only exclusive in 2021 and hasn’t been made available since.
But as I chowed down on today’s sundae, I was reminded of the efforts I have to endure to catch every last one—traveling far and wide. Oh, the places I will go (for sundaes and Pokémon)!
Quality of Fudge
Delightful, if not a little runny. But it was certainly fudge!
Quality of Toppings
They just dropped some new tech on the sundae game: fruit compote. The last fruity-fudgey sundae I had was Margie’s Cherry Fudge, which did, in fact, disappoint. This was fresh, chock full of vitamins, tangy, and sweet. There were also some delightfully-toasted nuts and a wafer straw. Great additions to a complex flavor profile.
Level of Comfort Ordering Sundae
Spanish is not very good. Fortunately I can point to a menu. No real barriers here.
Would I Rather Get a McDonald’s Sundae?
Certainly not. Was very content and refreshed after my hike in a way that McDonald’s could never satisfy.
Final Score: 8.5/10
Note: I am officially out of excuses for absence. But with the semi-recent release of Pokopia, a game that’s frustratingly/perfectly designed to my gaming sensibilities, we can treat this excuse as a perpetual barrier to Hot for Fudge reviews. That and laziness. But a recent job posting to be a food critic for a Chicago publication has potentially inspired great fervor within me to do what I love doing: write about food. We’ll see how far that burning takes me.
Hot for Fudge 